PSYCH TALK ARTICLES

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When is daddy coming home? Why don’t I have a daddy? These are questions, many single mothers have had to respond to. The single mother is faced with the challenge of being honest and not bad-mouthing the biological seed that fertilized their child. This is the pain that a mother may feel when she sees the pain in her child’s eyes and there is absolutely nothing that she can do to remove the pain. His physical absence can have a significant long-term impact on the child because he or she must reconcile feelings of abandonment at some point no matter how awesome the mother is. The father’s sin is his purposeful absence. However, it is not uncommon for the same sin to haven been committed against him by his own father. While having an absent father himself is not an acceptable excuse, it sure does create some understanding of how this irresponsible behavior continues. 

But what about the fathers who are physically present but emotionally absent? Some would say that emotional absence is worse than physical absence, as one client described this experience as “being in the same room with my dad but being invisible.” The desire for connection of the child is innate, and for healthy emotional attachment there needs to be some effort on the part of the father. 

One father (John) stated, “I just don’t know how to connect with my kid…No one connected with me..My dad was an angry verbally abusive alcoholic before I was placed in a permanent foster home..That’s when I went into survival mode….The foster parents abused me ….I had to take care of me----or I would die—now as a dad, I am supposed to know how to connect with my own kid? I want to but..I just don’t know how..”

John’s dilemma is not uncommon either. The abuse he experienced in his own home with an alcoholic father and the abuse foster care are all forms of developmental trauma, e.g. complex trauma. 

To address the abandonment and neglect of these clients, one powerful approach is to determine at least one negative cognition or beliefs of oneself relative to the identified trauma. Then it is important to know how the individual feels (emotionally) about the experience. After the feeling/emotion is identified, it is necessary to ask where that emotion is manifesting in the body. It is that physiological representation of the emotion that must be processed first.

What is the Invisible Wound? It is the physiological, social and psychological impact of childhood sexual trauma. It is invisible because people assume that she is okay because she hasn’t disclosed it to anyone..and if she often feels like she can’t or she does not want to talk about it….And if she has disclosed it and received help for the trauma, people still wonder why she is not over it. After all, she was 7 years or younger or a bit older. But she was just a little girl…And It may still affect her even though TODAY, she is 25, 37, 45, 56 or 70 years old--.She was young when it happened and someone she may have known and maybe even trusted betrayed her in one of the worst possible ways...

Many who claim to be experts in treating CSA swear by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy alone can resolve the physiological, social and psychological impact of this horrific, terrifying event. 

CSA is one of many types of developmental trauma. Developmental trauma are those horrific experiences that take place early in a person’s development and as a result often adversely affect her brain and body development (cognitive development and autonomic nervous system), her psychological development (her overall mental health) and social development (relationships with others, attachment styles)

• Some of the psychological effects include, Flooding of emotion

• Shame

• Depression

• Embarrassment

• Fear

• Rage

• Helplessness

• Lower self-esteem

This type of trauma may be considered “complex” because much of the healing involves not only changing negative perceptions of herself relative to the trauma but also just as well knowing how her body reacts when the thought of the trauma is triggered. 

Her understanding of the trauma is often related to her understanding at the developmental stage that the trauma occurred. If the CSA happened at age 7, we are treating the wounded 7-year-old (The 7-year old’s brain’s processing of the event at the time it occurred.). 

For some seven-year old’s Black and White thinking, and egocentrism are common cognitive constructs which may have manifested in the little girl believing that she was bad or dirty and the world is an unsafe place—or that she cannot trust anyone.

• Some CSA survivors experience irreversible changes to thinking

• Pre-trauma (before trauma) perception of life or her view of the world can change

• Her perception of the world may become skewed, appearing abnormal, and her view of herself and her coping abilities, and personal beliefs all become tainted by the traumatic experience (Joseph & Linley, 2006).

Brain Development (Kids exposed to trauma)

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• Brainstem/Midbrain portion of the brain seems to overdevelop resulting in increased hypervigilence and seeking safety and reactive stress responses and impulsivity

• Limbic/Cortical functions (emotional reactivity and problem-solving skills)

For some CSA survivors there is a real risk for engagement in high-risk sexual behavior, such as having multiple (unprotected) sex partners (Lalor & McElvaney, 2010) 

They also have an increased risk for sexual revictimization as adults (Lalor & McElvaney, 2010), as at times they may subconsciously recreate the environment in which the trauma occurred