No Trust, No Development

Children of Trauma
by Jane Middelton-Moz, Ph.D.

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The energy a child expends to protect the self from frequent trauma, however, is energy that cannot be expended in normal child development. Basic trust in the security and continuity of the emotional and physical world are key to the development of a sense of positive identity and self-esteem.

Masterson (1985) talks about several elements that are present in a healthy real self. Among them are, "The ability to experience emotions deeply with liveliness, joy, vigor, excitement and spontaneity. . . the capacity to identify one's unique wishes and to use autonomous initiative and assertion to express them in reality . . . the capacity to limit, minimize and soothe painful emotions . . . the capacity to express the self fully in close relationships with minimal anxiety about abandonment or engulfment."

These capacities are sorely missing in adults who experienced regular unresolved traumas in their families. Or because of their parents' own traumatic childhoods, these children were not helped to resolve the traumas present in losses or in their ventures out into the world of school and community.

A child learns the trust and security of the world (through the unconditional love and nurturing of parents) in the initial weeks and months of life. This love extends beyond being fed and clothed. It is the warmth of the mother's body when being fed, the loving remarks and smiles of the parent when diapers are changed. Also involved is the early protective shield of the parents' holding the child. A sense of security develops also in the knowledge gained through repetition that although the parents may not always be right there every minute, they will return. In later months and years, while the child is building a sense of self, the parent's acknowledgment, praise, confidence, support, encouragement and comforting will be internalized by the child. This helps the child develop her or his own ability to express confidence in self, to self-praise for accomplishments, to self-encourage when confused and to self-soothe when disappointed. The parent's consistency and limits will be internalized as the child's self-discipline and self-control. The parent's positive attention to, and encouragement for the unique person the child is becoming, is positively internalized in the creation of the child's own sense of self and heightened self-esteem.

Children Of Trauma Of Children Of Trauma

Children of trauma are most frequently parented by individuals who experienced trauma that was never resolved. A child's first steps, when met with encouragement, cause the child to make greater steps forward. Children who experience disdain and judgment will be critical of themselves. If the parent shows anxiety and fear, the child will be unsure and tenuous or will take inordinate risks as a defense against fear. If the child's needs are rejected (as in the case of Sandy), the child will learn to show disdain for her own needs. This child leaps into expected responsibility of the pseudo-adult world with little or no foundation in reality. Typecast into a role and unable to live outside the world of the theater this child excels at memorizing lines and remains dependent on the cues of various "directors."

Some children, like Jimmy, learn that normal childlike existence is a threat to the security of others. They learn that normal emotions are like weapons that can actually endanger the foundations of their parents' lives. With this internalized sense of self, they are equipped only to live out their identities as "bad apples," to become the alcoholic or"slut" their mother sees in them, abuse themselves for the contempt the parent shows or to turn the parent's anger on themselves, being afraid that to express it would create danger to others and to their sense of security. They may keep testing their environment to finally secure punishment for overpowering "crimes," committed before the age of five.

Children live out what they see reflected in their parents' eyes or in the eyes of others in their community. If what is reflected is the disdain and unacceptability of their developing self, that self will be discarded in order to meet the image in the reflective mirror of their world. The wall of internal defenses keeps their true self in check, a wall created by stimuli too great for an unprepared ego to endure. Children of trauma live in environments that stimulate emotions and simultaneously block their release. When the defensive wall is relaxed, as is the case of a soldier with no more wars, a workaholic without a job or a caretaker without someone to care for, what is seen is the original panic of the frightened child.

In her book, The Ego and the Mechanism of Defense: Vol. II, (1966), Anna Freud writes:

"That the ego's defensive system acts as a protection against traumatization becomes evident whenever an individual is prevented from using a habitual defense in a situation that represents a specific danger for him. This can be seen most clearly in cases of denial or of phobic avoidance . . . The phobic individual, who is forced to meet the object of her/his anxiety instead of avoiding it, is thereby forced undefended into a traumatic situation and breaks down in panic; so does the individual who has warded off a painful reality fact by denial (impending blindness, cancer, threatening loss of a loved one) and is forced to take cognizance of it against her/his own intentions."

The Trauma Of Minorities

The trauma faced by Danny is of a much subtler type, but the accumulation of such incidents over time can be equally as devastating to a child's self-concept. The trauma in this case is the continual erosion of self-esteem faced by ethnic and cultural minorities in a world where they are seen as lesser than others. The belief may develop early in these children's lives that their families lack power in the majority culture. Cultural and ethnic self-hate leads to a sense, deep in the core of the self, that "there is nothing I can do to make up for the lacking in myself and the awareness that I am deeply and profoundly unlovable."

This shame is frequently multigenerational. The child not only receives continual cues of his lack of power and lovability from the real world outside the family but may also feel it deeply from his parents whenever they have contact with the broader community. Although the child may pick up subtle cues from toys, books and television, he becomes most acutely aware of these differences when leaving the safety of home and entering school. He may be taunted, teased or merely recognize that the family left in the morning is very different than people encountered in the larger world.

As noted by child development expert Erik Erikson in Childhood and Society, 1950:

"For a child of immigrant parents there is often acute conflict between the desire to look up to his parents and the shame he feels for the exposure of their different ways and their uncertainty and unseemliness in a strange land. Estranged from both cultures he may manifest his own insecurity about where he belongs by over-zealousness in taking on the ways of the school and the neighborhood alien to his elders, and by impatience with their foreignness and slowness of adaption."

The exposure itself would not be as devastating to the child's developing sense of self if it were possible to discuss and explore feelings regarding early wounds with parents. Frequently, however, as may or may not be the case with Danny, the child picks up cues from the parents that they are themselves in pain and perhaps hurting and suffering more than he can ever presume to suffer. This feeling leads to the child's assuming a protective role reversal and a sense that nothing will ever make a difference. In many cases the child actually becomes a pseudo-adult ambassador for the parents to the strange and hostile world felt to exist outside the home. If a child feels that the parents suffer from irresolvable wounds to their own self-esteem, the child may also develop survival guilt. This guilt is likely to inhibit the child from experiencing a sense of success or joy beyond that of the parents. In contrast, some children tend to "identify with the aggressor" and develop a loathing for those like themselves as a defense against their own sense of powerlessness and self-loathing.

© 1996 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

Jane Middelton-Moz is a therapist who speaks internationally on the topics of multigenerational grief and trauma, and cultural and ethnic self-hate. She has over 20 years experience in community mental health work, including a position as clinical director of the largest mental health organization in western Washington. Jane Middleton-Moz has appeared on national radio and television shows, including Oprah. She is the author of After the Tears, Growing in the Shadows, Children of Trauma and Shame and Guilt.