When people have trouble paying attention, when they’re too emotional, or reactionary, or downright aggressive, what can we do to help them turn it around?
Perhaps too often, these behaviors are addressed with medication for ADHD or bipolar disorder.
But according to Bessel van der Kolk, MD, the problem (and the solution) may lie in knowing how to recognize the signs and symptoms of childhood trauma.
Bessel walks us through the major markers of this kind of trauma in this short video – check it out, it’s just 4 minutes.
Have you ever recognized any of these symptoms as potential childhood trauma? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
I agree. ADHD or bipolar disorder are very difficult to diagnose when the child is transitioning to adulthood. It can be seen when ADHD symptoms is intertwined with some PTSD symptoms.
All of them. At 53, coming out the otherside of breast cancer treatment. I have been married for 28 years. And after losing a lot of weight for reconstruction surgery, I was having concerns about my husbands lack of interest in sex. At first he said it was bc he didn’t want to hurt me and was unsure about how I would feel. After everything I had been through, I was desperate for connection, but he was also drinking heavily, after a 30 year abstinence. I put it down to the cancerand thought it would ease up, it didn’t and sex was non-existent. I was confused and hurt. I was looking after myself better than ever, and looking fit and healthy after losing 30kg. I had developed a crush on a much younger male who propositioned me for sex, no strings attached, first I declined, then I said yes. When we had sex, he made a deliberate and conscious effort not to look at me, and in that moment I was triggered. I left my body, finished and went home, about a week later the flashbacks started. I couldn’t figure out what I was responding to, something in the present or the past. I felt like a caged animal trying to find some sense of balance, I felt trapped, betrayed and totally dehumanised. There was so much mismatching of actions to words. I had no idea what was going on, but I had an overwhelming compulsion to interrogate to get the information I needed. I was desperate to find my piece of mind. It hasn’t ended well. I had two more triggers, and now clearly see the link to my childhood sexual abuse, but at the same time been unfaithful in my 28 year marriage. I can see how the filter of trauma has tainted everything and why all the disconnection had occurred in my marriage, I must have looked like a narcissis. Right at the time I discover the hidden trauma, and with the help of the book, ‘the body keeps the score’, I finally have a language and understanding of trauma, and my husband finally gets it, then I have to confess my infidelity. Not knowing anything about trauma until so late has almost destroyed me.
Hi Jane, succinctly written. By way of encouragement, this is all surfacing for me at sixty, the realisation of how my life has unconsciously been a series of behaviours that kept the childhood traumas at bay. But, better late than never, (I am sixty). And coming out the other side, I am feeling more alive and here. I can see people still gripped and unaware, so I take comfort in that at least, even this late, I am aware. Best wishes with the journey.
Yes