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...
When the First Trauma is Separation
Some people spend years trying to explain a wound that began before they had words. That is one of the hardest parts of very early trauma. If the injury happens at the beginning, people often assume it should not count. They assume that if you cannot consciously...
How To Spot Sexual Abuse in Children
As a survivor of sexual abuse and horrific trauma, I can attest that it is the worst pain a human being can endure. It feels like being tortured, and in simple terms, it is. As adults in this day and age, we have the power to stop children from being abused, but many...
What the Parentified Child Looks Like as an Adult
Parentification is usually described as a childhood role reversal. A child becomes the emotional caretaker, mediator, problem-solver, or stabilizer in a home where adults are inconsistent, overwhelmed, impaired, or absent. In clinical language, it is a distortion of...