When the Innocent Suffer: Navigating Trauma and Restoration

Healing from the invisible wounds of childhood trauma is a journey many embark on, but few speak about with such candor and depth as we do on our podcast. Anchored by the emotionally resonant words of Antoine Fisher's poetry, our latest episode explores the profound effects of early adversities and the resilient spirit that can emerge in the face of such challenges. Drawing from my learnings in a recent class on adolescent and child psychology, I weave a narrative of hope and potential for recovery, inviting listeners to understand the complexities of trauma through a lens of compassion and knowledge.

As we navigate the terrain of a child's psyche, we confront the developmental repercussions of trauma and its insidious ability to mold behaviors and relationships. The episode takes an earnest look at the significance of attachment styles rooted in the pioneering theories of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, uncovering the lasting impact of our formative bonds. Such discussions are not just academic; they serve as a beacon for those striving to comprehend their own life stories or seeking to support the vulnerable young souls around them.

Concluding with a soul-stirring chapter on faith and hope, I reach out to listeners with reassurances of intrinsic worth and the promise of unwavering love. Sharing my own tales of survival and the life-affirming presence of Jesus, I aim to embolden you to find solace and strength within your own narrative. As we press pause on the conversation, remember that the threads of support and understanding are ever-present, ready to be picked up and woven into a tapestry of healing when we return. Join us as we continue to share heartfelt dialogues that shine light into the overlooked corners of our lives.

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Transcript

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Who will cry for the little boy lost and all alone? Who will cry for the little boy abandoned without his own? Who will cry for the little boy he cried himself to sleep? Who will cry for the little boy he never had for keeps? Who will cry for the little boy he walked the burning sand? Who will cry for the little boy, the boy inside the man? Who will cry for the little boy who knows well hurt and pain? Who will cry for the little boy he died again and again? Who will cry for the little boy, a good boy he tried to be? Who will cry for the little boy who cries inside of me? Hey everybody, and welcome to a special solo edition of the Wednesdays with Watson podcast. I am so grateful you are here Before we get started today. If you are not subscribed or following the podcast, the kindest thing you can do for a podcaster that you follow is, in fact, hit that subscribe or follow button. It helps the show grow and, as you know, we have one mission here and that is to demonstrate the star of the story in a world that is dark and people that are walking the dark roads of trauma and, this season, those that are trying to hang on to their faith in the meantime. Today's episode is a very special episode. That poem that I opened up with was a poem written by Antoine Fisher, and Antoine Fisher wrote a book, but he also but there is also a movie of his life starring Denzel Washington, one of my favorite movies, but that movie is really a. It could be a classroom lesson on childhood trauma and resiliency and what it does to us in adulthood and how, when a child is traumatized, that it looks different and different parts of their lives and it also will affect them in many ways, including physically, brain alterations, somatic issues, health issues across the life span, if we don't intervene. You see, guys, that's my point, that's my reason for being here, that's my reason for being behind this mic, as I just finished what is my 11th class, I believe, for my doctorate. I just got done with adolescent and child psychology and while it was one of the hardest classes that I've taken because of my own story, it really gave me great hope, because there is hope for children who have had trauma more so, actually, scientifically speaking, than there are adults. So what I thought I would do today is just do a solo episode, talk about some things that get asked pretty often of me and educate you guys a little bit. This is not meant to make parents go ahead and put money in therapy funds for their children. This episode is for survivors of child abuse, foster parents who had children in their home for a significant amount of time where abuse could have occurred. If you have nieces, nephews, grandkids all of that you're going to learn today what a traumatized child acts like and why they act like that and, more importantly, how we can help them. So, without further ado, let's jump into today's episode. One of the very first things I want to talk about and this is something that, if you are friends with me, you actually hear me say quite often is that so many times we overuse the word trauma and we overuse the word trigger, and so, while I don't agree with everything that the Diagnostic Statistics Manual for Mental Health says, we have to have some sort of guideline, and so the first thing I want to talk to you guys about today is let's talk about what is trauma. Now, there are a couple layman's definitions of what is trauma, one of them being when an event happens that pushes a person outside of what we call their window of tolerance, which is just your brain's ability to deal with the cascading of stress hormones and things like that that happen. Some of us have a greater window of tolerance which is how we're born than others, and in trauma therapy, one of the goals is to expand that window of tolerance so things don't become traumatic events in our lives, and so that's one definition of trauma, when layman's definition of trauma is any event that pushes your brain outside of the window of tolerance, and there's certainly levels of trauma, and we're going to talk about that here in a minute. What I mean is, if you were to go to a doctor or you take your child to a doctor, they are looking for certain things that the child is either witnessed or experienced. That would give them the definition of having experienced trauma. Now, the other layman's term that I would like to put in here is that trauma I heard this a survivor one time say this is that trauma is when your safety has been compromised, and I think safety will be a theme throughout this podcast, because that, besides connection, is the thing that we need and that we want and that we seek. It's safety and connection, and we do that from very early on. With that being said, let's talk about what the DSM calls trauma. So trauma is any of these different things Brain, death, witnessing a threat to life this is where car accidents come in, that can sometimes be traumatic Witnessing serious injury or experiencing serious injury, witnessing physical violence, which could be connected with serious injury. But we need to add that Brain and or experiencing physical violence, witnessing sexual violence or experiencing sexual violence. So let me say those again, witnessing actual death, witnessing threat to life, and I would, I would argue there, I would push the DSM a little bit on that as a witnessing threat to life or limb, witness serious injury, which that would kind of fall under Witnessing and or experiencing physical violence, witnessing sexual violence, experiencing serious, serious injury or experiencing sexual violence. And so that's what the DSM calls trauma. But there is something that they, that the DSM has not actually recognized as important. Everyone else has, including one of my favorite speakers on trauma, dr Diane Lienberg, on complex trauma, and so we in the DSM 5, complex post-traumatic stress disorder is not even listed in there. It is listed in the International Classification of Diseases of the last one as complex traumatic stress disorder. Now a lot of people think that CPTSD and we're going to talk about CPTSD in a few minutes. But a lot of people think that just means that it involves the body and it doesn't. So let's talk about what some of the literature is saying, and I'll put all of these citations in the show notes. But let's talk about what the literature calls complex trauma, and I love Dr Diane Lienberg's definition of it. But so it is complex trauma if it meets one of those DSM things that I just mentioned to you and it happens at an important developmental time during childhood development. So it doesn't matter whether it's repeated or multi-layered. If a traumatic event happens during a developmental stage and there are different developmental stages all the way up to age 25, but particularly in early childhood when neuropathways are being formed. If it happens during those times when important developmental things are happening languages being developed, your personality, your sense of being, your, your sense of independence, all of that those things get stunted and hurt and this is where we see, we begin to see the cascade of symptoms of complex trauma throughout the lifespan, because they never get help and those important parts of the brain that never developed properly. Another definition of complex trauma is multiple exposures to trauma or multi-layer trauma, and so multiple exposures to trauma, multi-types of trauma, multi-layers of trauma. Complex trauma is usually focused on survival, leading the brain to really really really significant alterations. Therefore the functions aren't unhappy properly. Talk about that in a few minutes. Complex trauma does have a significant this is where kids come in impact on behavioral, cognitive and even biological domains, and so complex trauma is something that we are seeing more and more of. Unfortunately, as we are talking about it, more I don't know that it's actually happening. More complex trauma, that is. Except for that, we're actually beginning to recognize that there is a difference between single incident traumas, people like me who had multiple traumas and pretty much each of those domains that we talked about death, sexual violence, physical violence. All of that happened for me, and so that's the reason why mine is complex. Usually it's focused on surviving. When you are focused on surviving for a good portion of your life, that does all kinds of things, and we don't have time to get into the neurobiological aspects of this. That might be another podcast, but when trauma has happened at these developmental stages, it alters important brain structures like the prefrontal cortex, which is listener. If you put your thumb in between your hand and you, like, you're making a fist and your fingers. Imagine your fingers as the prefrontal cortex. That's where all the good stuff happens executive function, behavioral modification, acting properly out in public and interacting with people. That is the center when there's trauma. Dr Dan Siegel's hand model caused this flipping your lid. So now what I want you to do if you're holding up your hand is pull up your hand, and now only your thumb should be showing, like you have four fingers up. Well, now the prefrontal cortex is offline. It's not going to help you modulate behavior, speech, learning, any of those things, because your thumb, which is your Olympic system, your hippocampus and your amygdala are now in charge, and this is the fear center, and this is why safety is so important. When we work with survivors of trauma, safety and connection should be our two things, and so this is why complex trauma has significant impact on our behavior, because if that prefrontal cortex, if our lid is flipped, if you will, then we are being commandeered by our emotions, and that is the reason why oftentimes we see, especially in children, behavioral outbursts and things like that, because they don't know what to do with that and, let's face it, neither do we as adults. So that's a little bit more on complex trauma and a little bit of brain alterations. Some actual brain alterations happen in children where the PFC is not completely formed like it should be, neural pathways aren't formed like they should be, important neural pathways that should be growing or actually getting pruned because the brain is trying to survive. So all of this is the reason why we have to pay attention to trauma, especially in children. Now some of you might be thinking well, my experience, or my grandchild's experience, or my foster child's experience, either. I don't know whether they included any of those things that the DSM calls trauma or they didn't, but they are exhibiting symptoms of a trauma-related disorder. There's another important measurement that we talk about. It's called adverse childhood experiences and they somewhat track with the DSM, except for maybe a little bit more specific. For example, the adverse childhood experiences that we pay attention to and we actually measure these, and that's going to be important here in just a second. But the adverse childhood experiences that are of note physical abuse, emotional neglect and incarcerated family member or somebody who is abusing substances in the home, someone who is mentally ill in the home, if there's domestic violence in the home, if there is parental separation by abandonment or divorce, unsafe neighborhood bullying, parental death, sibling death or parental disability. So you see that that covers a little bit more and they are considered adverse childhood experiences. Why does that matter? Well, it matters for that same reason I just told you. If you still have your hand up with your finger, your thumb tucked in your hands down, adverse childhood experiences keep that lid flipped completely and children do not have access to higher order thinking or any of the things that make us good members of society, that are absent of behavioral issues and substance abuse and things of that matter. It was found in one study that the impact of childhood adverse experiences starts with adverse childhood experiences and then it disrupts that neurodevelopment, as I just talked about, and because of that those kids have social and emotional and cognitive impairment and because of that they usually adopt unhealthy decisions, unhealthy habits like substance abuse and things of that nature, and that leads to disease and addictions and which leads to death. As a matter of fact, one study found that if you had adverse childhood experience score of greater than six, there's 12. So if you have one greater than six, then you are 1.7 times more likely to die before age 75, if these adverse childhood experiences are not treated. So that is important when you guys think about those that are in your care, those that you know about. I'll read them again physical abuse, emotional neglect and incarcerated family member. Substance abuse in the home, mental illness in the home, domestic violence, parental separation, unsafe neighborhood bullying, parental death, sibling death or parental disability. And I know what you're thinking. You're all thinking, amy, really 1.7 times more likely to die if you don't get help. Yeah, that's true, but the good news is that there's help and you're doing it right now by listening and getting yourself educated on children especially and these impact of adverse childhood experiences. And let's not forget Jesus, the star of the story, who has come to heal us, who promised us that in this world we would have suffering, but for us to take heart that he had overcome the world. And so I don't want you guys thinking that you can't do anything about your own experiences or those in your life, just because the science tells us that adverse childhood experiences and trauma will have an impact on us. It already has altered some of our brains, but there is such hope in the completed work of Jesus on the cross, as well as podcasts like this and people like me who just want to help people understand trauma, so that they don't have to live a life that is not abundant and free. Okay, so here's what you all got. You guys all came for. Let's talk about what a traumatized child looks like. So for those of you who, again, you are watching kids and you have something in your brain is asking you I wonder what's going on at home? Very similar to what happened when I went to church when I was 10 years old, those people had to have known something was going on at home because of my behavior, because, again, if we're using Dan Siegel's hand model again and you have your four fingers up or that PFC, my PFC offline, and so my ability to use it for behavior, speech, all those things was not there. However, trauma does affect us differently at different ages. So much so, in fact, that the DSM, the diagnostic statistical manual for mental disorders, breaks it into younger than six years old and greater than six years old, and so when the trauma happens when somebody is younger than six years old, the reason why the DSM decides to delineate this from seven to 25 really is because, younger than six years old, the linguistic part of the brain is not functioned enough for them to be able to articulate much, and so some of the traumatic responses that you can see in kids younger than six is like they will immediately have a reaction to the traumatic event, because when they're younger than six years old, they've not been trained to put their head down and keep moving when a traumatic event happens. Their brain hasn't learned that yet, and so they will have an immediate reaction to the traumatic event. And so watching them act out of character especially if they've been somewhere without you or without the caretaker they will have an immediate reaction to that. Because that PFC is offline remember, you're only holding up four fingers with the Olympic system in control. They will absolutely have behavior issues. It will be. They will be irritable, they will be angry, they will be aggressive, they will have temper tantrums, they will be hyper vigilant because they can't talk or much anyway, and so much will startle them. They will overreact too much, like putting shoes on, something like that. They will have intrusions symptoms, and what intrusions symptoms mean is reliving their trauma, and so that is early childhood responses. Now when we look into other early childhood responses, we're talking avoidance. So if the child wants to not go somewhere or be near somewhere or somebody, something like that. They will avoid it. Younger children will have sleeping problems, often the way of nightmares. They will have developmental regression. They will actually lose language skills or failure to gain those language skills. They also have auditory pseudo hallucination. So this is earlier than six years old. This is what we're watching out for in these children that are earlier than six years old. Now let's talk about greater than six years old. This is a great time frame, for sure, but the responses are very different. So now, by the time a child has become verbal and has lived some years, they likely have experienced traumas and they don't react immediately to the event because they know that that didn't work for them before and their brain is trained to put their head down and go on, just to survive. But what we're looking at, especially in teenagers, is when they've been exposed to trauma they're going to internalize and this is higher in boys in childhood, so say, like six to twelve, but then it's higher in girls, in adolescents, like thirteen to eighteen or twenty-one, which is really interesting. They're going to internalize it and that is, you know, they'll withdraw from you. They will have somatic complaints, stomach aches a lot of times, headaches, aches and pains, somatic complaints. They will be riddled with anxiety, they will be riddled with depression. This could also turn into addictions and turns out the way they are internalizing their response to the trauma. They also exhibit this in externalization. Again, if you have your hand up, you still have flipped the lid. We're still the amygdala and the hippocampus is in charge, and so teenagers will often externalize when they have been exposed to trauma, and that plays out at school and in the community delinquency, aggression, insufficient behavior, regulation, as well as antisocial, oppositional behavior disorders. And so in teenagers they're going to do both. Most likely, the internalization part is going to happen in the privacy of their own home or foster home or group home, wherever they are. They're going to withdraw, they're going to have somatic issues, they're going to have anxiety, depression and propensity for addiction externally, usually out in the community. That's when we're going to see symptoms of flipping the lid, where they have no ability to control their behavior. And so I stop here, because so often times we label these kids as problematic kids and we're not looking at what's going on with them. And in this world we have to pay attention to what's going on with them, and so one of the things that is also important for us to know as people who are out there and who are working with kids or who know kids, and if you yourself are a trauma survivor, some of this podcast might help you understand your own behavior. But the other thing we need to bring into play here and so we've already talked about the adverse childhood experiences and we've talked about trauma let's talk about attachment styles. Attachment theory is not new. John Bowlby basically came up with this back in the I want to say it was the 60s and essentially this was a philosophy. This theory is that the way we attach to our caregivers is the way that we will live out most, if not all, of the rest of our lives. And this was further proven, if you will, by Mary Ainsworth, who followed Bowlby, and they did an experiment where they put a mother and a baby in a room plane and then and the baby's just playing, just fine, and the mom gets up and leaves and the baby cries. And then the mom comes back, picks up the baby, they call out the reunion, hugs the baby, calms the baby down, the baby's fine, puts the baby back down, the baby plays. Now a stranger comes into the room, sits on the floor and begins to play with the baby, which is fine, while the caretaker is there. Mom leaves, baby cries. The caretaker picks up the baby nothing, the baby's still crying. Mom comes in, hugs the reunion, and that forms a secure attachment. Essentially, again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, safety is a paramount and that baby knows that, that mom is its caretaker and the way that it's going to stay alive. And so the crying when the mom left the room was intense at the beginning, but the more she kept coming back, the less the baby cried when the mom left the room, and that forms a secure attachment. When we don't form secure attachments, what happens Then? We have different other forms of attachment. There are four different types. One is the one that we all want and is a secure attachment and that is when our caretakers have paid close attention to us and childhood, met our needs, picked us up, held us, hugged us, connected with us, kept us safe. Can't express how much safety is paramount in the life of a child's safety and connection. So a secure attachment style that person is going to be warm and caring and trusting. They're going to forgive. They're going to be boundaries, able to do boundaries. They're going to be open and honest, they're also going to be able to emotionally regulate themselves. The avoidance attachment style is fear of closeness. This is this is later in life fear of closeness, distance and withdrawn. Super logical, not emotional about anything. Avoids partner, avoids conflict, emotionally distant, extreme independence. That's avoidant. That's an avoidant attachment style and these play out in your friendships and in your marriages. And all of that if we don't fix it. The anxious attachment style is relationship insecurities, fear of abandonment. This person lacks boundaries, super sensitive, overly accommodating and mood fluctuations. Then we have a disorganized attachment style the inability to self regulate issues with intimacy and trust, tendency to disassociate, desires close relationships but are fearful of them. And so these attachment styles are important because this is the way that we will live out the rest of our lives if we don't get help. And just for those of you who are listening and who know my story, I do have a secure attachment style, but I have not always had a secure attachment style. I have a secure attachment style because I have gotten help and I understand the importance of getting help and connecting with safe people, and the more that we do that for children who have been abused, abandoned, neglected, who would not cry when their mom left the room, because they're just used to their mom leaving the room. They live out their lives with these attachment styles that I just mentioned, which causes problems, and again they're living with their lid flipped, with their emotional, their emotional Olympic system in charge, which is just never a good thing. We want the PFC, the prefrontal cortex, back online, and we do that through trauma therapy, and we'll talk about that here in a few minutes. Now, what are some of the trauma related disorders that happen in some children if treatment is not given or the trauma even acknowledged? The first one and this is might be the most important one for those of you listening, because if we catch it here, the likelihood that we can stop it from progressing to down the line of disorders is very high, and this is one that you don't hear about a lot, but it is called acute stress disorder. And so when a child, for example, has witnessed violence, sexual loss of life, physical stosing that I read to you at the beginning when they've experienced a traumatic event, they can have an onset, an immediate onset, of what's called acute stress disorder. And this gives us hope because we can implement treatment into acute stress disorder and hopefully get, stop it from climbing up the ladder. But acute stress disorder those symptoms have to occur within the first four weeks of the traumatic event. It does include intrusions symptoms or reliving it, avoiding it. If, again, if a kid is avoiding going to school, going to a friend's house, going to church, going to you know, around the person, these are things to be watching out for. Arousal. So they're going to be super hyper, vigilant and disassociative symptoms. What does that mean? That means that they're going to check out, you're going to see them. When they call it the thousand years stare, disassociating, separating themselves from the pain. That's just the body's way of protecting itself. Asd is more prevalent when this trauma is interpersonal, meaning when trauma happens to the child, not like an earthquake or a hurricane. About 16.5% of children studied in this one study had ASD, but the prevalence of ASD increased with age. So in other words, young children are not getting ASD. It seems like young children are jumping straight to post-traumatic stress disorder and not this lesser known and less salient, if you will, disorder of acute stress disorder. So that kind of treatments that we could use for ASD include cognitive behavior therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy. We don't have time to talk about these modalities on this podcast, and probably we'll do this in April Play therapy, art therapy really significant for kids, especially pre-language, and so that is acute stress disorder. The next one, and the one that we hear about the most, is post-traumatic stress disorder. Those symptoms must occur for one month after the qualifying event, and what I mean by qualifying event is what I mentioned to you at the beginning of the podcast. They must have been exposed to that event. Obviously the same thing, the symptoms of intrusion, yeah, reliving it, basically without the just coming into their consciousness, without them knowing it. They're avoiding things, they're aroused easy, they disassociate. It's the same as acute stress disorder, except for the symptoms are lasting longer. There is a dysregulation and inhibition of the prefrontal cortex, and so that lid is definitely flipped in those of us with PTSD. Unless we get help and we're able to close that lid and allow our prefrontal cortex to make the rules, not our emotional system. It is usually characterized by this flipping of the lid. Ptsd is, and so treatment with PTSD is important. Some other symptoms that happen on PTSD are relational issues. That can be certainly can be connected with attachment style, anxiety, depression and suicidality. And I want to stop here for a second on suicidality, since this tends to be something that is so prevalent in our society today, and especially among the church. You need to understand that those who take their own lives are not literally in their right mind. When I talk about Dr Dan Siegel's hand model and you might be doing it, you might not but when that prefrontal cortex is not working, there is no ability to make a decision that I want to stay on this planet if that pain is enough, and so a lot of people tend to want to judge suicide and don't understand suicide. But you need to understand that this is a brain thing. This is not a decision. Usually this is a brain thing. This is somewhat my opinion, but particularly as we talk about children, suicidality is a problem and it's something that we have to watch out for. So we're looking for these relational issues. We're looking for anxiety, we're looking for depression, we're looking for them to be super hyper-vigilant, we're looking for them to be acting out emotionally all the time and never using their left or linear side of their brain because they've been through trauma. We're looking for these things so that we never get to suicidality One of the saddest things when I was working at the hospital on the behavioral health unit and in the emergency room was a young lady that came in and she was probably 18 or 19 and she sat down and she had been there a copious amount of times and so she just puts out her arm because she knows that we need a blood sample and she said I just don't understand why it's not legal to kill yourself in this country, and that broke my heart every time she said that. But she definitely had some childhood trauma, had post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps even complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and so suicidality and post-traumatic stress disorder is something that I know a little bit about, having tried twice in my life due to just not dealing with so many of these things. It's such an issue, and so if I had one message besides, kids need safety and connection in this podcast is for those of you who are, who have teenagers in your life and even tweens the nine, 10 year olds now are taking their lives and it's because that PSC, their brain is not working. The trauma has been the cascade of neurotransmitters and the cascade of stress hormones has absolutely made them literally not in their right mind, because no one, I think, takes your life if you're completely in your right mind, your hands close, your PSC is in charge, not your emotional brain, and so I wanted to stop Park there for a second on suicidality, because it's a thing, and if we want to help children create secure attachments, like I've been taught, even though in the face of so much shod-hood trauma, and we want them to be able to move forward and it not affect them over the lifespan, we have to pay attention when we see some of these things like I've talked about in PTSD, particularly those intrusion symptoms. There's avoidance symptoms, that that disassociation which is easy to spot out, that they will just literally not be there. They'll be staring off in the space and have separated themselves. Watch for these and people that you have contact with, because there is hope. No trauma is so bad in my opinion, at least based on my own story that can't be redeemed, that that attachment styles can't be changed, that that somatic issuing can't be fixed and that the anxiety, depression, suicidality cannot be addressed. Jesus, the star of the story, has to be part of that. But there is great hope, even though trauma does a lot of damage to our brains, particularly the developing brain. The lifetime prevalence for PTSD in the United States is 6.8 percent For adolescents, guys 5 percent. It affects women 2 to 1 of our men, which is really interesting, since PTSD is so often mentioned in war time and for up until recently, women weren't even in combat. Globally, the lifetime prevalence of PTSD is 3.9 percent, and so I think that global number is probably much higher than we think. It is because of places where there's unreached people, groups. I'm thinking of a young lady in our church that is a missionary to Uganda, and I guarantee you that the PTSD numbers there are much higher than reported, just because of culture and things of that nature. Now let's talk about complex post-traumatic stress disorder. This is not recognized, as I mentioned, in the DSM, but it is an international classification of diseases, which is great for health insurance and purposes like that. Somebody recognizes that there is something a little bit different in complex PTSD than there is just PTSD, and here's what it is. In order for it to be considered complex post-traumatic stress disorder, you have to include three of the traumatic symptom clusters, so that some of those ones that I talked to you about arousal, disassociation, intrusion, behavioral issues. So you have to have at least three of those, and then you have to have emotional dysregulation and issues with identity and relationships, and so essentially what that means is you have all of those other things, you avoid things, you're super hyper, vigilant, can't sleep. Younger children have behavioral issues, but somebody would true complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and let's think about the child who cannot emotionally regulate and what that turns into. And generally speaking, that child is cast out as a problem child and no one investigates why that child is acting like they are. And so and this is true with all three of these disorders Acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and complex stress disorder this one has a lifetime prevalence of 1 to 8 percent, but 50 percent of people in mental health facilities have complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Therapies for both PTSD and complex PTSD include trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy and EMDR. Emdr is the one that I use, as you guys know, and patients improved by 74 percent in symptoms reduction With EMDR. So, as I, as I've mentioned in all three of these, emdr is one of the gold standards and we have a couple episodes on EMDR and I will put those in the show notes or we'll talk about it a little on another episode. But one of the other treatments for all of these is play therapy and art therapy and lots of times kids who cannot find their words for the trauma can write it, draw it, play it, recreate it and sand that kind of things, and so there is great hope. But let's talk about what you need to be looking out for as the observer of a child in your life. If a child is acting out, having temper tantrum, some of these things that we've talked about, it is very, very important that you investigate to the best of your ability whether or not a traumatic event has occurred. If a traumatic event has occurred and perhaps you guys know that traumatic event has occurred it is very important that you get that child treatment, because children's brains are what they call plastic, more plastic than adults, and what that means is we have the ability, when a child experiences trauma, we have the ability to change the trauma narrative. We have the ability to take the avoidant, the insecure, the disorganized attachment and turn it into a secure attachment, the way God has designed their brains to be able to create new neuro pathways and prune or get rid of, if you will, the ones that trauma has damaged and the developing child and adolescent brain. The brain is not done forming until 25 years old, but particularly in those early childhood years. If we can get these kids help and not die on the hill of they're just a bad kid or they have hypertension, activity disorder or they have something else, ask questions, watch, remember that what your child needs, what that child needs is safety and connection. And so, while your life might be busy, when you are raising children or you're around children, that connection with their primary caregiver will inform decisions that they make over the rest of their life. And I say that because I know from personal experience, having now a secure attachment style. I used to have an anxious, avoidant attachment style and that was because I went from trauma to trauma to trauma to trauma to trauma without getting any help, even after having been taken away from my mom by the state, even with an adverse childhood experience score of eight. No one had ever really addressed it. And so I went through life always trying to please people, never attaching to them, always afraid they were going to leave me, always a always afraid period, never felt safe and never felt connected. It wasn't until somebody, when I was 10 years old, decided that they wanted to care about a bunch of kids living in downtown Jacksonville. They knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to go to church. There's a book by Judith Cohen called Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Trauma Treatment, and when she talks about what happens to the child's brain during trauma, she mentions in her book that a child only needs one meaningful connection, one, two. Undo all of this to make the neuropathways begin to create again like they're supposed to and the stop of the pruning of the ones that are getting pushed out by traumatic memories. That's my story is that somebody decided that they wanted to care and connect with a little kid that was dirty and hungry and acted out, interrupted in Sunday school, attention seeking, behaviors, all the things. None of them labeled me as a problem child and forgot about me. Now I did get put outside the classroom a couple times because I like to talk a lot, but as a rule none of them dismissed me for being a behavior issue, even though I was, because there was no way that I was operating in my complete brain with my prefrontal cortex working. All of that trauma had completely exposed my limbic system, my emotional system, and caused brain changes, caused brain alterations. But, jesus, when I had a nervous breakdown at 35 years old, we went back and we addressed all of these things. And now, now I can be behind this microphone not fully healed, because I certainly live with CPTSD, but not as bad as I should be and so I encourage those of you who work with kids, who have kids, who have nieces, nephews, grandchildren, that you watch out for some of these signs and symptoms of trauma and that you understand the importance of helping them now, not later. Don't be afraid to go to somebody. Or, if you're nervous that something is happening, it's better to be wrong in that regard than to not ask questions, not investigate. It's better to be wrong than for them to continue to live in trauma. And so, for me, one meaningful connection changed everything, and I'm not saying that life is perfect, but, guys, we can help kids. And so, for those of you out there especially I'm thinking of foster parents just remember, when they're acting out in these ways, what they need is professional help, and they need you to be there to connect with them, and they need to know that you're going to be there and stay connected with them. And they need to be safe. And what other safety than to usher them into the arms of the star of the story, who is Jesus, and the only reason why healing can take place is because he has allowed it. And so, as we near the end of this podcast, I hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope to provide a few more like these for you guys as I continue towards my doctorate. Hope this has been helpful to you. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. Until then, you know what I'm going to say. You are seen, you are known, you are heard, you are loved and you are so, so valued.

Speaker 1: 42:08

Let my life be one more time, and when my hope is fading and when worries do assail me, I will remember how you you never fail me. You have pulled me out from the depths. You have saved me from certain death. You have shown yourself faithful to me over and over Jesus. So let my life glorify you. Teach me to walk beside you. I want to be more like you, so let my life be one more time More by you, more by you, More by you.