Sticks and Stones.

Terr, L. C. (1991). Childhood traumas: an outline and overview. Am J Psychiatry, 1, 48.

As a child, you think your parents are all-knowing. There comes a point where a child starts to

In this stage the child learns to feel comfortable with parents and trusts their care or develops a deep mistrust that makes them feel unsafe. Although Aileen’s mother did not leave her until age 3 she neglected them at a very young age and Aileen did not have a father to nurture her either.

Signs of repetition include nightmares and flashbacks. The authors then discuss trauma resolution. They make the important point that children’s trauma must be discussed by direct disclosure in order for them to resolve their issues. Simple play therapy, these authors believe, is not adequate to do this.

I did not keep an open mind to alternative perspectives at that time. My father and step-mother had expressed concerns before and I was becoming more aggressive and irritable with every accusation. I knew that my relationships with those around me were tested by my actions.

As children our world often revolves around our parents. This is because parents are our source of safety and security, of love and understanding, of nurturance and support. A child experiencing abuse develops strategies that become coping mechanisms. These coping mechanisms enable day-to-day functioning and help the child detach from the emotional and physical pain of events, especially when the abuse continues over a long

A child who is under the age of puberty is lacking the chemicals in the brain to see the whole picture and make decisions so the wounds that happen in childhood, a time during which the child does not have the capacity to understand, trigger responses not based on the whole picture of the event just happened, it is based on the adrenaline of the events and the relationship of the current event to previous events and trauma stored in the brain. Once a child is traumatized, the child will be more vulnerable to perceiving future events as trauma. In the bible Paul says, “We are not to cast down arguments or strongholds and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bring every thought into captivity and to the obedience

Sixty percent of adults report experiencing abuse or other difficult family circumstances during childhood. (Mental Health Connection, N.D.). This shocking statistic exemplifies the high prevalence of childhood trauma. Furthermore, twenty-six percent of children in the United States will witness or experience a traumatic event before the age of four. (Mental Health Connection, N.D.) Trauma is an extremely common and complex phenomenon. But what is trauma? According to Merriam Webster, trauma is defined as, “a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury.” (Merriam Webster, 2017). Dr. Lenore C. Terr from the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of America further describes trauma as unique to each individual. It can be caused by a series of events or one severe incident. Unfortunately, childhood trauma is usually experienced repeatedly. For example, many children endure sexual abuse, bullying, and severe family problems over and over again. Children may experience a variety of traumas that have lasting consequences on their mental health. Those who experience childhood trauma are more likely to develop psychological disorders. This occurs because their brains lack neuroplasticity, which inhibits their ability to adapt to various stressful circumstances.

A child’s sense of self as separate from the world is formulated early in development. Children exposed to early trauma, especially by a primary care giver, develop a distorted sense of the self, others, and the world. When exposed to trauma, children become overwhelmed and are unable to effectively self-regulate thus leading to a disjointed sense of self. They have a tendency to lose hope and expect that life will be dangerous thus challenging their ability to survive (Terr, 1992). Survival becomes the predominant drive for children exposed to trauma and their focus becomes toward responding and adapting to a potentially threatening environment. Feelings of trust and the sense of self become compromised as resources are allocated toward coping with threats. Traumatized children experience guilt and low self-esteem and perceive themselves as unlovable and unworthy of protection or love (Johnson, 1985, 1987).

When a child experiences emotional abuse, the wounds run skin deep. Kids who suffer repeated trauma feel lonely, scared, worthless and unloved, which is exactly the opposite of how children should feel. Abused children often become broken, hollow and bitter, with mental consequences that last long after the physical wounds have healed. The emotional stress it puts on children is tremendous.

“American Psychiatric Association defines trauma as an event that represents a threat to life or personal integrity. Trauma can also be experienced when children are faced with a caregiver who acts erratically, emotional and /or physical neglect, and exploitation” (Maltby, L., & Hall, T. 2012. p. 304). Trauma comes in many different forms including: war, rape, kidnapping, abuse, sudden injury, and

Trauma occurs when a child has experienced an event that threatens or causes harm to her emotional and physical well-being. Events can include war, terrorism, natural disasters, but the most common and harmful to a child’s psychosocial well-being are those such as domestic violence, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, maltreatment, and witnessing a traumatic event. While some children may experience a traumatic event and go on to develop normally, many children have long lasting implications into adulthood.

Childhood is a time for playdates and learning, a time for big dreams and imaginary adventures. Safety and security should not be questions that linger in uncertainty. However, this is not the case for many children across the globe. Thousands of children from all walks of life each day are faced with unspeakable horror and must deal with the resulting trauma from then on. However, in children, managing this trauma takes a different toll on the mind and heart than it does in adults. While the type of trauma may vary in pervasiveness across countries, trauma occurring in childhood has the ability to cause long term damage to the growing neurological functioning in the brain and negatively influence children’s spiritual development, wounding

Almost anyone that has had the misfortune of enduring an early childhood traumatic experience will readily admit that it has had lasting effects on his life. A traumatic occurrence at an early time in one's life will not only change the person's way of thinking, but it will also alter the relationships that this person has with certain people, places, or things. Normally comfortable settings will suddenly become extremely uncomfortable. People that the child was once at great ease with unexpectedly are transformed into completely different people in the child's eyes. For an adult, traumatic experiences are easier to handle, at least in my opinion. But for a child, going through a tragic event could completely destroy the type of

Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery provides not only greater understanding of how a traumatic event may defined but also the ways in which the effects of the experience may have a significantly repressing effect on the present and future self. Traumatic events are impressing on the self because they overwhelm the conventional emotional and physical perceptions that humanity has adjusted and modified their selves to. As traumatic events generally involve threats to the emotional and physical self, they differ from common misfortunes as they confront the victim with the feeling of extreme terror and helplessness that in result causes the individual to perceive the experience as one that was out of their control. As Herman reiterates, according to the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, “The common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation” (Herman 104). However, it is the response to the traumatic event in the emotional or conscious self that may differ from one another as there are three differing reactions to the terror factor of trauma: hyper-arousal, intrusion, and disconnection. Throughout this essay the work of Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery as well as Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower will be utilized to illustrated the compromising effects a traumatic experience such as childhood sexual abuse may have on the development of a young teen and the ways in