What counts as trauma in childhood and adolescence and why is considered trauma? Trauma is an experience, not an event. When does a child’s experience become a trauma? And what is the difference between experience leading to trauma and experience leading to healthy growth? Our reports contain information relevant to answering these questions. We wonder what you would say.
Children grow and change in the context of their experiences, most especially experiences in their relationships with parents and other important figures. Children all have difficult, painful, and frightening experiences, but not all such experiences become traumatic. Difficult experience that overwhelms, that the child cannot manage can turn into traumas. This happens if, for example, the child is left alone with their experience, which itself is experienced as a kind of punishment, or if they are shamed and punished because of their emotional reaction. In these cases, the child does not have the opportunity to discharge disturbing states in the context of a safe relationship. Then the child has to made an adaptation based on using their own resources to manage; this leaves chronic tensions; the emotional experience is not discharged; and the child necessarily will “adapt” in such a way as to contain pain and fear. Adaptations of this sort require energy and the formation of defensive structures at all levels of the person. The resources for healthy development are diminished, impairing development.