This week I spent time with other child advocates learning about children who endure complex trauma. Trauma is considered complex when abuse or witnessing abuse happens more than once. For years, expert therapists have tried to give effects of long term abuse and violence a term for better research and understanding. Post Tramadic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was often the closest way to explain the effects of serial abuse, violence and stress on a child. But to diagnose someone with PTSD, they must "fit in," to certain specific categories and sub categories. Children are not mature enough or developed enough to be properly diagnosed with PTSD although the effects are similar.
We learned what takes place biologically in and to a child's brain development when there is compex trauma. Their brains tend to shut down to preserve itself. The brain goes into survival mode, which means when a child is being abused or is witness to violence again and again, their brain shuts down development while it is in survival mode. There are several therapies to help children overcome the emotional and physical fall out of abuse and neglect. The therapist we worked with has been helping children for 30 years now. She said in spite of the horrific acts some of these young ones have lived through from family members, they always want to go back to to those abusers. Every time. As heart breaking as it is, the innate need to belong and to be loved and to be with their abusers is so strong, they almost always want to go back home, even if it is unsafe.
