While anyone - regardless of the strength, potential or life experience - can be injured by threatening situation, for infants and young children the probability of this is higher. Childhood is a special time in the life of every human being. Light, joyful, carefree. Time when the trees seem to be big, and all the problems minor, because around are the closest people - mom and dad. Interestingly, as children we all dream to become adults, and in adult life, with a feeling of light grief remembering childhood (Van der Kolk, 2003). And no matter how many years a person is, he/she will always remember how mother put mustard and sat in the crib when he was ill, how young his father was and what strong hands he had, and he could easily raise him high even with one hand. Where the childhood leaves? Most likely, it is carried away by the clouds in an unknown country that is not on the map. It remains only to memory. Childhood memory, which is always ready to give us a moment of joy.
The child memory is not what adults have. Operation of children's memory is a very important thing that must not forget the adults (Cook, 2010). Parents should always remember that the child is much more emotional than logical. He will remember the feelings and emotions that were with him in this situation than any facts. Especially if it is a fact that the child obtains any traumatic situation.
What is trauma? At the roots of traumatic legacy lies 280 millionth prescription, which we use with all creatures crawling on the ground - a legacy that is in the nervous system known as the reptilian brain. Primitive responses that occur in this part of the brain help the body defend itself from the factors potentially harmful or dangerous. Animals in their environment meet regularly with such situations, and each time respond to them. People, in sight of the more complex structure of the brain, characterized by a striking predisposition - ignore these primitive responses. Therefore, while the animals pretty quickly come to their senses after a meeting with potentially traumatic events, we cannot do so. Whether a person will be injured, or will be able to avoid the trauma, largely depends on the ability to respond to a threatening event in a certain way, while achieving favorable results.
When the reptilian brain senses danger, it activates an enormous amount of energy - a phenomenon known as the adrenaline attack. Such activation causes the heart rate and other bodily changes that provide the body the opportunity to make best use of their resources for self-defense. To avoid injury, the body needs to use up all the energy that was mobilized to meet the danger. Not discharged energy itself does not go away anywhere, on the contrary, it is delayed, creating the potential for the occurrence of traumatic reactions. Fewer resources than a body to meet the threat, the greater is the amount of energy not discharged, and the more it is likely that in the future will mark the development of symptoms of trauma.
In short, the way out of the dangerous situation without traumatic effects depends on the ability of the organism to be involved in the action, to respond effectively to the threat and mobilize released energy, thereby allowing the nervous system to return to the usual level of functioning. Even life-threatening events can not leave behind a trail of traumatic if the person is able to respond to them and live their natural, effective way. Moreover, while anyone - regardless of its strength, potential or life experience - can be injured by threatening situation, for infants and young children the probability of this is higher.
Any unusual behavior that emerged soon after the baby is very, very scared, could mean that he is injured. Compulsive, repetitive actions, such as when the child many times hits a doll with a toy car, almost certainly indicate the presence of unresolved reaction to a traumatic event (in this case will not necessarily be played circumstances of injury). Other signs of traumatic stress include repetitive control actions, tantrums, sudden fits of rage, hyperactivity, excessive timidity, recurring night terrors and nightmares, throwing in his sleep, enuresis, inability to concentrate in school, forgetfulness, excessive aggression or shyness, avoiding conflicts and anxiety, excessive attachment. There may also be abdominal pain and other manifestations of illness of unknown origin (Chin et al., 2014).
In order to know whether the unusual behavior is a traumatic reaction, it is necessary to try to talk about what happened, frightening events, and see how the child responds to these words. The injured child does not want to be reminded about this event, and can respond with silence, or, on the contrary, after the reminder, will be even more excited or restless, cannot stop talking about it.
Reminders detect injuries related to the distant past. Children, who have outgrown strange behavior, could not discharge the energy that serves their cause. In fact, a circumstance whereby traumatic reaction may not occur over the years, because the developing nervous system is able to restrain the excess energy. Remind your child about the frightening events that caused the last changes in behavior, you can wave to awaken signs of trauma (Riedel, 2014).
Reactivation of traumatic symptom is not a cause for concern. Related physiological processes, no matter how primitive they are, positively respond to the intervention, which both causes them to live and allows them to come naturally to healing. Children are surprisingly receptive to the healing of the traumatic reaction.
Creating favorable conditions for healing in a sense, is like learning unfamiliar customs of the country. This is not so much work, but very unusual. The first thing that is required from you and your child – to go out of the world of thoughts and emotions into a world of physical sensations, to listen to what the body feels, what and how it responds. In short, the opportunities revolve around sensations. Being in touch with their inner feelings, the injured child is attentive to the impulses coming from the brain of reptiles. In this case, it is likely that he will notice subtle changes and reactions in the body, whose purpose is to help release excess energy and complete locked bodily experiences. Bodily changes and reactions are enhanced when they are noticed.
Changes occurring in the body are extremely difficult to trace: something that feels like a stone, may, for example, suddenly melt and turn into a warm liquid. Changes of this kind are the most beneficial, when they are just watched, without interpreting them. Search of their values or inventing stories on this basis can switch the perception of the child to a more advanced level of the brain, violating a direct link established with the reptilian brain (Machtinger et al., 2012).
Bodily responses that occur with sensations typically include involuntary trembling, shaking the whole body and crying. If these responses are suppressed by the intervention of beliefs that require the child to behave "normally", i.e. be strong, adult, brave, then discharge the stored energy through them becomes impossible.
Another characteristic of the experiences generated by the brain of reptiles is their rhythm and consistency. Everything that exists in nature is controlled by cycles. Seasons succeed one another, the moon waxes and wanes, the tides come and recede, the sun rises and sets. Animals also live in accordance with the rhythms of nature: they mate, produce offspring, feed, hunt, hibernate in response to the motion of the pendulum nature. In the same way, there are bodily responses that cause traumatic reactions to the natural solution.
For people these rhythms are double challenge. Firstly, they proceed at a slower rate, compared with the one we are used to, and, secondly, they are entirely outside our control. We can only disclose the healing cycles, observe them, confirm their validity; but it is impossible to evaluate, manage, enhance or modify them. When the rhythm of bodily reactions does not receive the necessary time and attention to him, healing is rarely possible to come to an end.
If a child is in the world of instinctive responses, he will live for at least one cycle of treatment. How can you tell when it is completed? Tune in to your child. Traumatized children who remain in contact with feelings and do not use at the same time thought processes, feel relieved and disclosed; only then they are able to return their focus to the outside world. You can feel this change in the child, and thus know that healing has occurred.
Resolution of traumatic reaction does much more than simply eliminating the likelihood of further reactions. It brings the ability to easily pass through the threatening situation. As such, it brings a natural ability to recover from stress. Certainly, the nervous system, habituated to enter into a state of stress and then leave it much healthier than the overloaded by some permanent, not just accumulating stress levels. There is no doubt that children, who are encouraged to listen to their instinctive responses, receive in inheritance health and vitality (Nash & Litz, 2013).
Psychological trauma, usually pertaining to an unexpected, highly stressful external event or incident, as a rule, are not typical for the child's experience, leading the child to despair, filling it up to such an extent that he is unable to cope with it. Psychological trauma occurs when a person is faced with severe shock, feels helpless in the face of imminent danger, fear and instinctive drive (Wade et al., 2013)." Psychological trauma is characterized by the following symptoms:
a) re-experiencing of the traumatic event (nightmares and reconstruction of this event in the game);
b) avoidance of stimuli or situations associated with the event or reminiscent of the trauma;
c) "freezing" of the general reactivity; and
g) increased arousal (increased alertness, irritability, insomnia).
Based on long-term observations of children traumatized there are identified four features that characterize children who have experienced a traumatic event:
a) repetitive, intrusive, oppressive visual memories of the event;
b) repetitive behaviors (multiple-playing tragic episode in the game or behavioral idiosyncrasies);
c) specific fears associated with the trauma; and
g) changing attitudes towards people in various aspects of life and the future.
Effects of trauma may depend on how soon after the traumatic event the child received help how powerful his own defense mechanisms: self-esteem, faith in their abilities, problem solving skills, as well as the belief that he is able to cope with the changed situation, and to the best of its system of emotional support. The greatest damage may be applied to the child, putting recourse. The injury is not healing itself. It goes deeper and deeper - the child seeks to bury under the protection and strategies by which he tries to cope with the situation. In the end, the suppression, substitution, over generalization, identification with the aggressor, splitting, passivity, turning into activity, repression and self anesthesia prevail. In fact, after the child uses all these defense mechanisms and coping trauma can "look" better. But he continues to influence the nature of the child, in his dreams, feelings associated with sex, trust, and plans for the future.
Children's response to trauma differs from adult reaction. The observer can look out the window and see the child who rides a bike or playing after a few hours after the terrible events, while the adult survivor same event, sitting on the couch in the living room, crying and talking about what happened. Looking at the child, the adult may be thinking, "Wow, child playing in the street and enjoying life. He's all right! Look, he's already forgotten about it. It is better to leave him alone. In the end, we do not want to hurt him talk about what happened (Pence et al., 2012). He had already forgotten everything "This widespread belief leads to the fact that adults do not care about how to create a safe environment for the child's feelings, give him the opportunity again and again to play the event, to talk about what he went through, and ask issues that concerned him. Immediate therapeutic intervention for the child is traumatized, critical, as it will help reduce the impact of the tragic events and prevent the occurrence of psychological disorders in the future.
There are two categories of childhood trauma:
a) injury due to a single, sudden stressor; and
b) injury due to repeated or prolonged ordeal. Although the changes occurring in children resulting from each type of injury, somewhat different, they are treated in a similar manner.
Basically therapists work with children who have experienced trauma of the second type, and use a long or rapid therapy. Response to the crisis in these types of injuries are different. This chapter focuses on childhood trauma of the first type.
Crisis intervention - is a professional psychosocial assistance provided to persons who have experienced long-lasting damage mental and social equilibrium through the fault of some critical life events, not acquired, however, as a result of any mental disorder (Wilson & Keane, 2004). Critical life-altering event leads to disruption of the correspondence between the mental and the available natural and social resources required mental strain. Crisis intervention is designed to help people restore peace and social harmony, before the problem is "hardened" and turned into frustration. In this respect, the function of crisis intervention can be called preventive, and often it contributes to the further development and, if one is able to interpret the crisis as a challenge or a chance for development, giving a new impetus for self-organization in personal and social life. If the critical life events predictable, with the help of targeted measures can prepare a variety of people (for example, being on the eve of his retirement) before the onset of overload that the reaction to an upcoming event was more competent.
References
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