WHAT IS TRAUMA?
The word trauma is used so much these days and has a very powerful charge.
Many of us may not identify with this charged word as we associate it with more pronounced events like, war trauma, sexual and physical abuse or physical accidents and body traumas.
The actual physiological definition is “a negative emotional response to a terrible event”.
I hate to break it to all of us, but being born into the 3rd dimensional field of fear is in itself a traumatic event.
There is not one human on this planet that does not suffer from the trauma response pattern in some form.
Today I am going to talk a little about one form that we tend to mostly or totally overlook, but is a leading cause in our primary trauma response formation as children. This is what is called developmental trauma, because it happens in the environment over a period of time, not in one or a limited amount of “events.”
It is more pervasive, because it happens in what otherwise might appear to be “normalized” ongoing circumstances. I am speaking of the childhood trauma of neglect.
I am not speaking to the obvious types of bodily care neglect that we hear of in child abuse cases. This other kind of neglect is something we have all actually experienced because we were raised by 3rd dimensional parents who were not emotionally connected to themselves.
We may have been fed, housed and clothed in a “normal” family environment with people around us, but on an emotional level, there was likely nobody home, or at least not consistently or emotions were expressed in a deeply unhealthy way.
THE TWO STORIES OF TRAUMA
In the most common story, everyone was playing their roles like a 50’s sitcom. This is the story that we had a basically “normal” childhood, with no severe identified trauma events like blatant physical or emotional abuse.
In the second story, you realize and acknowledge at some level that you had a deeply dysfunctional childhood.
You hold the second story as a life blueprint for adaptation strategy. You have self-identified a bit more with the traumatic dysfunction it caused within you as a key to your healing process, or you repress and bury it and pretend it didn’t happen.
People tend to identify in one way or the other. Both have trauma imprinting.
I have quite a few clients that are so repressed and dissociated in their trauma response that they identify as normal and have in actuality been ritually or sexually abused in childhood and have no conscious memory of any kind. Their trauma responses and life story trace a clear line to the trauma, but they remain in denial, struggling with the mysterious symptoms that strangely disrupt and imbalance their lives.
THE EFFECTS OF SUBTLE NEGLECT TRAUMA
The emotional disconnect of an emotionally unavailable and vacant parent or caretaker causes a deep imprint in a new soul arriving and forming its fragile identity. This identity is formed based on what is being mirrored to the nervous system as safety and bonded connection, or in this case what is lacking in safety and connection.
What is missing is equally impactful.
The limbic resonance of present, connected, healthily bonded and attuned love and care beyond everyday physical caretaking is a foundation for building positive self-identity as children.
The limbic system is the part of the brain involved in our behavioral and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviors we need for survival: feeding, reproduction and caring for our young, and fight or flight responses.
So when the limbic imprint is one of lack of safety and connection it can cause a significant fracture in the development of the emotional self.
This lack of deep emotional attunement causes an over-sensitive and activated nervous system to develop. The emotions that rise are primal; fear of non-survival, a sense on anxious non-belonging and ultimately the possibility for death from exile and abandonment.
This is intense for a fragile young nervous system, and environmentally the child feels deeply unsafe, untrusting, misunderstood, unseen and unheard. When we are born we are still the highly sensitive beings that our soul embodies, but our demanding new physical reality can shock us into a sense of numbness and a strong desire to adapt to survive.
Many young children feel isolated as if in a strange place they don’t belong and with people they do not really “know.”
They cannot articulate this in an infant or child brain, it is a felt sense in the body and emotions and this is where it leaves its mark and fingerprints. This emotional fear imprint is now etched in the body and nervous system as a foundational experience from which all other experience will be responded to.
I can’t tell you how many times clients recount feeling like they were born into the wrong place with the wrong people, like they didn’t fit in or belong there and how alone and afraid they felt.
I have not met one person so far doing this work that did not have their inner child soul fragmented into a dark lonely place and stuck there needing soul retrieval.
This is deeply distressing (a negative emotional response to a terrible event) and causes a subconscious imprint of invalidation, non-being, fear of death via abandonment or lack of survival and isolation of the deepest kind.
This is the very essence of trauma.
We all have it in some form. It is the root of our belief that we are unlovable and unsafe at the depth of our being. If we are unlovable we blame ourselves as being unworthy and then what follows is a deep self-hatred rooted into our very essence. If we are unsafe we use unconscious mechanisms and masks to adapt strategies to get our needs met.
The more a person is in an egoic mask state of dissociated “okayness”, the deeper they hide from themselves.
These foundational identity and safety wounds are hidden very, very deeply and carefully away from our own conscious knowing. They are deep in the subconscious.
If you’d like to explore your deep unconscious trauma wounding so you can release and free yourself from old patterns, beliefs and behaviors, inquire about a personal mentorship.
Many Blessings
Elaine Marie Rose
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