Trauma Research Paper

Hi. Ms Martin, you addressed all the negative impact on trauma, regarding PTSD in youth and adults and now the government is finally addressing those of past Wars, Korea and Vietnam, which I feel has the most trauma experiences, due to not just being in a conflict but also returning to one, when that came home.
Complex trauma encapsulates a recurrent experience of deprivation (and at times overstimulation or the often unpredictable alternation between the two) that leads victims and survivors to feel ensnared by a sense of imminent danger. It challenges their identity and self-worth, causes a disconnection from primary support systems and community, and often results in despair. One of our clients described the experience as being analogous

to being cut out of her family picture and left homeless, an apt metaphor that conveys some of the disconnection and dis-identification experienced by survivors of complex trauma. This client’s sense of being “without an identity or a home” speaks not only to her place in the world but also to another fundamental “home base” loss, that of a self and of positive identity: “Who am I?” “Am I a reflection of what was done to me?” “Do I have a place where I fit?” “Do I deserve good attention?” Having a spiritual home and faith in a beneficent God are also issues that are affected, causing survivors of complex trauma to ask additional questions such as, “Is there a God?” “If so, where is He or She?” “Why was this allowed to happen?” “Is God punishing me?” “Has God abandoned me?” The cumulative ruptures specific to this type of interpersonal trauma most often involve primary caregivers and others in close relationships who, rather than nurturing and supporting the development of the child, commit layered affronts to that growing child’s basic self-capacities, in the process tainting the ability to develop trusting relationships with others. In a complex trauma scenario, the victim can experience one or more types of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional), neglect, exploitation, betrayal, rejection, antipathy, and abandonment (Courtois & Ford, 2013). In turn, these create situations of betrayal trauma, in which those who are supposed to be trustworthy and safe are not and have violated their roles and responsibilities (Freyd, 1998). Trauma survivors as well as the larger culture, including faith communities, often answer these questions about personal worthiness in the negative, by way of disparaging labels bred in a failure to understand an individual who has been profoundly injured in relationship to others and who is in the throes of emotional (and sometimes physical) survival.

I (SVD) can remember having a discussion with a pastor and his wife about how the church could best respond to traumatized individuals. As some of the difficulties of working with survivors were discussed, particularly the distrust of their pastoral care and God’s sovereignty, the pastor’s wife abruptly ended the conversation with the Copyright American Psychological Association. Not for further distribution. Spirituality, religion, and complex developmental trauma 31 pronouncement, “People don’t change or heal not because they were injured as children but because their hearts are not open to God.” The implication that a survivor’s profound disconnection and distrust is about a “hardening heart” is a Christian reference to rebelliousness and dishonoring of God that unfortunately does not take into account the defenses that are mounted to protect a damaged heart and spirit. Often, disparaging labels have come out of other biblical references used out of the appropriate context, for example, asking a woman in a domestic violence situation to “turn the other cheek” or

challenging a person to repent for a set of behaviors that allowed him or her to survive the deprivation and overstimulation of complex trauma. These create yet another betrayal or secondary trauma because they are other reminders of misunderstanding, and they lack empathy and validation of the injustice or abuse.