Trauma Recovery - Understand What Developmental Trauma Is First

Jan 21, 2022

Hi, Ed here. Today, I want to describe to you what developmental trauma is. My goal in this blog is to speed up your trauma recovery. So you’re not really guessing when you hear that word. If you explore my future blogs you'll know what I'm referring to. Our overarching quest here is about getting you relief from past trauma.

Human Developmental Stages Are a Portal To Trauma Recovery

Now, let’s focus our attention on developmental trauma. I want you to think about that all of us go through developmental stages in life. If there is a glitch in any of those stages, we get developmentally traumatized. Let’s look at a simple example. Imagine for a moment, when you were little, there was a lot of arguing and fighting in your house. Your body naturally knows that arguing and fighting is dangerous.

Your brain, at that age, perceives loud and angry voices are dangerous. Arguing and fighting automatically activates the fight-flight-freeze mechanism in your brain. This is otherwise known as your brains safety system. And we automatically activate one of those three strategies. When we are so young, the best option is to go right to the third one, which is the freeze response (also known as dissociation). To speed up trauma recovery, we need a way to "thaw out" that response so you stay present with whatever life throws at you. A fight response would be anger, like yelling. If we can talk, we’d scream out “stop yelling”, or “stop being mean to each other." For a more in depth description, one of my favorite books on the subject is Mindsight: The New Science Of Personal Transformation by Dr Daniel Siegel

If we’re too young to use words, we may cry really hard because we’re afraid of what’s going on. And then finally the freeze response is the equivalent of numbing out. It’s checking out. What to remember is this: if any of those happen and they become habituated, we’ll use the same strategies later on in life when something even slightly reminds us of that situation. It skews our perspective of the world. Developmental trauma causes us to leave out information. Developmental trauma skews our perceptions. It cause us to make bad decisions. This is why it's so important to investigate trauma symptoms. (Don't forget the tip I offered last week to help you resolve any "freeze" response if you can tell that is what you are doing.)

Trauma Recovery Is Faster When You Get To The Underlying Trauma Of These Symptoms

Here is a list of possibilities to investigate:

Chronic fatigue
Depression
Allergies
Arguing and fighting with spouse or significant other a lot
Relationships that don’t seem to last
Fear of getting close to others
Feeling needy
Avoidant strategies within a couple of months of dating someone
Attracting a certain type of person when you are dating
Underlying emotion like shame, anger or fear that hovers in the background of all your experiences

My invitation to you is to ponder the list above. Ask yourself, “When I look at my own life, are there any patterns,” based on any of those things that I mentioned? Or, “Are there any themes that I resonate with that might be affecting me?” If they are, it could be developmental trauma. Many people will spend time in therapy and they’re focused on skills, which is great, but they’re not getting to the underlying trauma. The payoff is: If you do have underlying trauma and you resolve it, you will be motivated in life from a completely different perspective that is not originating from fear.

I’m convinced we need to root out the underlying trauma. All the talk therapy in the world will only give you temporary relief. I’ll give you a good example. I had a client recently whose dad was violent. Today, anything that even slightly reminds her of that violence sends her into the same terrifying reaction she went into as a child.

When this happens, she becomes paralyzed. She becomes anxious inside and cries really hard. Well, ask yourself, how do you resolve something like that? And the answer is: depends on the person and the strategy needed at the time. There is a way to resolve this dilemma, so keep reading. There is no simple answer because each person is unique in what they need. We will explore these together.

I’m living proof of this. I was really deep in the hole when I started my work. Around 1985, I started getting curious about personal development. The biggest change came after I did the Hendricks Institute training in 1995, 96, 97. Another big shift happened when I did the Somatic Experiencing certification training between 2004 and 2009.
It taught me self-awareness. And I started seeing layers of patterns that I adopted to cope with life. Once I started clearing up the underlying glitch, or the developmental trauma, I recognized many skills lacking that others take for granted.

After those insights, many of the skills came naturally because the underlying trauma was gone. So my invitation to you is to take a look at the list. Are you fighting depression? Do you have chronic fatigue? Are you a workaholic?

Do you have any addictions like drugs, sex, or pornography? Maybe you have food challenges? If you’re overweight and you’ve tried everything and it doesn’t seem to change things. Maybe you’re stuck in a job and you hate your job, but you don’t know what else to do.

This list, are all symptoms of developmental trauma. I encourage you to review the list, and see if any of the resonate with you. If they do, the first step is to recognize that it’s common. And a pill wont fix it. And that it is okay to reach out to the right people to see if you can resolve the issue. I’ve been coaching people for 25 years on this topic and would be happy to support you in healing any past trauma you may have experienced. Set a free appointment at this link. [Ed’s Calendar] One session will tell you if it’s the right fit or not.

My goal is to help those with developmental trauma. I know how elusive the symptoms are and how it can feel like nothing ever changes, even after years of therapy. When I learned about healing trauma in the body, everything changed. Symptoms disappeared and my joy returned.

Here is a list of my programs I promised in the video:

I always offer a 30 day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy you don’t like it, it doesn’t quite resonate with you. Don’t worry about it. Just send me an email and I’ll refund you, but I think you’re going to be surprised at how much it can help you if you stay with it. Human nature is to get used to certain patterns. The brain doesn’t like change coming in until it believes it’s safe. When change happens, the brain safety system will put up resistance. Having self awareness in these moment will pay off. Say to yourself, “Wait a minute, maybe I should try this for a while and see if I get better results and then decide after I’ve given it an excellent test.” That’s my encouragement.

Again, many blessings. I look forward to talking to you in other lessons.