Part 2 of my series on Developmental Trauma (click here for Part 1)
Dr. Bruce Perry, MD (left) documents the brain science of how attachment problems can cause developmental trauma to a fetus, infant, or child – just when the brain is developing.
And he’s taking his “attachment first” approach to Washington.
In “Trauma Impacts the Brain: Healing Happens in Relationships,” Perry leads a full-day Pre-conference University on Sunday May 4, to kick off the National Council for Behavioral Health’s Annual Conference ’14 on May 5-7 (click here for details).
“Experiences profoundly influence the development of young children. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) shape the brain’s organization, which, in turn, influences the emotional, social, cognitive, and physiological activities,” the conference website notes.
“So often, trauma happens in relationships, but it is also in relationships that healing occurs. Explore the latest research and clinical treatment with trauma researcher, treatment visionary, and bestselling author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, and Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered.”
Dr. Perry’s relationship and attachment theory healing model first assesses each child as an individual, using his Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT). He emphasizes that there is no one label for child trauma. Rather, “there are very individualized patterns of exposure to trauma (all with unique timing, nature, and patterns)… So we don’t call ‘it’ anything,” he emailed me recently. “We describe it — and try to ‘illustrate’ each individual’s trajectory separately” with the NMT’s individualized brain mapping technique.
Birth is massive stress to a baby - by design, Perry explains. The biology of attachment is that a baby learns by thousands and thousands of good experiences that the stress chemicals that kick in at birth are tolerable -- because when mom meets its needs, that leads to reward chemicals. "Ultimately just seeing or hearing Mom makes you feel safe and pleasurable. Let a wounded soldier talk to his mom, he’ll need 45% less pain meds," Perry says.
Or not.
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