3. Understanding “parts” as thinking, feeling and acting components. We all have parts, the strength of which varies given different events and triggers.
4. The ability to demonstrate how anger avoids feeling fear and sadness. Anger gives power, while fear and sadness are difficult to manage for a child who lacked an attuned caregiver.
5. The understanding of these children as either more or less angry, but rarely happy.
6. Better parental skill at regulating their own emotions, along with an expanded range of emotional awareness.
Two additional skills parents are encouraged to use are “narration” and “affect matching.” The Two Babies Narrative highlights the role of parental narration of everyday life and of definition of experience. This is an automatic process for healthy parents and children. But children who come from stressful, abusive and neglectful environments most likely have not had this interactive experience. In the new paradigm, parents use the ECTM to narrate their children’s emotional worlds and to define their experiences.
Parents narrate the world for their infants, if you notice. The baby’s every interaction with the environment is described and defined in great detail; what a good sleep the baby had, how comfortable the crib is, the smell of the diaper, the taste of the milk, the empty feeling and the full feeling. Dozens of times a day, parents show baby the world.
So often the parents of traumatized children find themselves asking them questions like, “Why did you do that?” and “When will you stop doing that?” The ECTM encourages parents to stop asking and use the model to provide answers. This greatly reduces defaulting to the N-IWM of “I am bad” and “You are bad.” Now, “Why did you do that?” can be reframed as “You did not trust me, so you took the candy.” Parents will understand that the answer to “When will you stop?” will come with healing.
Corey’s Family
Over the years, Corey continued to steal food from Danny and Rebecca. Danny stated that he did not understand why Corey did not trust them to take care of his needs. Each time he stole food, he had the feeling of meeting his own needs, of being in control, thereby demonstrating that he didn’t need parents. Danny and Rebecca began to narrate their actions as they provided for Corey. Rebecca pointed out times when Danny played with Corey. Danny voiced his appreciation of Rebecca as she took care of each meal. Both Danny and Rebecca described the other parent as being trustworthy. Each reframe of the parent’s trustworthy behavior added meaning to the experience.
Another skill parents are encouraged to use is affect matching. Parents of infants match their affect with the child’s to calm them. This natural process is essential for infant co-regulation. Children with early trauma missed this vital developmental interactive experience. Parents of traumatized children must be taught the importance of affect matching, be provided with examples and encouraged to practice it. The foundation of affect matching is adult emotional self-regulation, followed by intentional co-regulation of the child. Parents use the skills of narrative and affect matching as they shift their paradigm.
The paradigm shift continues with understanding of what we refer to as Trauma-Disrupted Competencies (TDCs). Infant and child development is incremental and builds on each previous skill. If a skill is not learned, the incremental process is disrupted. Parenting a traumatized child becomes easier as the parent looks for TDCs in their child; misbehaviors can then be understood as missing skills instead of behaviors that need consequences.
• Negative Internal Working Model (N-IWM or “maladaptive schema”): A schema is an internal working model of oneself, one’s caregivers and the world. If a child endures trauma from child abuse, neglect and/or loss of the primary caregiver, the result may be distorted and maladaptive schemas. Maladaptive schemas may be linked to adult personality disorders that are very difficult to treat. Consequently, early recognition and attention to maladaptive schemas in children can be preventive. Typical behaviors consistent with a maladaptive schema include not trying (fearing failure) and stealing and lying (not trusting parents to provide).
• Developmental delays: Disrupted relationships are emotionally and developmentally costly. Severely disrupted attachment often engenders lifelong risk of physical disease and psychosocial dysfunction.12 These children may have atypical development of their ability to play or to occupy themselves, may regress under stress to behaviors typical of a younger child, be hyper-vigilant with an inability to focus or use controlling behaviors. Typical behaviors include being bored (an inability to occupy oneself) and not finishing games and projects (lacking in developmentally-appropriate skills).
• Inappropriate emotional response: Children may become frightened if they sense danger or feel that they are losing control of their environment. The child may have an exaggerated physiological response to stimuli, activating the autonomic nervous system with changes in heart rate, blood flow, respiration and stress hormone secretions. Otherwise stated, their “fight, flight, freeze” reflex is unnecessarily activated. Cognitive processing is then reduced, resulting in an inability to answer questions or make logical decisions. The brain processes information from the autonomic nervous system more rapidly than rational thoughts, as the former call for activation of automatic reflexes to keep the person alive. Typical behaviors include fighting, running away and being unable to answer.
• Object relations problems: Many children have a history of impermanence. Adults appeared and disappeared, caregivers changed, homes changed, people were not constant or permanent. For healthy development, children need consistent, constant and permanent caregivers and environments. Typical behaviors include reliance on smells for comfort (smells provided clues to the environment) and inability to sleep (fear of what happens at night).
• Self-regulation problems: Research reveals that complex trauma leads to “impairment in attachment, biological functions, affect regulation, dissociation, behavioral regulation, cognition and self-concept.”13 Many of the children with whom we have worked are dysregulated in eating, sleeping, temperature regulation, elimination, energy and emotion. Typical behaviors include not knowing when to stop eating (inability to recognize “full”) and wearing a coat in summer (inability to recognize “hot”).
• Sensory processing problems: These often have their roots in early deprivation and abuse. The children may be sensory defensive and hyper-sensitive. Touch tends to be uncomfortable or scary. Food choices may be limited due to previous deprivation. Hearing may be on hyper-alert for dangerous sounds. The children may appear hyper-vigilant to environmental stimuli. Typical behaviors include rejecting mom’s touch (inability to differentiate good touch from bad touch or suspicion about the other’s motives) and only eating macaroni and cheese (comfort with familiar food and little past exposure to a variety of foods).
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ATTACHMENT
Child Development and the Secure Base/Safe Haven
The Trauma Lens Paradigm Shift encourages changes in the parent’s perception of the child and the child’s behaviors. Parental actions and interactions must support the new paradigm. Parents must form a relationship with their children as they are now, not based on a preconceived notion of who the children should be. New positive interpersonal experiences and interactions build healthy relationships. Attachment research has found that children need a secure and dependable relationship with attuned caregivers before they can explore the unknown. Renowned developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth depicts the attachment figure as a secure base that allows the infant or child to venture away and return to the parent.14 Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek studied children with early trauma and found that these children have a “profound lack of trust” in the caregiver that prohibits the child from perceiving a secure base. Such children
