What is Childhood Trauma?

I have always viewed my childhood as 'traumatic' ... not just as a memory but even when the situations where actually happening to me as a young child. I always knew that what was happening wasn't normal, that I was in survival mode, and that I would have some issues to deal with when all the dust settled. I distinctively remember at 12 years old upon the moment of calling the police on my parents for a 'domestic disturbance' (they were physically fighting each other at the front door) that I was thinking, "Deep-six-ing everything in order to get past the moment will result in something coming out later." I could feel in the pit of my stomach, in the depth of my being, that I was getting eaten up by the stress, the drama, and the trauma. I knew that brushing it all aside and moving forward without truly addressing what happened would later haunt my brother and me.

So, for years, I went about life during my parents' long, drawn-out, and viscous divorce which encompassed custody battles, possession wars, and using us kids as pawns (Parental Alienation Syndrome). My parents remarried very shortly (within a year) after the divorce to 'ready made' families, so my brother and I were thrust into these 'ready made' families without having comprehended or adjusted to my parents actually being separated and divorced. The 'ready made' families immediately had riffs, battles, and conflicts, making life even more strained and stressed.

Although my mother will deny that our up-bringing has any effect on our adult life (read Blaming Parents for Our Past), nearly every researcher agrees that early childhood traumas lie at the root of most long-term depression & anxiety, and many emotional and psychological illnesses. Severe traumas can even alter the very chemistry and physiology of the brain itself. I have continually stated that I feel as if my brother's life as a dysfunctional adult is part-and-parcel of his upbringing. My mother and Dad both think that he is solely responsible for his mental state, lack of ability to manage his life, and his depression, lack of motivation, & more.

I wasn't left unscarred from my childhood either. I have battled insomnia during peak times of childhood trauma. I have battled anxiety through out my life, waiting for the next bomb to explode in my family. I have sought acceptance and attention from my parents that I will never achieve in receiving. I have searched, researched, dug, and sought understanding of my past, with which my parents have never assisted (my mother is irrational when speaking of the past, and my Dad 'doesn't remember' because he 'doesn't want to', which neither helps when trying to gain peace with the past).

So what exactly constitutes childhood trauma? Did I actually experience childhood trauma? A seminal 1992 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) report defines childhood abuse as "a repeated pattern of damaging interactions between parent(s) [or, presumably, other significant adults] and child that becomes typical of the relationship." In addition to physical, sexual and verbal abuse, this can include anything that causes the child to feel worthless, unlovable, insecure, and even endangered, or as if his only value lies in meeting someone else's needs.

Examples cited in the report include:

• "belittling, degrading or ridiculing a child; making him or her feel unsafe [including threat of abandonment]; failing to express affection, caring and love; neglecting mental health, medical or educational needs."
• The AAP also includes parental divorce in the list of potentially harmful events which can traumatize a child.
• Moving home frequently is traumatic for a child (it has been linked to suicide in older children)
• Disruptive home life, including having to adapt to a parent's remarriage and being part of a new blended family (perhaps several in the course of childhood).

Reference: What is Childhood Trauma?

Given the information above, my brother and I indeed experienced childhood trauma, namely (1) the repeated pattern of damaging interactions with my parents, (2) parental divorce, and (3) 'disruptive home life' with having to adapt to a parent's remarriage and being part of a new blended family (two in the course of our childhoods). The results are also blatantly clear with my brother who is very depressed and suffers anxiety with panic attacks.

Not only can these childhood traumas cause depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADD/ADHD, but researchers at the CDC have also found that a traumatic childhood can take 20-years off of one's life. The study, which appeared in the November 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the latest in the ongoing 14-year-old Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. The study involved 17,337 adults who became members of Kaiser Permanente, a health care maintenance organization in San Diego, between 1995 and 1997. After visiting a primary care facility at the HMO, they voluntarily filled out a standard medical questionnaire that included questions about their childhood. The questionnaire asked them about 10 types of child trauma:

• Three types of abuse (sexual, physical and emotional).
• Two types of neglect (physical and emotional).
• Five types of family dysfunction (having a mother who was treated violently, a household member who’s an alcoholic or drug user, who’s been imprisoned, or diagnosed with mental illness, or parents who are separated or divorced).

The researchers found that people with six or more of these types of trauma died nearly 20 years earlier on average than those without — 60.6 years versus 79.1 years. In this particular research, neglect was not included. So, a person who has been emotionally abused, physically neglected and grew up with an alcoholic father who beat up his wife would have an ACE score of 4. The significance of the study is that it supports the previous research — that child trauma is an important public health issue, stated David Brown of the CDC.

Research also shows that if a person has one risk factor, he or she usually has another. So, the researchers asked: if risk factors for disease, disability and early mortality aren’t randomly distributed, what influences their adoption or development? In parallel research, the neuroscience community has found that that trauma alters the function and development of children’s brains and nervous systems. Epigeneticists, who study how a person’s experiences turn their genes off and on, have found that trauma can turn on genes that manufacture the chemical stressors that affect the brain.

Traumatized children become hyper-vigilant, edgy, and impulsive with hot tempers. They are unable to focus on their schoolwork, unable to sit still, and regard social interactions as threats. These behaviors can get them in trouble or suspended, and that can lead to engaging in risky behaviors, such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol, workaholism, eating too much, etc., which can affect their health. Each of those descriptors fits what happened to my brother: hyper-vigilant, edgy, impulsive, hot tempered, unable to focus on schoolwork, couldn't sit still, and engaged in risky behavior (smoking, drinking).

Reference: Traumatic Childhood Takes 20 Years Off Life Expectancy

I still believe that one's personality and genetic make-up have a huge effect on who you develop into as a person. Your perspective in life which leads to how you handle your surroundings, thus your stress levels, greatly impacts your health. I recent dove into that topic of Nature vs Nurture And considering that my brother and I both came from the same parents, with the same childhood trauma, and over the same duration, but we both turned out drastically different gives an indication of personality's effect. Regardless of how we turned out as adults and regardless of my mother's and Dad's perceptions of my brother / my childhoods, we did indeed experience childhood trauma: my brother from 7 years old and onward, and for me from 9 years old and onward.

Blaming Parents for Our Past

"Our childhood experiences guide the way we create our own lives"
Gopnik Berkeley

A common theme that my parents have harped their entire life is that my brother & my childhoods shouldn't effect our adulthood-- that we are a product of our own choices and those choices are ours alone. My parents say that childhood should not be used as a crutch or an excuse for failings or shortcomings, that you as an adult make your life the way it is. I agree that one shouldn't use crutches or excuses; however, the life you make is a collection of choices that have been shaped by your past experiences. Funny how book after book is written to help the adult-child of abuse move past their childhood / teen years and to accept & heal. Hmmmm, but no, our childhood doesn't effect who we are as adults?!?!?

Neither parent will discuss the confusing, destructive, and tormenting past (OR any of the fun times either) that we endured from the late 1970's through the 1980's. My mother doesn't remember most of it accurately or becomes enraged when speaking about my Dad, and my Dad says he doesn't remember because he doesn't 'want to'. My parents also haven't taken accountability for the emotional abuse we were subjected to with Parental Alienation Syndrome as well. So, either way, my brother and my experiences are not validated, we are not to evaluate our childhood as possible causes for our reactions / actions / choices in our adulthood as the childhood had no impact, and we are supposed to deep six all of the aspects that concern both of us because it doesn't matter anyway.

Well, our childhood DID happen. Our childhood was very confusing, very destructive, and very tormenting. Our childhood left us treated carelessly, with conditions on love, and orphaned. And I think dealing with the emotions, feelings, and memories is crucial to being a healthy, happy, and productive adult. I thoroughly believe that our choices are guided by our internal subconscious shaped by our past experiences. And that internal subconscious can be a positive or negative force depending on the presence, amount, and condition of the scars.

Prudent choices may not be made if the child of an abusive parental relationship has not dealt with and come to terms with his / her past. Further, if one's self confidence has been eroded from the waves of parental mistreatment over the years, choices are further hindered. My mother just recently jumped all over my brother about 'owning up' to his bad choices that he's made since childhood, Rearing Their Ugly Heads, reiterating that HE made the choices. Yes, he made choices, but evaluate each choice to which she is referring independently, IN CONTEXT, and you will see that the surrounding is not black & white. And the fact that she is condemning him for things that happened when he was a CHILD is sad and bizarre in itself. Sad because he was a child-- a young boy that could have had parents guiding & supporting him in his decisions at the time, and bizarre because he's almost 40 years old being berated by his mother like he is 10 years old again.

My brother has needed his parents' support, reassurance, and guidance since a young boy, and having very selfish parents that were centered on their own wants & needs, my brother got very little that he needed. Sure, he had a Dad that coached his sports teams, and sure, he had a mother that laundered his clothes for him-- but what he needed was someone to help him deal with growing up. He needed someone to talk to, to help sort out all of the challenges that a kid feels when they're growing up. My mother treated him as the "No Good" child who could do nothing right, whereas my Dad wanted so much to please his new wife that he chose her over his son. My brother's room was given to her daughter, and he was to reside in the basement.

At one point, he was crying out for attention so much that he jumped out of a moving car. Sure that got him some attention, but not the attention he really needed. He really needed someone to REALLY talk to him, to REALLY listen to him, to REALLY help sort out his thoughts. Instead he was called stupid and yelled at. When he needed his parents even more, we lost our grandparents, and our mother retreated further from us, and our Dad was left to figure out how to keep the household going. Then our parents divorced and started using us as pawns in the game of divorce. Stress levels were intense for us kids, and I remember my head spinning from the amazing amount of mental abuse we endured. Then our parents almost immediately remarried to people that already had children, which added even more confusion to the simmering pot of parental neglect.

By the time that my teen brother started using alcohol and drugs to gain attention, my parents were so into their new lives that no one really took the time to sort out what in the heck was going on with my brother. Quick fixes were their answer, his problems were ignored, or he was told to try harder. How do you try harder when you've never been given the tools to work with in the first place!?

What happened to my brother BAFFLES my mind. I wouldn't treat my child with such disinterest and neglect. And it's so obvious that he was tossed aside so many times. And to now say that he is solely responsible for the choices that he made as a child, teen, young adult, and adult is simply negligent even further! And the fact that we were put through a huge amount of manipulations, guilt trips, mental & emotional abuse, and carelessly treated by ultra-selfish parents only compounds the neglect my brother experienced.

I dealt with all of the confusion of our childhood differently than my brother. I retreated, a lot of times, on my own, and thanked God for the good head he put on my shoulders. I spent a lot of time thinking about what happened, realizing that the situation was not my doing but between my mother and Dad. I would also immerse myself into running, my education (knowing I wanted out as fast as possible at 18 to go to college on my own away from them), and in my friends. I tried to digest the abuse as much as possible my writing in my diary as well.

My brother, on the other hand, was 2 1/2 years younger than me and a different person than me-- so of course he dealt with the situations completely different than me. He is mentally ill- diagnosed bipolar; however, I am certain that deeper issues are effecting him and have been effecting him since he was a small child: Antisocial Personality Disorder: Letter to my Brother. I don't think he's spent quality or quantity time sorting out his feelings and memories. I don't think that he's been able to figure out what happened, why it happened, and who our parents are. I don't think that he realizes, truly realizes, the reality behind what happened to us from such a young, tender, and innocent age. And I think if that ends up hitting him, the reality of it all, that he may get thrown over the edge.

He is very, very depressed-- mentally ill. And recently when I called my Dad to enlist his support for my brother, the amount of empathy that expressed was in the form of a to-do list and buying some things for him. He visited with him for a few days after not seeing him for years and honestly didn't delve into the crux of the issues. My Dad, again, just like when my brother was little, had quick fixes for my brother-- "He just needs to get a job and stick with it" My Dad completely fails to realize that my brother can't hold down a job is only a SYMPTOM of a much bigger issue-- the job is not the problem. My Dad doesn't want to take the time or the effort to get to know his son, to find out what makes him tick, and to understand what REALLY is going on in his head after all these years.

My brother's choices are a result of a damaged core combined with mental illness. My brother's choices are a result of a damaged self esteem with crippled self confidence and shattered sense of self. My brother's choices are a result of being orphaned by parents whose ghosts are still around haunting him with abuse into adulthood. My brother's choices are a result of not having the emotional tools to handle what life throws at him. My brother's choices have ALL been directly effected by the way he was handled as a child. PERIOD.

For my brother to overcome these obstacles in order to make different decisions, he has to overcome mountains of scars, erosion, and roadblocks in his mind that were started at a young age and reinforced through almost FOUR decades. So, for my parents to say that where he is in life is due to what he's chosen is completely inaccurate. I think they don't want to face the fact that they have damaged their son to the core and left to him fend for himself. And I would like to tell my mother, "You are a ruthless woman who should be ashamed of herself" and my Dad, "A job is not the answer. You are such a lazy and shallow thinker"... and to both of them, "You are both the most selfish people I have ever met" Adult Child in Crisis with Personality Disorder Parents