For 15 months I have been teaching a crisis prevention course with a focus in being informed in the impact of trauma on a person's behavior. Trauma can be defined simply as any expreience or experiences that were too much for a person's emotional resources to handle. The experience(s) color the way the person sees the world, usually as an unsafe world. This may be a one time event like a motor vehicle accident from which one recovers, an event that is usually resolved as time passes. If, however, that accident leaves a person with a permanent injury that changes their life, that often brings ongoing grief and depression.
Probably the worst trauma to resolve is that trauma caused by the very person who should be taking care of you. A parent who abuses or neglects a child leaves the child with a fear of caregivers. I see this all the time in mental health work, especially in adolescent psychiatry. I was a foster parent to about ten abused and/or neglected preschool children (I didn't have them all at once!). Trusting me as an adult figure was a challenge. One little girl who had been hurt numerous times by her teenage mother took four months to trust me to bathe her and dress her. In those four months, my little five year old daughter did those tasks as I stood by coaching. Eventually we saw faint smiles, then giggles showing us all she felt safe with us as a caring family.
The very system that is supposed to be treating the person with mental illness is often not offering opportunity for learning self regulation and safe connections. The doors are locked, the schedule is set by others, and there is little room made for self expression. Groups are a wonderful venue for expression but often run by people with little understanding of person centered care. We need to see the person as a person who has survived, who has learned through his experiences, and who has many untapped strengths. When I run a group I don't look at the diagnoses first. I want to meet each person without a label. It frees me up to 'see' the person.
