When someone experiences trauma, its physical and emotional effects can sometimes impact their children – and the impact of trauma on child development can begin in utero.
You see, during times of stress, the body releases the hormone cortisol. As you may know, that’s one of the ways our body helps us cope with physically or emotionally difficult situations.
But when trauma elevates cortisol to unhealthy levels, it can have an epigenetic impact – not only on the client, but on their children as well.
So how can this happen?
We created an infographic you can use with clients to help them visualize how trauma can get passed on through caregivers.
Click the image to enlarge
Early Development – Caregiver With Traumatic Experience
- Mother Releases cortisol
- Baby absorbs cortisol through placenta
- This can impact a baby’s:
– HPA axis
– Central Nervous System
– Limbic System
– Autonomic Nervous System - Caregiver struggles to regulate
- Attachment relationship between caregiver and child may be strained
- Can impact child’s:
– Development of a core sense of self
– Ability to integrate experiences
– Epigenetic expressions
Adulthood – A Person Who Has Had a Caregiver With Untreated Trauma May:
- Be more prone to PTSD after trauma
- Struggle to repair after conflict
- Struggle with relationships
- Be emotionally detached
- Be more prone to dissociate
Breaking the Cycle of Trauma
- This can become a cycle, impacting further generations
- The good news is that healing trauma can break this loop. Seek help from a license health or mental health practitioner
Parenting is a hard job, and this isn’t meant to add to the stress of raising children. But its critical to provide practitioners with information that can help them work more skillfully with patients who’ve experiences trauma and help them resolve their trauma. Trauma is not a life sentence – it’s never too late to heal.
If you’d like to print a copy for yourself, just click here: Color or Print-friendly.
The Role of Cortisol in the Cycle of Trauma
What is Cortisol?
As you’ve likely seen in your work, when a person struggles to regulate the emotional impact of stressors, it not only affects the mind, but impacts the body as well.
During these moments of stress, one of the primary hormones released into the body is cortisol. You may already be very familiar with cortisol and its many impacts on the body. But just to provide a brief refresher. . .
Cortisol is often called the “stress hormone” and is nature’s built-in alarm system.
Cortisol is helpful when it regulates metabolism, reduces inflammation, manages blood sugar levels, and aides in memory formulation. Cortisol is a vital hormone for living a healthy and sustainable life.
When a person is under distress, cortisol is released into the body resulting in:
- Increased heart rate
- Increased blood pressure
- Increased blood glucose
- Increased respiration and muscle tension
- The shutdown of systems not needed during a survival response such as the digestive system and reproductive system
During a crisis, all of these can aide in your survival.
But when a client is experiencing stress caused by everyday triggers, their cortisol levels can become dangerous to their health and well-being.
When someone has experienced trauma, it is often more difficult for clients to regulate emotions and the range of emotions they can manage can become quite narrow.
In these cases, the “window of tolerance” is a useful tool to help explain to clients what’s going on when they’re feeling dysregulated.
How Cortisol Impacts Early Development
During pregnancy, cortisol also supports the developing fetus. When the mother’s body releases cortisol, the fetus absorbs the hormone through the placenta.
Cortisol has an impact on the baby’s:
- HPA axis – (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis)
- Central nervous system
- Autonomic nervous system
Cortisol also plays an important role in the fetus’s brain and lung development.
During this phase of development, the fetal organs and organ systems are subjected to both positive and negative influences from the mother’s body. This is a crucial time for the fetus and elevated stress levels from the mother can pose a dangerous risk to the physical and cognitive health of the baby. If a mother experiences high levels of stress – the fetus will also receive the increased levels of cortisol.
High levels of maternal stress during pregnancy can lead to delayed development in both cognitive and motor functioning for the child.
Of course, when a woman is pregnant, they are already more vulnerable to psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, and stress. So how can we help mothers manage their stress levels during pregnancy? Here are some resources that can help:
When a caregiver struggles to regulate their stress levels, it can also strain the attachment relationship they have with their child. As you know, early attachment traumas can have lasting impacts on a person’s life.
When a child develops insecure attachment styles, it can lead to difficulty regulating emotions and building trusting bonds.
For strategies on how to work with attachment and how it profoundly impacts the treatment of trauma here are some resources that can help:
Helping clients heal from attachment-based trauma can be one of the most challenging things we do – but when we can understand how insecure attachment develops, we can be primed to help clients heal more quickly.
How a Caregiver with Untreated Trauma Can Impact the Child – Even into Adulthood
So how can a caregiver with untreated trauma impact the lives of their children – even into adulthood?
When a fetus absorbs heightened cortisol levels from a mother who experiences trauma or relives traumatic memories, it can have lasting effects. This can result in the child experiencing adverse effects throughout their lives, such as:
- Being more prone to PTSD after trauma
- Struggling to repair after conflict
- Struggling with relationships
Epigenetics has been shown to influence a person’s susceptibility to PTSD. You might find this article interesting: How Might Epigenetics Influence the Link between PTSD and Inflammation?
In addition, when left untreated, childhood trauma can make it difficult for clients to get close to other people throughout their lives. Terry Real, MSW, LICSW has an interesting way of thinking about this specific aftereffect of trauma that can be helpful for clients to better understand their struggle. We created an infographic to break this model down into 3-parts: How Trauma Can Affect Adult Relationships. We think you’ll find it useful.
When a child grows up in a home with an insecure attachment relationship with their caregiver, it can lead to that person:
- Unintentionally bringing out negative behaviors in others
- Being emotionally detached
- Being more prone to dissociation
When a client has experienced trauma, even perceived threats can put them into a state of shutdown or dissociation. This can often be triggered by feeling threatened, recounting traumatic memories, or feeling emotions associated with past trauma.
And left untreated, this can impact a client’s sleep and eating habits, result in them feeling socially withdrawn, and make it difficult for them to express themselves.
Here are some resources that can help you with your clients struggling with dissociation:
The Differences in Dissociation Triggered by Shame and Terror – and How to Work with Each
[Infographic] Working with Structural Dissociation
How to Integrate the Brain and Prevent Dissociation After Trauma
While these impacts can be significant and long-lasting, attachment styles aren’t set in stone. People can learn secure attachment at any point in life — and that’s where therapy comes in.
Breaking the Cycle of Trauma
When trauma from a caregiver impacts a child, it can create a cycle that extends for generations. So how can we as practitioners help to break this loop?
We can start by recognizing when a client has experienced trauma and utilizing trauma-informed care in our work. With a trauma-informed approach, we can better understand how trauma has shaped a client’s life, determine the best path for healing, and avoid potentially retraumatizing.
There are six principles of trauma-informed care that allow clinicians to effectively recognize and respond to the signs and symptoms of trauma. They include:
- Safety
- Trust and Transparency
- Peer Support
- Collaboration
- Empowerment & Choice
- Cultural, Historical, and Gender Awareness
You can find more information on trauma-informed care here.
Compassion-focused therapy strategies can also be critical in healing the shame, depression, and anxiety that is often felt after experiencing attachment-based trauma. Understanding how compassion affects the brain and body can be game-changing to help even the most stuck clients begin to heal.
Integrating compassion therapies can help clients break free from shame cycles, self-criticism, and improve their capacity to whether distress. And it can often be effective to help clients overcome the resistance and blocks to working with their trauma.
Here are compassion-based strategies that clinicians can use to help clients struggling with the effects of trauma:
Treating Trauma with Compassion-Based Therapies
A Compassion-Focused Approach to Self-Critical, Negative Thoughts
[Infographic] A 5-Step Process for Transforming Shame with Self-Compassion
Two Compassion-Based Ways to Help Your Client Overcome Shame
When we can help someone heal from trauma, we impact more than just that one person. The effects can ripple to their children, family, communities, and more. That’s why the work we do as health and mental health practitioners is so important.
We hope that you found the information in this article useful to your work with clients.
For more strategies that you can use to help clients who’ve experienced trauma, be sure to check out The Neurobiology of Attachment.
You’ll get insights from Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Dan Siegel, MD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Allan Schore, PhD; and Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD.
Now we’d like to hear from you. How have you worked with clients who have experienced trauma? And how do you plan on using these strategies in your work? Please leave a comment below.
As always, thank you so much for this amazing work and all that is shared with us. With these tools we are able to help bring relief and healing to our clients through education, new perspective and a sense of empowerment that comes with new understanding! And, with that understanding comes the ability to react and respond in healthier ways, allowing clients to gain a deeper connection to their resilience and efficacy. What an incredible gift!
Thank you so much for this free to watch series. So much great info!! I am printing out each info graphic . Awesome!! Thank you from the bottom of the heart!!
This infographic is so helpful for my work. Great tool. Thank you so much.
Thanks for providing an easy to understand tool to help my clients
This infographic is both insightful and inspiring. In working with families, in an educational setting, its beneficial to interview the mother, in particular. Through this intake, we are able to share with parents/caregivers, practical strategies they can use to promote a more nurturing environment for their child. Similarly, the more I know about the development of a student, I can determine or adjust my communication style to meet the needs of my client. After determining their educational goals, the educational team can design the best program for students who may have been exposed to trauma.
Thank you, for making this article available to me.
I am very impressed by these fabulous handouts. They will help to explain to my clients the workings of the brain and the effects of anger. Thank you
There is a theoretical possibility that psychotherapy can reverse or alter epigenetic changes related behaviour. Think of it this way: Thinking (cognition) is a neurochemical activity. Particular thinking styles elicit different immunological and other physiological pathways. These pathways in tandem can potentially alter or weaken negative epigenetic expression. The challenge today when it comes to verifying effects of counselling / talk therapy/ psychotherapy is when one approaches this from the lens of Cartesian dualism. Aka, something can only make physiological change if there’s direct physical intervention (drugs or surgery). Cartesian dualism thinks the mind is not a physiological entity and therefore it’s qualities (cognition and emotional regulation for example) cannot be beneficial in correcting pathological pathways in body and mind. Advances in neuroscience today are fortunately paving way for the true interaction between body and mind. In conclusion, the chart is based on sound and current scientific postulates.
I wish I could find someone with your area of expertise in my area! When we talk about inter-generational trauma and possible ways to address and reverse it, the dream of a radical shift in racism and poverty and certain abuses becomes possible. Unfortunately my country still cannot bring itself to apologize as a nation for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So it’s going to have to start on the ground floor.
Responding to some of the comments about how children in the same family can react differently to a mother’s stress (including twins): I’ve been working with survivors of attachment trauma for several years and work from the premise that parents struggle to embrace those parts of the child’s character that correspond with the parent’s Shadow. Shadow is not a word that you often hear, applied to early life trauma, because much of what we’re taught about Shadow has not been updated in close to a century.When children exit the womb, they embody every conceivable personality trait but only 50% of those traits are considered safe by the mother’s psyche (50% are considered unsafe by the father’s psyche, though the mother’s list will always differ from the father’s and if I had time I could elaborate). When an infant is expressing calmness, they’re much easier to embrace than when they’re expressing cruelty, or slowness, or when they’re tasting their own poop. If you observe the parent’s closely and without judgement, you’ll notice that they tend to be more emotionally available to the infant when the infant is expressing parts of themselves that do not correspond with the parents’ shadows. When parent’s encounter elements of their own Shadow in a child, the parent unconsciously SEPARATES from the child, plunging the child into temporary attachment crisis. The more traumatised a parent, the higher the likelihood that this separation with ensue to a point where the infant reaches a state of futility, in their efforts to restore connection with the parent. Each child will trigger the parent in a slightly different way, and each child develops distinct strategies for re-engaging the parents, and our adult personalities are reflecting our parents’ shadows and together with the strategies that we evolved to survive the traumatic periods of involuntary isolation that presented whenever a parent was unable to be with their Shadow in us. b-loops.com
While I am aware of research on multi-generational epigenetic changes and other developmental effects created by stress during gestation, I have not seen any research that supports the claims made here about the effects of treatment. The emphasis in “a person who has had a caregiver with UNTREATED trauma” suggests that there is evidence that those changes in utero can be prevented by giving therapy to a pregnant woman experiencing stress or perhaps even that they can be reversed by treating the caregiver later. Is there actual *evidence* showing that therapy for traumatized pregnant women 1) prevents or reverses stress-related epigenetic changes in the fetus or 2) prevents or reverses the prenatal developmental problems associated with stress? It seems even more unlikely that there would be *evidence* showing that therapy for a caregiver could reverse epigenetic changes in a child that originated from prenatal experiences, and extremely implausible that it could reverse anatomical changes to the nervous system.
And in the third box, again, is there any actual evidence that demonstrates those epigenetic changes can be reversed in offspring or later descendants through therapy? I don’t doubt that therapy is valuable to many people in breaking a cycle of trauma, but I do doubt there is a solid body of evidence (enough to make a clinical claim of this nature) supporting the specific implication of this poster that therapy will reverse a set of prenatally-induced epigenetic and developmental problems. I think this is misleading as to the state of the science and known or even plausible mechanisms of actions of therapy.
Appreciate the thoughtfulness here and the drive for us to be fact-based and credible.
There is a theoretical possibility that psychotherapy can reverse or alter epigenetic changes related behaviour. Think of it this way: Thinking (cognition) is a neurochemical activity. Particular thinking styles elicit different immunological and other physiological pathways. These pathways in tandem can potentially alter or weaken negative epigenetic expression. The challenge today when it comes to verifying effects of counselling / talk therapy/ psychotherapy is when one approaches this from the lens of Cartesian dualism. Aka, something can only make physiological change if there’s direct physical intervention (drugs or surgery). Cartesian dualism thinks the mind is not a physiological entity and therefore it’s qualities (cognition and emotional regulation for example) cannot be beneficial in correcting pathological pathways in body and mind. Advances in neuroscience today are fortunately paving way for the true interaction between body and mind. In conclusion, the chart is based on sound and current scientific postulates.
Well, the U.S. medical industry destroyed their credibility with bogus claims about Prozac, so in all friendliness, I say why should I believe now what any doctor, including you, speculates about the “evidence-based” effectiveness of psychotherapy, shamanism, religious transformations, or any other healing modality in addressing in-utero epigenetically based this and that. The AMA says “don’t smoke or do crack when you’re pregnant.” If that’s not an endorsement of epigenetically based therapy, I don’t know what is.
The way I see it, the AMA is responsible for providing evidence-based testing proving that pre-natal stress *doesn’t* cause epigenetic changes in fetuses. Until then, the normal, natural, obvious assumptions should be that it does. So get going, Doctors, on proving that stress doesn’t causes changes, you’ve got a lot of research to do.
We now know, based on *real* evidence-based review of published and unpublished studies of Prozac and other anti-depressants (instead of carefully selected and deceptively “framed” studies) that Prozac is no better at treating depression than placebo, except in cases of severe depressions where the working theory is that the placebo effect is wearing off which make the Prozac only seem to work.
The response of the American Psychiatric Society was a smokescreen, the the President Nada Stotland giving the following statement:
“studies like those reviewed by Kirsch and colleagues, which compare a single drug to placebo, do not accurately reflect the way doctors prescribe antidepressants.
“We know that many people who are depressed do not respond to the first antidepressant they try,” she says. “It can take up to an average of three different antidepressants until we find the one that works for a particular individual. Therefore, testing any single antidepressant on a group of depressed individuals will show that many of them do not improve.”
OK, those are the facts. Now lets interpret them. Stotland says people have to “shop around” until they find the right anti-depressant. But there’s another way to interpret this fact that fits the placebo reality much better. It’s well known that psychiatric drugs make people feel different. People who feel depressed might go from drug A to B to C in their search for a “cure.” Eventually, some medicine makes them feel different in just the right way that they interpret the new way they feel as “health.” It’s perfectly plausible to posit that it’s not the drug that makes them feel healthy, but the own unique way they view own chemical response to the delta (physiological change) induced by the drug. The drug companies are in fact selling *designer placebo effects*, taking advantage of the fact that that neuroplasticity int the brain allows someone to interpret their changed physiological reality as “health.” It’s the the person’s internally generated response *to the drug* (the inner placebo effect) which is actually changing their mood, not the drug.
Some people awake very slowly in the morning. You know, we have morning people and night people. If it becomes necessary for a night person to become a morning person, there are ways to do it. One way is on waking to give them a choice of coffee, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew — anything with caffeine will do. Eventually, they’ll settle on a beverage as being the optimal one that makes them feel best awake. But if all beverages have the same amount of caffeine, it’s the “designer placebo effect” that’s actually controlling the impression the person has that efficacy is based on the actual beverage chosen.
Or, if you are against this logic, you have to prove that what I say here isn’t true until you can say that Prozac is what’s effective, and not the designer placebo effect.
The fact that an ordinary Joe like me can take apart the unproven logic of the drug companies in stating efficaciousness of drugs (and not the placebo effect) shows you something. If drug companies were really interested in researching psychopharmacological reality, they would start doing physiology monitoring of people involved in various modalities of psychotherapy — CBT, shamanic, Freudian, AEDP, Jungian, ritual-based (religion) — to see what *real chemicals* already resident in the human genome are being generated (or not) to see how the human body can heal itself.
Also, I think we have to bump the conversation up the level of raw power and ask ourselves who benefits financially from the assumption that anti-depressants — and not placebo effect — are what’s in play here. There’s no money to be made off the placebo effect. Same with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy using MDMA for post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD), which is about to finish Phase III FDA trial (and has in fact been rated as “breakthrough” therapy), with no support whatsoever from any of the drug companies, even this is going to cure the PTSD for tens of thousands of military veterans. And why aren’t the drug companies assisting? Because they can’t make any money because there’s no patent on MDMA.
Thank-You Ruth for another info-graphic that is easy to understand and use with clients who are struggling to understand what may be impacting their lives.
Thanks for sharing! Will post and share.
Ive been looking at P.A.C.E for healing trauma and repairing relationships with the caregiver.
Thank you! This is a great tool and very informative for parents in my family project
I wouldn’t use this with clients as the language is quite inaccessible without a lot of explanation (HPA axis, epigenetic expressions) and is very deficits focused.
As both a clinician and a client, I have found that psychoeducation and scientific knowledge of what is happening within the body and societally are empowering tools. I am not sure what you are referring to as “deficits”. Clients have always responded well in my experience when the work in session is happening on the intention of an even playing field. Clients come to clinicians for their knowledge, not authoritarian screening or pity. I love the above chart.
At the moment I have no extra monies. Hopefully this will change in the near future. Are any of your courses funded?
I have a woman in one of my support groups has a very stressful life and traumatic past. A month ago she gave birth to a premature baby. They are impacted by poverty, they are immigrants and there is a past history of abuse. English is not her first language. I got her a lisenced counselor but she did not follow through after the first meeting. This series will help me have more ability to help her and her family, and to find a counselor or therapist who can help.
Believe her actions. She might be more interested in obtaining affection and approval thorugh her victim stance. Which is totally supported by her circumstanmces.
Hi Louise M. Sandberg,
I work with families who struggle with emotional upheaval. The approach is based on somato-emotional release and currently effectively used in different countries of Europe like Germany, Switzerland and Spain. There must be something similar in the United States, too. It can help young parents release stress, anxiety and emotionally challenging situations with their baby and becoming more prone to creating an affectionate tie within the family. It is played out to do with the child together, it’s a lot of body work, breathing techniques, posture, letting go of emotions…. All in contact with the baby, which will contribute by his or her own reactions. If you’d like to know more let me know!
I have found it moust helpful, at the moment I am working with a mother and child of 8 and I learned that her brother was dying of cancer while she was pregnant of this child…….thank you for such a magnificent course,
Bless you
Teresa
The Counselors in my Diocese are receiving training on ACES. I think this could help supplement the info we currently have.
Whilst there are some salient points I think this is a little narrow and focussed solely on the mothers history and a single child. I am interested in knowing why it is that the same mother could give birth to multiple children and not all of them would inherit the trauma? They have the same care-giver according to the info-graphic and presumably the same environmental conditions. Has it been considered that this may go beyond just the care-giver and that there may be additional factors in utero that give rise to this and not just the care-giving provided by a traumatised mother? Sure, a mother/father with untreated trauma has a higher probability of having difficulty bonding and creating secure emotional attachment for the infant, but what if something physical, such as the umbilical cord around the infants neck in utero, prevents the flow of oxygen to the brain and subsequent completion of synaptic movement and neuro-development so that the infant’s neuro-development is incomplete when born and is already in a position where normal internal attachment cannot automatically occur for the infant and neuro-developmental trauma is a given no matter how good the care-giving is?
We cannot presume that multiple children of the same mother have all had the same environmental conditions in utero. The pregnant mother can encounter a traumatic event in or outside of the home, e.g., a bad vehicle accident, a home invasion robbery, the death of a parent or close friend, etc. Undoubtedly, each child’s developmental journey in utero would be as unique as a fingerprint.
I’m a mother of twins and they definitely have had different birth experiences, although I had a c-section. They display completely different behavior. I would also go as far and say that they didn’t get the same amount of attention during pregnancy. One was always more present and the other more drawn back. It’s interesting, now it’s the other way around, however, I do agree we cannot claim to know it all in this area.
Surely there has to be some consideration for the explicit changes in dynamic as an extra person (as a minimum) is added to the mix? For example – child 1 is born and is adversely affected as per above, is that same child then not a “buffer” or “diffuser” for any subsequent children born? So child 2 is less exposed to and indeed exposed to an altered and evolved (either positively or negatively) mother? It feels like the absolute “if X then Y” leaves no room for the grey, and this to me sounds like with the introduction of any additional child, we no longer compare like for like and therefore couldn’t possibly draw any solid conclusions, could we? Please excuse my ignorance as I am not within the profession however extremely interested in learning on various levels, in particular with relation to the broader content beyond this particular post and how self-perception and psychology affect a trader’s propensity to approach their trading with balance and poise, as a trading coach this is the key to successful trading and you may have heard the statistic that less than 10% of people who attempt to trade will be successful, I would love to incorporate some of the ideas I am learning here as they confirm some of my own theories of how to improve confidence when trading… thank you all for sharing your knowledge
Oddly enough, I am the mother of 3. Married 27 years, so all have the same father. My kids are 26 daughter, 19 daughter and 18 son. All 3 have issues with anxiety that present in different ways. Our middle daughter has had mental health issues and is on medication. Our son has OCD. Because of this and I being their mother…I feel like I have failed them in some capacity.
Colorful and informative!
Thank you so much I am sure this infographic will be helpful when explaining the impact of a Mother’s trauma on an unborn child .
Thank you. It clarifies and gives substance to what I already knew. This is a useful tool to use with clients.
Thank you! I am working with team of primary care physicians at the veterans hospital in Atlanta, GA to create a Tai Chi program. We are working with clients to alleviate symptoms of PTSD and the materials you have created will be very helpful.
Mike Shallow
Tai Chi Instructor
Thank you for excellent work and assistance in a most needed domain of work.
This answers a lot in my personal life. Thankyou
It seems very helpful in so many ways I don’t wish to generalize it in such a short space as this comment. However, it is helping me PERSONALLY, as well as professionally, as at age 51 .. the past.. becomes.. the present .. and the future. Thankyou.
Not a single participant from : France, Italy, Spain?
Hi Michael,
There were participants from 99 different countries, so I’m sure people from those countries tuned in too!
We just couldn’t list them all here.
Hope this clarifies!
Best,
Hannah
NICABM Staff
I was uncertain whether I should comment because I’m watching this series as a patient, not a therapist. But I see that many of us here are patients! Without knowing it until recently, I’ve lived with developmental trauma for the full 75 years of my life. I treasure the information you are sharing, increasing my understanding of the forces behind my experiences. I’m healing now, finally, after years of failed efforts because I’m both working spiritually and recognizing that my down-regulated behaviors are wired in my body and emotional centers in my brain. With a caring therapist/teacher as a skilled guide and witness to my story, and the safe environment she created for me, I have been able to open up and truly feel love and other positive emotions for the first time in my life. Thank you for what you are bringing to us, both patients and therapists!
I am systematically happily surprised with your materials. The professional levels, your generosity in sharing and the quality of your presentations, richly contribute to planetary evolution (via the recipients). Given the limited professional development/financial resources of some of our programs (in Canadian non profit agencies) our involvement might appear less representative than it actually seems, because we might not be purchasing as many programs as you offer.
The summaries you provided were outstanding and practical thank you very much. From an IPT therapist very focused on helping clients develop good meaningful constructive relationships. author of Feeling Better beat depression and improve relationships with interpersonal psychotherapy
Some of this information is new to me and very helpful to understand the whole picture.
This infographic overly BLAMES the mother when the father’s untreated PTSD can be much more pronounced, through constant verbal abuse, depression and actions that dismiss his own need for help. Very biased infographic. Why call it “caregiver trauma” then single out the mother?
Ann, I don’t view it like that. My mother’s father died before I was born and she was in an abusive relationship with my father. Both may have pushed up her cortisol levels and neither were factors she could control. I did get complex PTSD as an adult but none of the other three siblings did. This helps to explain why.
It seems very helpful in so many ways I don’t wish to generalize it in such a short space as this comment. However, it is helping me PERSONALLY, as well as professionally, as at age 51 .. the past.. becomes.. the present .. and the future. Thankyou.
Ann, I agree with you. This does appear to blame the mother. I have complex PTSD and it most likely began in utero as her relationship with my father was not the best. I have been in therapy for most of my adult life and can very much see the changes I have been able to make with the proper modes of treatment. My sister, not treated, has her own issues and the cycle had continued. I see this graphic as way too narrow, as some issues are intergenerational and more.
I see this as and overview of the trauma response there is no indication here where the trauma originated from that I see. This shows the path of the reaction to trauma as it is passed to the child. The father could be the source of the trauma the mother is experiencing it does not say.
And .. yes.. sadly.. THE MOTHER … is always BLAMED .. despite ourgender being on the receiving end 90 percent of the time. Anachronistic.. outdated.. BS, now that I look at it with” fresh eyes” . A load of Malarckey
None one is really to blame; people are just doing the best they can. Dysfunctional behavior is just an end result that keeps getting passed on unwittingly by everyone; caregiver, mother, father, teacher, etc. I believe this is more common than we realize. The key is to just be aware that it has happened, is harmful, education is needed to bring this into awareness for change by ALL, & get help to heal…forgive all including yourself for being subjected to this harsh event & influences. Use it as a wake up call to become more aware of how we are treating each other & change.
If nothing else this information and as you, Mary, have shared , should make us aware of why none of us ever have the right to judge anyone. Whilst we may not like what they are doing or how they behave –
What I find interestingly lacking in this information, and it is of course contentious, is our spirituality – this factor – our spirit and soul play a huge role in how we will respond to our birth and our karma is going to be a fundamental factor in that – it changes the whole dynamic when we recognise there is a functioning intelligence and interplay of energies already at play long before the child is in utero stage –
So while this work is great and offers ways to deal with and function more easily within this world, I wonder if true healing (evolutionary healing) can occur without a connected intuitive approach that understands how our spirit functions in its battle with our separation from Soul.
I did hear one of your speakers discuss the need to be more consciously present within one’s own body, and moving with this awareness and living in a heart centric way is, I feel, the only way to go.
Thank you for sharing this infographic. It’s clear and simple which is important for people who don’t come from the trauma informed field.
Thank you for the information, understanding better is helping better.
This series has given me much guidance in working with young pregnant moms. I do a home visit with them before the birth to talk with them about postpartum depression, but I should be talking with them earlier about how they were parented and the their relationships.
Love having a visual reference! Thank you!
I am so excited to see this “myth” verified as an actual scientific truth.
The elder women in my country (Ecuador), especially the shamans, told my mom about this when she was pregnant with my sister to keep herself safe and avoid conflict with my dad because my mom was experiencing lots of emotional and physical trauma from my father at that time.
Now my sister is experiencing the effects of such trauma, with heart issues, high levels of depression and anxiety that a team of people including myself are helping my sister to cope with and regain wellbeing for herself.
This information used to be considered “new age woo woo” and myth for pregnant women who had experienced domestic violence, now we can prove that the harm is not just to the mother but also to the fetus itself. This can change many family laws when it comes to protecting the mom and child and custody matters.
I am fired up about this because I myself have gone through domestic violence and trauma during my pregnancy where now I am doing everything I can to help my child transcend inherited traumas because it has showed up in her life and attracted more trauma and also affected her attachment style throughout her younger years. Now with my help and intervention it is going from disorganized to more organized – a working process for sure!
Thank you for brining this to the light!
I appreciate Lucia Gabriella’s comment that the older women and Shamans called attention to this when her sister was pregnant. I hope this affirms such intuitive intelligence and hard earned wisdom. I also appreciate her efforts to undo the kind of knots that get passed on in her own family. There’s a lot we can do personally to heal. I think that informing oneself and striving to heal should be added to the conclusion where the advice is to seek professional help. Many professionals are not actually trauma informed or capable of this kind of healing work.
Typo when her mother was pregnant with her sister.
Yes, I agree. Thank you
Thanks for the infographic! Yes, it makes sense that a baby could be exposed to high levels of cortisol and other stress hormones if mum is traumatised or chronically stressed during pregnancy. I wonder about the mechanism of effect on the baby after birth. Is some damage already done, or could it be a case of rebound withdrawal, e.g., when a mother has been taking high levels of Vitamin C during pregnancy, the baby may develop rebound scurvy … love to hear opinions on this.
Thank you so very much! I will add this to my parent information/support notebook.
Thank you – a clear printable to support my client to understand this process
Can you say what level of trauma or how much cortisol would be needed to have such an effect on a baby developing in the womb? Without some sense of degree this might make mothers worried unnecessarily that they are having an adverse effect on their child.
Yes easy to see and feel infographic Much gratitude
MANY HEART-FELT THANKS FOR THIS INFOGRAPHIC!
This looks like an excellent Infographic. Thank you very much.
I ought mention, that I will be using this infographic on clients who belong to the population I researched , i.e., the unacknowledged trauma (and grief) of competent, non-disordered adults who survived parents with a severe mental illness, and with whom I work with in my clinical practice. It’s always good to have a clear visual depiction of something that is actually quite complex. Many thanks.
Sorry, I should have included that if people are interested… they can Google my name: Suzette Misrachi to access my (easy to read) trauma research entitled “Lives Unseen: Unacknowledged Trauma of Non-Disordered, Competent Adult Children of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness” freely available at The University of Melbourne, Australia. This research will come up along with trauma-informed articles I’ve posted on medium.com You should also be able to access my resource website.
Hope this is helpful
Yes, thank you for your all your efforts & sharing.
God bless you for your research! One rarely hears of the acknowledgement of the voiceless pain experienced under these conditions—particularly in my age bracket before the meds that were eventually developed. I realized many years later the self-sabatoging mechanisms that thwarted my own chances at motherhood. Thank you for the direction to more material!
Michelle, I read your passionate comment and was greatly moved. I was also left wondering which research you were referring to?
Absolutely spot on information. This has immediately helped me recognize patterns that trigger negative reactions by traumatized patients. This is a very useful tool!!
Yikes! This explains a lot about me!
I just reentered therapy to address some of my childhood issues that haven’t yet been successfully resolved. Thankfully I have made significant progress, but still more to do for greater healing and wholeness.
Very interesting although not new to me as a Time Line Therapy therapeut.
In TLT we sometimes experience clients going back to the uterus and there they clear the situation (it’s not their trauma, not their experience but their mother’s.
The poster is very nice and helpful.
Thnx for that.
Good morning Ruth,
This poster is very striking!
It is so clear, so educational. It does not leave much room for doubts.
Thank you to all who developed it!
Sincerely,
That’s very helpful, thank you.
Thank you