{"id":1176,"date":"2011-03-10T11:01:38","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T16:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2013-09-14T14:37:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T18:37:49","slug":"trauma-through-a-childs-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading Trauma Through A Child\u2019s Eyes<\/a> by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline.\u00a0 Peter Levine is the person who developed Somatic Experiencing as a method for healing trauma.\u00a0 The book describes a number of ways children can be traumatized from being born in a standard hospital, to falls and bicycle accidents, to simply having their basic needs neglected.\u00a0 Trauma is NOT in the EVENT, it\u2019s in the nervous system\u2019s inability to cope with the event.\u00a0 Babies and young children with highly sensitive nervous systems which are still developing are far more likely to be overwhelmed by events that wouldn\u2019t faze an adult.<\/p>\n

Imagine you\u2019re a baby lying in her crib.\u00a0 She\u2019s so young she can\u2019t even turn herself over yet. She\u2019s hungry and she\u2019s crying.\u00a0 Crying is her only coping skill to try to let someone know she needs help.\u00a0 The truth is that she is completely helpless to feed herself, and if someone else doesn\u2019t bring her food, she WILL DIE.\u00a0 Once the reptilian brain stem concludes that she is going to die, she enters the realm of trauma.\u00a0 Mother may walk through the door with a bottle five minutes later and it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

I first read Waking the Tiger<\/a> in June 2001.\u00a0 This is Peter Levine\u2019s earlier book about his theory of trauma based on studies of animals, and his development of a method of healing trauma.\u00a0 When I got to the chapter on Hypervigilance, I went into a hypervigilant spiral, my terror went through the roof, and it lasted for months until I was finally calmed down by medication.\u00a0 It was only at this point that I began to take seriously the idea that I had been traumatized, and started to see a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.<\/p>\n

The mechanism behind hypervigilance starts with a nervous system that is easily triggered by innocuous happenings \u2014 a word said a certain way, a particular smell, even a door slamming.\u00a0 Once the nervous system has been triggered into red alert, the person starts looking around for the danger.\u00a0 When they can see nothing dangerous, the body doesn\u2019t relax, as it would for a non-traumatized person, it stays in red alert.\u00a0 The feeling is \u201cI know I haven\u2019t been able to see it, but it must be there because I still feel scared.\u201d The search becomes desperate, and can\u2019t end successfully because the scary event happened in the past.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, but as I expected, reading about traumatized infants and children definitely re-stimulated my own trauma.\u00a0 Fortunately, because of years of Somatic Experiencing I\u2019m much more resilient and able to handle it.\u00a0 I knew what I was dealing with, I got the baby doll and held her as close as if to say \u201cI know you\u2019re having a hard time, and I\u2019m here.\u201d I let myself \u201chide\u201d in a book, in computer solitaire, and didn\u2019t force myself to go out and \u201cenjoy\u201d the beautiful day.<\/p>\n

I suspect that what I was dealing with was birth trauma, because in the past I have often been uncomfortable on bright sunny days and been puzzled by it.\u00a0 One day started out grey and rainy as I drove to Montpelier for a therapy appointment.\u00a0 Part way over, the rain stopped, the clouds opened, there was brilliant sunlight, and I felt completely blasted, in a state of shock.\u00a0 Later, when I thought about it \u2014 at that time I didn\u2019t know enough to bring this up with my therapist \u2014 I saw that I had suddenly been transported from a dark wet environment to one with bright light and everything glittering.\u00a0 I thought how this mirrors the transition from the dark wet womb to the brightly lit hard-edged environment of the hospital room.<\/p>\n

Gosh!\u00a0 Just writing that all out helps.\u00a0 I feel much more solid.\u00a0 AND, it\u2019s clouded over since the morning.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Somatic Experiencing and to find a Practitioner<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading Trauma Through A Child\u2019s Eyes by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline.\u00a0 Peter Levine is the person who developed Somatic Experiencing as a method for healing trauma.\u00a0 The book describes a number of ways children can be traumatized … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-interesting-link","category-somatic-experiencing","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}