Factors that Influence the Severity of Effects of Child Abuse

The degree to which a person who suffers abuse during childhood is damaged by the experience will depend upon a number of different factors. Those who research such factors have split them into two groups : 1) RISK FACTORS – these are factors connected to the abuse that are likely to increase the emotional damage it […]

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Types of Abuse and Their Effects : An Infographic

The infographic below illustrates different types of child abuse together with some of the effects of such abuse :   CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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The Five Main Routes Through Which Childhood Trauma Harms Us-Part 2

This post follows on from The Five Main Routes Through Which Childhood Trauma Harms Us – Part 1. Click here to read it. We have already looked at the emotional route (item 1 on the list of the five routes – see Part 1) through which childhood trauma may harm us in Part 1. In this […]

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The Five Main Routes Through Which Childhood Trauma Harms Us-Part 1.

It has already been established in previous articles on this site that childhood trauma can affect us ; – psychologically – neurologically – biologically It has further been described that the damage done by the experience of childhood trauma may manifest itself in a variety of ways; these include : – our ability to emotionally regulate […]

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Child Trauma and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) PART 1.

Several of the posts in this blog have already examined the link between childhood trauma and anxiety. In this post, I want to consider one specific anxiety based disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). When a person has this disorder, as its name suggests, s/he suffers recurring obsessions and/or compulsions. I define these below : […]

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Schema-Focused Hypnotherapy for Trauma

As we grow up and interpret the world around us, we develop what psychologists term schemas. Essentially, a schema is an organized system of meaning around  specific topics which include : – how we view/evaluate ourselves – how we view/evaluate others – our judgments about our own autonomy (ie how much control we have over […]

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The Vicious Cycle of Adult Problems Stemming from Childhood Trauma

‘WE NEED TO SEE THE SYMPTOMS WE HAVE AS A RESULT OF OUR CHILDHOOD TRAUMA LESS AS THE RESULT OF SOME CHARACTER FLAW, AND MORE AS THE RESULT OF HAVING SUFFERED EXTREME AND PAINFUL EXPERIENCES WHEN WE WERE LEAST ABLE TO COPE WITH THEM. BY CONSIDERING THE IDEA THAT OUR SYMPTOMS COULD BE SEEN AS […]

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A Closer Examination of The Effects of Childhood Trauma. Part 2

In Part One I looked at how childhood trauma can adversely affect an individual’s ability to control his/her emotions and his/her ability to maintain relationships and interact socially. In this post, Part 2, I wish to look at how 3 other areas of the individual’s functioning may be adversely affected by the experience of childhood […]

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How I Went from 1/4 Million Pounds in Bank to Homeless Hostel in a Few Months (or Just What the Doctor Ordered).

I started this blog about four months ago, and, recently, have reflected on the possibility that it is really just one long exercise in self-justification. After all, I’ve made mistakes in life. One mistake that many would consider particularly inexplicable was how I managed to lose just over a quarter of a million pounds in […]

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Childhood Trauma: Borderline Personality Disorder – Should Sufferers Tell Others They Have It?

Deciding whether to tell others about the fact one is suffering from BPD presents a very difficult dilemma: on the one hand, there is the worry of being stigmatized and discriminated against, and, on the other, there is the possibility that others will become more understanding of one. Because few people, through no fault of […]

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Childhood Trauma: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (with Questionnaire).

Survivors of extreme trauma often suffer persistent anxiety, phobias, panic, depression, identity and relationship problems. Many times, the set of symptoms the individual presents with are not connected to the original trauma by those providing treatment (as certainly was the case for me in the early years of my treatment, necessitating me to undertake my own extensive […]

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Childhood Trauma: How the Child’s View of Their Own ‘Badness’ is Perpetuated.

When a child is continually mistreated, s/he will inevitably conclude that s/he must be innately bad. This is because s/he has a need (at an unconscious level) to preserve the illusion that her/his parents are good; this can only be achieved by taking the view that the mistreatment is deserved. The child develops a fixed […]

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Childhood Trauma: Famous People who Experienced It. Kurt Cobain.

Childhood Trauma: Kurt Cobain (1967-1994). I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain and his band, Nirvana. I therefore remember where I was when I first heard news of his death – it came on the TV in the gym I was in at the time (in an uninspiring town called Watford just north of […]

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Childhood Trauma: Aiding Recovery through Diet and Lifestyle.

Several of my posts have discussed research that shows childhood trauma can profoundly influence the biochemistry of the brain and that these biochemical changes can, and do, lead to problems with the individual’s psychological state and behaviour. Fortunately, however, research has also demonstrated that these adverse biochemical changes and their negative effects may be, at […]

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Childhood Trauma, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Dissociation.

I have already written posts explaining the connection between childhood trauma and BPD. An important symptom of BPD is DISSOCIATION, which this post will examine in greater detail. Dissociation is generally considered to be a COPING MECHANISM in response to severe trauma or stress. The phenomenon of dissociation can involve feeling disconnected from one’s emotions, one’s […]

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Childhood Trauma: What Experiments on Causes of Aggression in Rats Tell Us.

A recent Swiss study has looked at the effects of trauma on ‘adolescent’ rats. It was found that those rats who were exposed to trauma (fear and stress inducing stimuli) suffered adverse PHYSICAL EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN (specifically, the PRE-FRONTAL CORTEX). This, in turn, leads to them displaying significantly more aggressive behaviour than non-traumatized rats. A […]

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Childhood Trauma: Can ‘Buried Traumatic Memories’ be Uncovered by Hypnosis?

A central tenet of psychodynamic theory is that some traumatic memories are so painful that they are buried (repressed) in the unconscious (automatically rather than deliberately) denying us direct access to them (though it has been theorized indirect access may be available through dreams and other phenomena). One theory is that these buried memories need to be brought into […]

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Effects of Childhood Trauma: The Interaction between Nature and Nurture.

TONY SOPRANO: And to think I’m the cause of it. DR. MALFI: How are you the cause of it? TONY SOPRANO: It’s in his blood, this miserable fucking existence. My rotten fucking putrid genes have infected my kid’s soul. That’s my gift to my son. Studies have shown that male children who are severely maltreated […]

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Types of Relationship Problems the Individual may Experience as a Result of Childhood Trauma.

Early relationships between the parent and child have an enormous impact upon how the child manages relationships throughout later life. If the child experiences significant difficulties with relating to his/her parents, it often leads to problems with relating to others later on in life. The developmental psychologist, Bowlby (1998) proposed that there were, in very broad […]

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How Childhood Trauma can Reduce Life Expectancy by 19 Years.

Childhood trauma clearly puts the child who experiences it under great stress; the more protracted and intense the traumas, and the more traumas the child suffers, all else being equal, the more stress is inflicted upon the child. A recent study has shown that an especially traumatic childhood (in which the child experiences several types […]

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How Adult Children can Manage Their Relationship with Parents who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Part 2.

If we have been brought up as children with a parent who has BPD, it is often necessary to seek therapy to help resolve the trauma that we have suffered and to help us come to terms with our loss – in effect, our ‘stolen childhood’. In therapy, it may often be necessary to work through […]

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Childhood Trauma: The Link with Future Violence. Part Two.

It is possible that even just one, short-lived, traumatic event experienced in childhood, particularly in very early childhood, can prove so overwhelming that it leads to intense emotional suffering. Much research has been conducted upon this, and, to use just one example, a study by Pincus has demonstrated that just about all violent adult criminals have, […]

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Childhood Trauma: The Link with Future Violence. Part One.

A research study (Fonagy et al., 1997) showed that 90% of young offenders had suffered significant childhood trauma, including both abuse and loss (eg. of a parent through divorce). Neglect in childhood was also a very significant factor in greatly increasing the risk of later violent offending. Violent offending following such trauma is sometimes referred to […]

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Borderline Personality Disorder: Raising Our Self-Esteem.

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF THINKING BADLY ABOUT OURSELVES? Individuals with low self-esteem constantly criticize themselves. We may even META-CRITICIZE ourselves (criticize ourselves for criticizing ourselves). We oftemn focus on mistakes and over-generalize from them, believing that these mistakes completely define us as a person (thus losing perspective and ignoring the positive things about ourselves; in […]

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Borderline Personality Disorder and Reasons for Low Self-Esteem.

We come to form our beliefs, including those about ourselves, through our life experiences. Of course, the beliefs we hold because of what has happened to us in life can be very inaccurate. Experiences that we have early in life have a particularly strong impact on how we feel about ourselves, and, below, I list […]

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How Adult Children can Manage Their Relationship with Parents who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Part 1.

Some of us experienced childhood trauma due to a parent being unstable. As has been described in previous posts, BPD causes great instability in individuals, which can have a very serious impact on that individual’s child/ren, so some of us who experienced childhood trauma may have grown up with a parent with BPD. This could have contributed to ourselves […]

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Psychotherapeutic Interventions that Research Suggests are Helpful for Individuals Suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

A quick search of the internet reveals a very large range of therapies on offer which purport to treat BPD effectively. Indeed, the sheer range of putative treatments can seem confusing and overwhelming. It is for this reason that I concentrate on just six treatments which research suggests are the most beneficial. Let’s look at […]

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The Association Between Childhood Trauma and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Many research studies have shown that individuals who have suffered childhood trauma and neglect frequently develop BPD as adults. WHAT IS BPD? BPD sufferers experience a range of symptoms which are split into 9 categories. These are: 1) Extreme swings in emotions 2) Explosive anger 3) Intense fear of rejection/abandoment sometimes leading to frantic efforts to maintain a […]

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Childhood Trauma and Self-Harm : How it can be Addressed.

Three key elements to reducing our risk of harming ourselves are: 1) distracting our thoughts away from self-harm 2) reducing the intensity of our emotional arousal to levels which we are able to manage 3) dealing with internal critical ‘voices’ (ie thought processes). However, as self-harming is often deeply ingrained, we cannot expect instantaneous results. […]

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Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) and My Experience of It.

Childhood trauma can lead us to become severely clinically depressed as adults, and this happened to me. ECT is only used as a last resort on people who are at high risk of suicide and/or are unable to function in even the most basic areas of life. ECT is, in fact, misunderstood by the vast […]

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Childhood Trauma and Self-harm. Part 1.

Many research studies (eg Arnold, 1995) have demonstrated a link between having been abused as a child and self-harm. In one study,84% of individuals who self-harmed reported that childhood trauma had contributed to their condition. WHAT IS SELF-HARM? The following are examples: -skin cutting -skin burning -compulsive skin picking -self-hitting -self-biting -hair pulling -interfering with […]

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My Own Story : A Brief Overview.

My own childhood was highly chaotic and traumatic. I started to suffer severe emotional problems very early on (for example, when I was 8 the teachers at the prep school I was at thought I had gone deaf, so I was taken to see my GP. It transpired, however, that there was nothing at all […]

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A Closer Look at the Theory of Repression of Traumatic Memories.

Most of us are familiar with the idea that people who have experienced severe traumas sometimes REPRESS the memory of them (ie. bury them deep in the unconscious where they cannot be consciously recalled). This is thought to be an automatic process (ie. not under conscious control) which operates as a defense mechanism. Freud thought […]

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Childhood Trauma: The Statistics

The following statistics relate to the UK. However, it should be pointed out that childhood trauma and abuse tends to be under-reported and under-recorded so the figures presented should only be taken as a guide. The statistics were gained by interviews with a large sample of young adults. – a quarter of young adults were […]

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The Effect of Childhood Trauma on Genes and Susceptibility to Depression.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ON DNA. Recent studies have shown that childhood trauma can actually change the structure of DNA in the person who has suffered it and consequently alter how these genes work (it has been known for some time that how genes express themselves is influenced by their interaction with the environment). Animal studies support this […]

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Neurological Effects: How Childhood Trauma can Damage the Developing Physical Brain.

Recently, there have been various cutting-edge studies into the neurological effects of child abuse and child neglect- in other words, how childhood trauma has been shown to damage the developing physical brain. It has been shown that BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEMS, following childhood trauma, can be scientifically traced back in origin to damage, caused by child abuse, […]

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Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Challenging Our Negative Thoughts.

When we have negative thoughts, it is important to ask ourselves: ‘What is the evidence to support this negative thought/belief?’ OFTEN, WILL WILL FIND THERE IS VERY LITTLE OR AT LEAST NOT THE COMPELLING EVIDENCE WE’D ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED. It is important for us to get into the habit of challenging negative thoughts in this way […]

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Childhood Trauma: Coming to Terms with what We have Lost.

Many who suffered childhood trauma grow up feeling that there childhood has been ‘stolen’ from them. They may have grown up feeling worthless and uniquely unloveable, lacking, too, in feelings of safety and security. They may also grow up with a lack of confidence and find it extremely difficult to trust anyone or to believe […]

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Anger Resulting from Childhood Trauma. Part 2.

It is better to express anger in a healthy and helpful way rather than to REPRESS or DENY it (in the case of the latter, it can profoundly, negatively affect our peace of mind or lead us to TURN THE ANGER IN ON OURSELVES or DISPLACE it (i.e. take it out in an inappropriate way […]

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Anger Resulting from Childhood Trauma. Part 1.

Anger is not a bad thing, if it is APPROPRIATELY EXPRESSED. Expressing it inappropriately will usually get us nowhere and can badly back-fire. However, its appropriate expression is often most effective. As we begin to realize that what was done to us as children was wrong, anger often emerges (especially when we start to understand all […]

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Overcoming Relationship Difficulties Caused by Childhood Trauma

It has already been stated that as survivors of childhood trauma we often find it very difficult to trust others. We may avoid close relationships in order to avoid the possibility of being hurt. Whilst this can allow us to feel safe from harm, it can also lead to extreme loneliness. Research shows that without good […]

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Coping Mechanisms for Survivors of Childhood Trauma

In my last post I mentioned it might be useful to look at some coping mechanisms one may wish to make use of in the recovery stage from childhood trauma and it is to some of these that I now turn. There are two main types of coping mechanisms: 1) Those which are helpful in […]

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Childhood Trauma: An Analysis of Blame.

When we are children, if someone treats us badly, we attempt to understand why. But in trying to understand, the child’s logic is very often flawed and s/he falsely deduces s/he is to blame for it. The child’s flawed logic may flow similarly to this: ‘Someone is hurting me…punishment only happens to bad children…that means […]

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Childhood Trauma: Recovery.

Research shows those who suffer childhood trauma CAN and DO recover. Making significant changes in life can be a very daunting prospect, but those who do it in order to aid their own recovery very often find the hard work most rewarding. Some people find making the necessary changes difficult, whereas others find it enjoyable. THE […]

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What Kinds of Problems does Childhood Trauma Cause? Part 1.

One thing from research is clear: the experience of childhood trauma makes it more likely the individual will suffer problems as an adult. Abuse does not, though, necessarily lead to severe problems, but makes a person more VULNERABLE to them in later life. THE MORE SEVERE AND REPEATED THE ABUSE THE MORE LIKELY THE INDIVIDUAL WILL […]

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Childhood Trauma Recovery. A Warm Welcome From David Hosier MSc.

February 05

‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.’ -John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667),  Book 1, lines 254-255 The articles on this site are intended to serve as an accessible, informative, concise introduction to childhood trauma and child abuse and their relationship to post traumatic stress disorder […]

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