When connection fails : result of trauma in the first stage of development

The capacity to connect and attach to others may be wounded by deficits either pre or post birth and our earliest year of life. A sense of safety only gets wired into our nervous system if we were held and connected to sufficiently and if we do not develop this platform then the capacity to be and express ourselves through our bodies as well as to reach out and connect with others is damaged from then on. When this stage fails due to trauma, neglect or lack of connection from caregivers, we also will experience a high degree of inner terror with NO KNOWN BASIS since imprints remain lodged in the limbic brain and system..

When we have to cope with shocks, neglect or trauma in the connection stage a survival style develops in which we either withdraw (and contract) or cling.. In a addition a high abnormal charge remains stored up within our bodies and nervous system which makes connection seem dangerous or threatening, so we seek both reactions to feel safer, but end up even more disconnected as a result. A full sense of self is not able to develop out of this trauma and as a result of this survival style, the right to exist is impaired, as is the right to express and connect. Connection to the body is impaired and sufferers learn to run from connection.

In addition no conscious memory of the wounding events remain as at this stage the neocortex has not fully formed and the hippocampus has not yet come online, symptoms occur that may make no sense, even in therapy. Our internal experience then remains frozen inside the twin experiences of DREAD AND TERROR, these feelings remain the background. Our sympathetic branch of the nervous system remains highly charged and this leads to a sense of ongoing threat. Hypervigilance and scanning result which make moving out of withdrawal or freezes even more difficult. Collapse and dissociation result.

This type of trauma and its mysterious affects is often not even understood by many medical and psychological clinicians.. Prior to 1988 it was not even thought that babies registered the truth of their inner visceral treatment or felt any pain. Surgeries were often conducted with no anaesthesia and the experience of the baby to this was pain, panic, freezing and helplessness (all locked in due to the inability to move or escape).

The following symptoms all characterize the results we can bear as a result of developing the Connection Survival Style of reaction to trauma, pain or neglect.

A sense of constant threat

High arousal

A thwarted fight response

Freeze-dissociation

Numbing, splitting, fragmentation.

Acting in and acting out of aggression

Diminished aliveness.

As adults all of our energy goes into trying to manage these symptoms, we experience ongoing anxiety and a sense of feeling unsafe and under threat.. Dissociative responses make us disconnect more.. We may seek escape in fantasy or films, or through flights of fantasy into an imaginary world. Our capacity for self regulation suffers.. Life becomes more and more narrow as a result.. We experience diminished feelings of aliveness but sensitivity does still remain locked up deep inside of us.. Our bodies become braced and tight and our capacity to move also becomes more and more limited. Shame often results too, as lacking knowledge of what was AT THE TIME OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTROL we may shame and blame ourselves or be shamed and blamed by society.. Gabor Mate in his work with addicts highlighted this issues.. Often the addict or alcoholic is scapegoated by seeking a destructive solution to a far far far earlier wound, deficit, injury, neglect or trauma.