Exposure Therapy Case Study

As I sit here thinking about Sandy’s story, I wonder about what was going through that little girl’s mind while she laid there on her mother’s dead body. She herself had been victimized at the hands of her perpetrator. Though the psychological effects were devastating, it makes me think that in it might have been a good thing that her brain was not fully developed. What I mean by this is because the consequences might have been worse because her body could have gone in the fight or flight mode. As Perry stated “what Sandy faced was so small and powerless, the brain was overwhelmed, which made her unable to go in fight or flight mode” (pg. 49). My interpretation is that Sandy’s brain went numb or dissociated from the threat.

Since the

event Sandy very shy and distant to anyone that she came in contact. Which is completely understandable that she was standoffish towards people she was not familiar with. Her brain associated strangers as a threat.
When Sandy was in therapy, she does like other people associate things towards the events. For example, the milk or even the silverware. Sandy tried to get her mother to drink the milk, and her throat was slashed by a knife. These are objects that the normal person takes for granted because they are used to nourish the body, but in Sandy’s case they were not. Sandy relates milk and knife to the traumatic event.
As I was reading how therapy progressed with Sandy, I saw that Sandy was doing exposure therapy, but with a twist.

Meaning that each session she was exposing herself and the therapist to the event. Though the therapist did not go in detail about the steps and how the therapy would like traditional exposure therapy. Sandy dictated the therapy. She would do the same thing by having the therapist lay on his belly, put his legs and arms behind his back, as if he was “hog tied”. As the therapy continued the episodes of her instructions of the therapist became less and less. It came to the point that she did not do it at

all.
When I think about Sandy, I think about her resilience.

Through growing up she would keep in contact with the therapist. At the end of the chapter, he mentions the last time he heard from Sandy, she is doing well and is having a “satisfying and productive” life. Though the article written by Emily Bazelon was about children that suffer from sexual abuse and how some children deal better than others (2006, April 30). Bazelon discusses about research with the 5-HTT allele. I believe that this can be established with not just children that are sexually abused, but any traumatic even that a child endures. It makes me wonder if tested, would Sandy’s 5-HTT allele be long or short. If I had to make a hypothesis, I would think that Sandy’s allele would be two long ones, because of the way her life is even after the horrific event she

experienced.