It’s well known that to reduce or eliminate the negative effects of trauma, the trauma must be expressed and shared with safe recipients. When no outlets for such sharing exist, the trauma becomes fixed, its adverse impacts indefinitely sustained.
Ordinarily, children communicate their trauma to their parents. But if these parents were the ones causing the trauma, such sharing is hardly viable. Consequently, it must be held in—or internalized. That’s precisely why it can be so long-lasting and engender so much developmental damage. The psychic damage to the child will be sustained unless substantial intervention is carried out.
The nature of the early trauma doesn’t by itself determine its long-term effect. It could involve any of the various forms of abuse, including emotional, physical, or sexual abuse—and certainly neglect, which might be even worse than physical harm because it’s tantamount to abandonment, being forsaken by the two people the child is most dependent on.
Moreover, the child’s mere exposure to domestic violence can traumatize them. For such extreme intensity in the home can gravely threaten their sense of security and stability.
The long-term effects of trauma are closely linked to the child’s inability to disclose these terrible experiences to their caretakers. So the healing that such sharing might foster is blocked and cannot take place.
There are actually multiple reasons why children may remain silent about their abuse. They may, for instance:
- Lack the vocabulary or understanding to effectively put into words the entirety of their experience.
- Fear that their experience won’t be believed.
- Fear being retaliated against if they share their experience.
- Lack the maturity to comprehend and express the complexity of their emotions.
As a result of their silence, their worrisome emotions can’t get processed, which, by default, leads them to act them out behaviorally or develop impediments to their mental health.
To be more specific in explaining this phenomenon, when openness feels untenable, the harmful psychological mechanisms in operation are:
Repression: However unconsciously, the child feels obliged to push painful memories out of conscious awareness, although they’ll still be experienced at a deeper (but less accessible) level.
Internalization: Lacking any viable outlet for such expression, feelings of guilt or shame associated with the trauma will be kept “safely” inside.
Attachment Issues: The secure attachment to their caregivers, fundamental to developing feelings of relational security, will not evolve normally, which inevitably can create barriers and all sorts of difficulties in future relationships.
Longer-term they’ll be more vulnerable to constrictive anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, and problems in forming, and sustaining, healthy relationships.
Although they typically require professional intervention, effective remedies for these conditions are available.
Simply having children let out their feelings in a safe environment can ameliorate or eliminate these distressful feelings.
Play therapy and art therapy can allow them to communicate their experiences non-verbally when they’re struggling to express them directly. These alternative modalities offer them the opportunity to disclose, in the least threatening way possible, what they so badly need to release. For to get beyond—and heal—their damaging experiences, they must be divulged.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
© 2014 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.