Developmental or Relational Trauma (often referred to as “Attachment or Betrayal trauma”) occurs when someone close and trusted to you violates your trust or sense of safety. This level of betrayal is complex and devastating to your “internal working model” or blueprint/template of how you connect (or struggle to connect) in all your relationships.
This chronic, recurring ‘small t’ trauma is commonly seen in children’s experience living in a dysfunctional family dynamic, as is common in a childhood characterized by caregivers with mental illness, or exposure to domestic violence, or chronic forms of abuse including psychological and emotional abuse (i.e. narcissistic abuse). Betrayal trauma can also occur in bullying experiences that always lead to feelings of humiliation, abandonment and terror, or all three. Read below to learn more about different forms developmental, relational attachment trauma can take.
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)
DO YOU STRUGGLE WITH:
Knowing what you’re feeling and why? Or feeling like there’s no apparent reason to feel so unhappy/anxious/angry?
Being either disconnected or overwhelmed by your emotions, unsure of how to cope?
Feeling confused or overwhelmed by other’s emotions, and unsure how to respond?
Knowing how and when to set boundaries?
Perfectionism, low self-confidence, self-doubt, or imposter syndrome?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you experienced some level of emotional neglect also know as Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) when you were growing up.
CEN is defined as a parents failure to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs…it’s something a parent fails to do for a child…what’s missing is parental emotional attunement” - Dr. Jonice Webb
The struggles listed above, while painful and difficult to experience, are all COMMON side effects of CEN. Feel free to watch the two video to the right to learn more.
What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?
How to overcome CEN (Begin at the 3:05 mark)
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s)
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) was developed in 1995 by Dr. Vincent Feliti and Dr. Robert Anda through Kaiser Permanente. The study asked participants ten questions around their childhood experiences of household dysfunction, neglect and abuse. In addition to Traumatic Stress symptoms, many of the clients Max works with struggle with chronic pain, fatigue, somatic symptoms, autoimmune disease all resulting from environmental experiences of toxic stress.
What was revolutionary about the ACES study was the correlation it proved between childhood traumatic experiences (ACES) and the incidence of chronic physical health problems in adulthood. Developing awareness around your mind-body connections— or the connection between (toxic) environmental stress and physical health problems may help alleviate your symptoms.
View this Ted Talk by Primary Care doctor and author, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris on “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.“ She also wrote the book, The Deepest Well, on this same subject.
Click here to compete the ACES questionnaire and determine your ACE score.
“Small ‘t’ traumas tend to be overlooked by the individual who has experienced the difficulty. This is sometimes due to the tendency to rationalize the experience as common and therefore cognitively shame oneself for any reaction that could be construed as an over-reaction or being “dramatic.” This reaction is a form of avoidance”