Developmental Trauma Series: 3 – Why Insight Alone Does Not Heal Developmental Trauma
There I was standing in the hallway of the emergency room after my mother’s latest suicide attempt. This time, she had taken a knife up and down her arms, and for good measure, jumped into my father’s rural fishing pond behind the house. The neighbors found her. Now,...
Developmental Trauma Pt 2: When Survival is a Way of Life
How the Nervous System Adapts to Ongoing Fear In the first article, we explored what developmental trauma is — not a single event, but an environment of ongoing fear that shapes a child’s nervous system over time. Understanding this raises an important and haunting...
Developmental Trauma – What is it? An explanation in six parts.
The Atmosphere of Developmental Trauma I froze. Even at four-years-old, I knew that danger lurked behind every corner. My home, a minefield of attack, never rested. Each day began as a slow burn, then turned into a pressure cooker until the explosion...