Developmental trauma disorder

Pacific_Loner

Pirate from the North Pole
I would like to know if anyone else here relate to this.

Hoping it won't depress anyone, I just think the more we understand the origin of our brain problems, the more likely we are to overcome them.

Attachment Disorder Maryland - providing information and treatment options.

Here's a paper written by the guy who came up with this

http://www.traumacenter.org/products/pdf_files/preprint_dev_trauma_disorder.pdf

Warning: If you relate, the paper might be depressing


DTD results from growing up in an interpersonal context of ongoing danger, maltreatment, unpredictability, and/or neglect. 80% of all child maltreatment is at the hands of children’s own parents.


Some interesting points for those who doesn't want to read the whole thing


Somatic effects: Trauma can affect appetite, digestion, excretory functioning, sleep, the immune system, and temperature regulation. The bodily sense of being unsafe tends to be concentrated most powerfully in the upper chest.

Autoimmune disorders: DTD can generate autoimmune disorders because chronic overreactivity to subjectively perceived threats depletes the immune system (elevated cortisol levels).

Speech + language: Speech is impaired, and this blocks being able to talk about a traumatic state while in it. Because the language areas in the prefrontal cortex are not well connected to the amygdala, traumatic emotion can’t be effectively talked through.

Dissociation: In traumatized states, emotion, sensation, perception and thought are dissociated into separate fragments. This literally blocks understanding of what is happening which disturbs later memory processing. This sets the stage for learning to ignore the body and what is going on within it.

Attentional system: DTD also dysregulates the attentional system. This, of course, looks like AD/HD and gets overwhelmingly labeled and treated as such. Trauma takes executive functioning skills offline as well. The experience of trauma tends to blunt innate curiosity and exploratory impulses.

Fragmentation / emotional awareness: The fragmentation of the Self disconnects children from their own feelings. Consequently, they may not know what they are feeling and may not even realize they are having an emotional experience. This will block developing emotional regulatory skills. Being internally disconnected will also prevent children with DTD from knowing what other people feel, with devastating effects on attachment and empathy skills.

The human face: As infants cannot escape the emotion on the caregiver’s face, they are trapped by what that face conveys. If the caregiver’s face conveys frightening emotion, the human face itself can become imprinted as a traumatic trigger. Here lies the origins of future avoidance of eye contact and physical closeness to the face which obstructs attachment.
 
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