PTSD, Trauma And Adult Children Becoming Parents

Dr. Tian Dayton is a pioneer in ACOA healing. Her recently published article in the Huffington Post is titled, "When Adult Children of Alcoholics Become Moms“. Although targeted to mothers, this insightful writing applies to all ACOAs and dysfunctional family members.

Highlights:

Kids whose fight or flight response is activated over and over again by the confusing and disturbing dynamics that surround addiction may become traumatized by that experience. That trauma can surface years or even decades later in a post traumatic stress reaction. Adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs) can experience a form of PTSD from growing up with addiction.

ACoA moms can be big worriers. They pass along a certain anxiety and they often have a hard time with boundaries. In addition, there is this loss of self- regulation that is part of the trauma response, so ACoAs may alternate between emotional and behavioral extremes.

As kids we rewrite, repress, "forget" or dissociate from the pain that we can do nothing about. It's the nature of trauma. Kids who are feeling overwhelmed by the chaos around them "check out"--they dissociate and they freeze their feelings because it's the only way they can get any sense of personal control. After all, they are small and dependent on their parents; they are trapped by the vulnerability of their age and size. Besides this, they make sense of their parent's erratic behavior with the developmental equipment they have at that time, and that sense can be very young and magical.

When they grow up and become adults, they just don't have a mature sense of what happened and how it affected them. They are mature and functioning adults with wounded little kids hunched down in silence deep inside of them.

Why don't ACoAs recognize this and try to get help?

Because the pain is unconscious and surfaces unconsciously through triggers and memory primers. The trap is that because ACoAs often have the capacity to understand what happened to them, they mistake understanding for emotional processing; their pain remains untouched and unprocessed. They can refer to it, but not feel it, process it, and let it go or at least transform into another stage. They block it in a thousand clever ways.

Read the entire post here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-tian-dayton/when-adult-children-of-al_b_8061092.html

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Dr. Drew On Trauma And Emotional Disregulation

http://www.kabc.com/common/page.php?pt=Dr.+Drew+Midday+Live+-+03%2F03%2F15+-+12PM&id=40341&is_corp=0



You may be familiar with Dr. Drew Pinsky’s work as an addiction specialist on the show Celebrity Rehab, his own TV talk show and now as a radio host on KABC 790 AM. Dr. Drew’s radio show is available as a free podcast. On March 3, he had a few interesting things to say about trauma, dysfunction, emotional disturbance and addiction. Check out the podcast at about 2:45 after the beginning.

Drew says, “Finally people are starting to make the connection between adverse health affects and (childhood) trauma… the consequence of that trauma is emotional “disregulation"… if you’ve been traumatized it shatters the brains ability to regulate… it creates a child who is unwilling to trust another person and unwilling to be vulnerable and re-enter that frame where they can build an emotional landscape that could lead to flexible emotional regulation.

Instead, they reach for alternatives- sex, drugs, cigarettes, high calorie/ processed food… this is more than emotional eating. This is eating in an attempt to fill a void/ regulate painful emotions and un-regulatible feelings. Pain, somatic dissociation, poor self care.”

He says that when children are traumatized it affects their brain physically. “It actually has a measurable effect on their memory- their hippocampus is structurally different.” They have a higher probability of difficulty in school, ADHD, problems functioning academically, drug and alcohol use, behavioral problems. “When you can’t regulate you’re more likely to drink and not do so good in school.”

Dr. Drew says people engage in dysfunctional behavior such as substance abuse because they are so unregulated. Whatever the particular psychological disturbance, ultimately the causational link is trauma. Drew says his patients had twofold problems- addictions AND underlying trauma. Pain, PTSD mental and emotional pain, feelings of emptiness, propensity to reenact their trauma- it ALL stems from emotional disregulation. Attempts to solve that include self medicating with substances and or coping behaviors.

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Traumatic Memories

When writer Annette McGivney set out to do research on a murder for a new book, she developed nightmares, panic attacks and insomnia. Her diagnosis was delayed onset post-traumatic stress disorder. The cause was 30 years of repressed fear that she had successfully kept a secret — especially from herself — that as a little girl she feared her my raging father would kill her.

“Most adult children (of abuse) reach adulthood with their secrets intact,” writes Judith Hermann, M.D., in “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse and Political Terror.” But “as the survivor struggles with the tasks of adult life, the legacy of her childhood becomes increasingly burdensome. Eventually, often in the third or fourth decade of life, the defensive structure may begin to break down…”

Annette writes: PTSD is not a sickness. It is the mind and body’s normal reaction to what is perceived as life threatening circumstances. But for adults who have experienced chronic, prolonged trauma — usually on the battlefield or growing up in abusive homes — this fight, flight or freeze reaction becomes deeply imbedded in the central nervous system and can make the challenge of recovering from PTSD daunting, and for some, seemingly impossible.

For her, the answer was in tackling the trapped energy - “the poison that lies beneath the surface”. Under the guidance of a trained trauma therapist, Annette was able to re-experience those episodes when she was on the receiving end of her father’s rage. Eventually, through Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) and Somatic Experiencing (SE) techniques, “That kid in me became convinced she was finally safe and could start to let down her guard… Instead of re-experiencing what actually happened, I chose escape. I envisioned calmly walking out the back door of my childhood home and down my sunlit driveway into the woods where I loved to roam.”

After three and a half years of working on recovery every single day, Annette remains on a lifelong journey toward healing and has found peace in the present.

Annette McGivney is a writer and 18-year Flagstaff resident. She teaches journalism at Northern Arizona University and is the Southwest Editor for Backpacker magazine.

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children