Brain Healing and Trauma How Dark Psychology is Highly Effective in Treating Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse

By Brittany Forrester

Approximately 50 percent of the population will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. While reactions to trauma can vary widely, and not everyone will develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD), trauma can change the brain in some predictable ways. With increased awareness, you can seek treatment to address your symptoms and learn skills that could actually rewire your brain for recovery. Knowing what's going on can be immensely helpful because it may help you realize that you're not crazy, irreversibly damaged, or a bad person. Instead, you can think of a traumatized brain as one that functions differently due to traumatic events. And just as your brain changed in response to your past experiences with the world, it can also change in response to your future experiences. In other words, the brain is "plastic," and you can change it.

The depth or imaginal psychotherapy is highly effective in treating and assessing adult survivors of childhood abuse. Specifically, interventions that use dreams, symbols, metaphor, and expressive art techniques are deemed especially valuable as they address dissociatively based changes (affect regulation, sense of self, and diminished imagination).

Specifically, this book proposes that prominent symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (which will be further referred to as PTSD), such as changes in affect regulation, sense of self, and use of imagination, are better neurologically matched to therapeutic interventions that foster right-brain processes.

An assessment tool, the Imaginal Sense of Self and Affect Test (which will be further referred to as the ISSA8 Test), has been developed to evaluate the underlying intrapsychic changes causing these symptoms and give an enhanced understanding of the trauma-afflicted client, despite her inability to express such insights. By assessing specific depth psychological aspects of the individual's shattered sense of self, a more focused and efficient treatment plan can be created sooner in the course of therapy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: vincenzo nappi
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201681746

Book preview

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Origin

The aim of this book is that depth or imaginal psychotherapy is highly effective in assessing and treating adult survivors of childhood abuse or severe neglect. Specifically, this book proposes that prominent symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, such as changes in affect regulation, sense of self, and use of imagination are better neurologically matched to therapeutic interventions that foster right-brain processes. An assessment tool, the Imaginal Sense of Self and Affect Test (which will be further referred to as the ISSA8 Test), has been developed which evaluates the underlying intrapsychic changes causing these symptoms and gives an enhanced understanding of the trauma-afflicted client, despite her inability to express such insights.

By assessing specific depth psychological aspects of the individual’s shattered sense of self, a more focused and efficient treatment plan can be created sooner in the course of therapy.

The prevalence of any type of trauma occurring in any person’s lifetime has been reported to be as high as 90%, with 38% of the population experiencing assaultive violence (combat, rape, mugging, badly beaten), 28% experiencing a serious car crash, 29% witnessing the killing or serious injury of someone, 60% experiencing the sudden death of a loved one, and 63% experiencing trauma by listening to someone else talk about their traumatic experience. In the United States, The Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), defines child abuse and neglect as any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families in 2019, approximately 905,000 children in the United States were determined to be victims of abuse or neglect; among the children confirmed as victims, those in the age group of birth to one year had the highest rate of victimization at 24.4 per 1,000 children. Of all victims, 64.1% suffered neglect, 16.0% suffered physical abuse, 8.8% suffered sexual abuse, and 6.6% suffered from emotional maltreatment.

PTSD generally afflicts people with a reduced quality of life due to intrusive symptoms, which restrict their ability to function. Epidemiologists found that 15%-16% of the general adult population admitted to some posttraumatic symptoms. Although not enough symptoms are evident in most cases in these studies to make the full diagnosis of PTSD, there are enough solitary or coupled post-traumatic findings in these ‘healthy’ adult populations to have caused some concern. Individuals may not be receiving necessary services and treatment because their often-unobtrusive symptoms are not being identified by mental health, social, and other front-line workers. At other times, presenting issues of economic distress, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, relationship difficulties, homelessness, and medical problems disguise the underlying cause of these issues.

Depth psychologist Carl G. Jung noted that the enduring emotional impact of childhood trauma remains hidden all along from the patient, so that not reaching consciousness, the emotion never wears itself out, it is never used up.

He added that as a result of some psychic upheaval whole tracts of our being can plunge back into the unconscious and vanish from the surface for years and decades causing disturbances known technically as phenomena of dissociation, and are indicative of psychic split.

Dissociation is a significant symptom of trauma. The curse of dissociation condemns the state of self who experienced the abuse to a trapped existence in the inner world of the survivor, a place dominated by terror, impotent but seething rage, and grief for which there are no words.

Indeed, the cumulative, long-term, and powerful effects of traumatic childhood events are likely to be invisible to health care providers, educators, social service organizations, and policymakers because the linkage between cause and effect is concealed by the time and the inability to ‘see’ the process of neurodevelopment. The dearth of education and training of health and mental health practitioners obscures the identification of medical symptoms versus those which are mental symptoms of PTSD. Thus, practitioners often don’t ask or are unaware that these symptoms may or are most likely due to past trauma or traumas. The ISSA8 Test presented in this book provides an improved ability to identify the invasive and often invisible dissociatively related symptoms in clients.

Much of the research or interventions dealing with play and expressive arts are directed at treating traumatized children. A shortage of material that addresses the practical use of depth psychology with adult survivors was found, with no research conducted which showed the effectiveness of such treatment or the incorporation of depth psychology into an assessment appropriate for trauma-affected clients.

From a neurological perspective, much research has been done which shows specific changes in the