Is the Loss of Self the real outcome of trauma?

The role parents play is critical in how an individual responds to a traumatic experience initially and over time.  My patients consistently say that there was only one thing worse than experiencing the trauma of sexual abuse -- and that is not being believed when they tell one or both parents.  The lack of support is salt on the wound.

@Karin Anderson posted:

I have been reading your question over and over trying to give you an answer as I too, need to know. Most of my childhood trauma had nothing to do with me. For instance, a bomb was placed in a car near my home that killed a child. My father was paralyzed after back surgery. My mother died after we were hit by a drunk driver. The last one did sometimes make me feel if I was a better daughter she would have fought harder to live. My father was amazing and made me feel like a wonderful person. I raised two daughters the same way. They both struggle with addiction. My oldest daughter has been incarcerated many times and been through programs during that time. She says the worst experience is telling the story of her childhood. After hearing one tragic story after another she feels guilty telling her story which she describes as a wonderful childhood. As much as I would love to believe it, I can't help but think this can't possibly be the case. I go over the past constantly trying to pinpoint where I failed her. Since I lost my mother, I tried to give my girls what I didn't have and more. I wonder if they would have been better off without me. I don't know. I don't think this gives you an answer to your question, but I hope the information is some help.

“[Even] well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.24).

Regarding early-life trauma, people tend to know (perhaps commonsensically) that they should not loudly quarrel when, for instance, a baby is in the next room; however, do they know about the intricacies of why not? Since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123). This causes its brain to improperly develop. It's like a form of non-physical-impact brain damage.

Also, it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm? When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg.42).

Furthermore, how many of us were aware that, since young children completely rely on their parents for protection and sustenance, they will understandably stress over having their parents angry at them for prolonged periods of time? It makes me question the wisdom of punishing children by sending them to their room without dinner. …

Certainly so.  But we all have very effectively taught as children that nice people don't talk about certain things, like childhood sexual abuse, and certainly don't ask about them.  That's why it is so important for physicians and psychotherapists routinely to inquire, as part of a patient's Medical History, whether adverse childhood experiences have occurred in their childhoods.  When the answer is Yes, the next step is to ask, "Can you tell me how that has affected you in your life?"  Listening quietly, and implicitly still accepting that person, has been shown to have profound emotional benefits for that person as well as reducing their  cost of future medical care.  

Excellent points from everyone.  I really thank you for your comments.  I agree that it appears that treatment focuses on the individual who experienced the trauma and does not always focus on the perpetrator or events -- or both.  It is imperative that the individual be provided the opportunity to confront those who hurt them and/or to address the experience(s) that contributed to feelings of loss, grief, and doubt.  And yes, I agree that trauma impacts are incremental and that damage grows over time.

I am impressed that you shared your experiences and sources of doubt.  I would now ask if you are ready to confront these memories in a way that will allow you to progress in life. 

A couple thoughts...

1) Missing from your analysis is external life factors. US psychotherapy focuses too much on the individual alone. The personal sense of self. How self feels about self. It also matters how others, in the present, are treating the individual.

2) Important question - who is society asking to take responsibility for past trauma? The answer, at least in most of the US, is primarily "self". So even if you convince someone that they weren't at fault for the past, society very much says "it's your problem to deal with it now". Many so-called "help" outlets don't actually help. Social security nets are woefully minimal. We need to stop telling people to not feel at fault when the current social construct very much assigns fault at the individual level

3) Does justice matter? I'm surprised how rarely this topic comes up in regards to past abuse. We constantly try to tell people to "move on" or "build a new life". We rarely or never help people with accountability or justice for past harms caused. I'm not saying "move on" never works, but am saying we need to question the opposite hypothesis. What if, for some, the one true healing act is having society finally say "that wasn't okay, and we are now taking new action to stop that from happening to others and to bring to justice those harms you suffered". Something I've been working on a lot lately in discussion on what constitutes "health" and "healing"

I like the simplicity of the idea summed up in the title of your post because I think it has merit.  When I then read your post, I wanted to comment in order to state that my experience is that it's not necessarily a loss of respect for one's self from trauma that leads to the loss of self, but rather continued breaks in the idea of self due to "toxic stress" and adverse childhood experiences during a crucial time for self-development.  This can then manifest itself as a loss of self.  Does this make sense?

In other words, each adverse experience places a small traumatic break in the idea of self, and with each traumatic experience, the risk for a feeling of loss of self increases.   

In other words, I don't think it's a loss of respect for the self that equals loss of self, I think it is a person's self not being able to adequately form due to dents in the process put there by exposure to adverse experiences in childhood.

I like to keep it vague because I think the person doing the work towards self has their own words to attach to the adverse experiences and having them identify this is part of the journey to fix the spaces left behind by their very personal adverse childhood experiences.

I have been reading your question over and over trying to give you an answer as I too, need to know. Most of my childhood trauma had nothing to do with me. For instance, a bomb was placed in a car near my home that killed a child. My father was paralyzed after back surgery. My mother died after we were hit by a drunk driver. The last one did sometimes make me feel if I was a better daughter she would have fought harder to live. My father was amazing and made me feel like a wonderful person. I raised two daughters the same way. They both struggle with addiction. My oldest daughter has been incarcerated many times and been through programs during that time. She says the worst experience is telling the story of her childhood. After hearing one tragic story after another she feels guilty telling her story which she describes as a wonderful childhood. As much as I would love to believe it, I can't help but think this can't possibly be the case. I go over the past constantly trying to pinpoint where I failed her. Since I lost my mother, I tried to give my girls what I didn't have and more. I wonder if they would have been better off without me. I don't know. I don't think this gives you an answer to your question, but I hope the information is some help.

My brain seems to uncontrollably release high levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in what appear to be non-stressful daily routines. Almost all of my dreams are some form of 'anxiety dream' or another. ... It’s like brain damage.

For me, it’s like I’m always waiting for ‘the other shoe to drop’ and simultaneously worried about how badly I will deal with the event that normally doesn’t occur. It’s like a form of non-physical-impact brain damage.

It has been done elsewhere, but I'm actually arranging to have engraved on my grave/urn marker that, “Frank spent his life worrying about things that never happened.”