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The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

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Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#141

Post by blargey »

sleno wrote: post #87
igorramazanov wrote: post #36

Attachment Theory is an interesting subject on the matter. A few useful books which helped me with both understanding and healing (there're still problems, but it gets better): 1. Love Sense, Sue Johnson. 2. The Power of Attachment, Diane Pooler Heller. 3. Understanding Disorganized Attachment: Theory and Practice for Working with Children and Adults, David, Shemmings and Yvonne Shemmings. 4. The Body Keeps the Score…

Could you summarize some practical takeaways from all these books? To be honest I've become a bit skeptical of how much this sort of stuff helps. From what I see, our society has become much more well-versed in all this psychology-therapy-trauma material in the last 20 years, yet despite this we're taking more anti-depressants and seeing more therapy than ever. Mentally and spiritually we seem to be doing worse than…

> Somehow, humans managed to get by for thousands of years without any of this stuff.

By “humans” do you mean 50%, 75%, 90%, 99%, or 99.99% of the population?

By “got by” do you mean “lived mentally strong and resilient and healthy lives” or “just managed to do enough labor to not be ostracized and cut off from resources” or “maybe they couldn’t, but nobody wrote about or wanted to remember those people anyway” or “nobody had the vocabulary to describe their state or behavior as anything more than ‘unpleasant/unbecoming’”?

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#142

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

smeej wrote: post #101
NateEag wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I guess that's one thing that might characterize society: Lots of frustrated would-be grandparents. Perhaps also many alienated grandparents, confused, hurt, and angry that their children don't want them involved in their grandchildren's lives. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20230620/dealing-with-a... https://www.alienatedgrandparentsanonymous.com/

The list of "Reasons for Estrangement" in that first article is sorely lacking in anything that acknowledges the parent might be at fault.

It really does seem like the sort of article an estranged parent would find extremely satisfying to read. Remember, it's someone else turning your child against you!

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#143

Post by a_conservative »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #140
a_conservative wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying this to try to start a fight or anything. You strike me as a kind person, so I’m going to give this a shot. I am a bit of a contrarian about lots of things. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known were major contrarians. Are Linus Torvalds or RMS contrarians? What about Richard Feynman or Tesla? I don’t really know if any of those examples would be widely considered contrarians, but my point is tha…

So, I divide things into two camps. I think one can hold an unpopular opinion about subjective things, and it's fine. I won't judge you for preferring tabs over spaces, even if I think you're wrong. I won't weigh that opinion against your other work either. It's like preferring sweet potato to apple pie. You're still wrong, but again it has no bearing on objective facts. :^) When you're outspoken about an objective f…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m similar to you in this regard, but I’ve been thinking about the frailty of human knowledge lately.

We get it wrong a lot. It will be interesting to see how the vax debate and perception plays out over the next few years.

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#144

Post by giraffe_lady »

m463 wrote: post #43
lanstin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the research on child sexual abuse in the US shows that rates have dropped by about 50% since the 1970s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201120/ search for "Evidence for a Decline in Physical and Sexual Abuse" (searched for that to post this, and they cite %60 since the 1990s). Freud himself discovered a tremendous amount of horrible abuse in his patients; depending on the culture, most people just turn…

> not believing how common it is. I knew someone that was abused as a child. Had trouble with drugs and went into rehab. He said that ALL the people he met in rehab had been abused.

True in prison as well. The setting doesn't encouraging grappling with it in those terms like rehab does. But it's easy to see anyway.

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#145

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

dang wrote: post #46
TeeMassive wrote: post #41

Finally a subject my childhood makes me "expert" at! People often say that I have a unsavory dark humor, but it's one of the best coping mechanism out there. My earliest memory is my mother spreading food all over my face because I didn't want to finish my plate. I remember my eyes hurting because of the pepper in it. My father threatened to shoot the family dog on a weekly basis to make me behave. I could not leave…

That's seriously awful. I'm glad you have a sense of humor because that seems like one of the helpful reactions that could arise from such a nightmare. > They would often bring me in front of the school's psychologist and he would make me cry in front of them, always blaming me, never once asking me what was going on at home. It's remarkable how institutions (the school psychologist in your case) often re-inflict the…

> It's their job to protect the child, but often they do the opposite, and it's worth asking why.

It seems pretty simple to me why. If we were talking about a job in tech, there would be 10,000 snarky responses about how it was obvious that this project manager or that maintenance developer was just protecting their job. Same here. Rocking the boat as a guidance counselor or anything like that just invites complaints (warranted or not), and in those roles they're judged by the school administrators on how many (or few) complaints are received. Same as teachers, I think. And though I've read no stories from school psychologists, teachers who get even a few complaints find themselves unwelcome in that district.

Maybe my speculation is wrong in this regard, but if so, I can't see the flaw in it.

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#146

Post by petsfed »

sleno wrote: post #87
igorramazanov wrote: post #36

Attachment Theory is an interesting subject on the matter. A few useful books which helped me with both understanding and healing (there're still problems, but it gets better): 1. Love Sense, Sue Johnson. 2. The Power of Attachment, Diane Pooler Heller. 3. Understanding Disorganized Attachment: Theory and Practice for Working with Children and Adults, David, Shemmings and Yvonne Shemmings. 4. The Body Keeps the Score…

Could you summarize some practical takeaways from all these books? To be honest I've become a bit skeptical of how much this sort of stuff helps. From what I see, our society has become much more well-versed in all this psychology-therapy-trauma material in the last 20 years, yet despite this we're taking more anti-depressants and seeing more therapy than ever. Mentally and spiritually we seem to be doing worse than…

I suspect that your anecdata results from the community that organized religion engenders. Irrespective of all the criticisms leveled at religion, the simple fact of the matter is that if you feel like you belong, that your struggles are not unique, and that you can talk to people who have come through similar struggles apparently intact, you will likely heal from the experience faster and more completely. That the religion can provide some explanation for why you had to experience the trauma is a neat side effect.

The veteran suicide rate is an evergreen cause of concern, but one of the major stories amongst veterans is that they leave this community where they had a very clearly defined role, with very clearly defined acceptable modes of behavior, and when you leave, all of that is stripped away. The sudden absence of community and sense of purpose is, for many veterans, an unbridgeable gap.

There absolutely are insidious downsides to such tight-knit communities (especially in response to threats to the community - vis how often the victim of clerical sexual abuse encounters further attacks from members of the church). But e.g. religious organizations have persisted for so long because there's a sort of cost-benefit analysis occurring, where the community decides that so long as the community continues to function, its OK that a few members of the community are sacrificed to protect it.

To be clear, its not like PTSD is a new thing. Catatonia, combat fatigue, etc, are stress responses that have been recognized for centuries. Its just that only fairly recently we've concluded that hey, maybe writing people off when they hit that point is a bad thing, and maybe we should invest some time in helping people before they reach that state.

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#147

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

tsegratis wrote: post #66
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read about the history of childhood I think it's clear that children were immeasurably more traumatized in the past. The concept of child abuse barely existed, and the relational needs of children weren't recognized at all. That raises the question of why contemporary attention to trauma is so elevated, if the problem is actually smaller now than it used to be. There's an easy answer though: this is first mome…

Divorce is a massive cause of trauma and increasing in the west I organized a large group of trauma experts last week (church pastors), and although they were amazing and had clearly overcome trauma; residual selfishness and power grabbing meant a child got ignored The same last night: a bible study with the homeless. A happy and peaceful place, though one member was throwing trauma bombs There's not a simple switch,…

> Divorce is a massive cause of trauma and increasing in the west

Not true that it's increasing. It peaked in the 70s and has decreased since.

[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#148

Post by astrange »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #109
sleno wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you summarize some practical takeaways from all these books? To be honest I've become a bit skeptical of how much this sort of stuff helps. From what I see, our society has become much more well-versed in all this psychology-therapy-trauma material in the last 20 years, yet despite this we're taking more anti-depressants and seeing more therapy than ever. Mentally and spiritually we seem to be doing worse than…

You could be seeing correlation and not causation. People with psych issues want to get better. Those that are intellectually curious tend to read up on underlying causes and possible solutions. I will say, that while I've read a lot of these sorts of books, they've mainly helped me identify my predispositions in temperament, my blind spots, etc. If you really press a therapist on the question, they will tell you tha…

Religion and psychiatry hardly seem opposed to me. It's popular to see Buddhism as actually a kind of therapy, although certainly not 100% correct, and that's sort of what prayer is meant to do too.

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#149

Post by anonuser1234 »

Narhem wrote: post #98
taurath wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a larger club than you might imagine, and even to the deepest depths of nigh-unimaginable mistreatment there are people who have worked through it.

The sad part is the best way to deal with it is pretend it never happened. Feel so defeatist but that'd the reality of being a man.

I have a hard time not ruminating, but for some people it seems unavoidable

Re: The Effects of Early Relational Trauma (2001) [pdf]

#150

Post by anonuser1234 »

usgroup wrote: post #72

I’m sorry to read about so much pain experienced by so many. Do the people doing the traumatising typically know they are doing it? Do they typically deny it if confronted?

I told my dad point blank he was physically and emotionally abusive and he denied it lol.
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