Developmental Trauma, Defined:

Often when we think of trauma, the first definition we recall is that of shock trauma. Shock trauma refers to a specific disruptive and distressing incident or incidents which cause the individual to become highly activated in a fear response. The individual can become stuck in this fear response when similar events or reminders show up later in life. Commonly, individuals who experience shock trauma are clinically organized under a diagnosis called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Those who experience developmental trauma, on the other hand, may not have a single traumatizing event they can point to, but ongoing experiences which occurred during their childhood and adolescence.

Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre state that,

“developmental trauma causes ongoing autonomic activation that forms chronic patterns that lead to physiological and psychological developmental deficits. In developmental trauma – which can include specific shock traumas at an early age, profound ongoing misattunement, such as attachment trauma, as well as ongoing abuse and/or neglect - the physiological response may be similar to that in shock trauma, but the dynamics of the trauma itself are quite different.” 

Because developmental trauma is relational in focus, it creates difficulty with both being with yourself and being with others. If you’ve experienced developmental trauma, you may have challenges with self-regulation and forming connected, healthy relationships with others. 

Impact

When you think about experiencing a threat, you may think about the fight, flight, or freeze response. You may think that you would engage in one of those three responses and then the threat will eventually be resolved.

Developmental trauma can be especially difficult, because the threat is always present and so the shock, attachment trauma, misattunement, etc always persists. Your body and mind never get to turn off from being so highly activated. That level of high arousal in your nervous system simply becomes the baseline. Biologically the body cannot tolerate this state forever, so Laurence Heller and LaPierre state that “locked in perpetual, painful high arousal, the only alternative, the fallback position, is to go into a freeze state, which infants and small children accomplish by numbing themselves.” So individuals commonly experience hypervigilance and then disconnection / dissociation.

Individuals who experienced developmental trauma may experience: 

• Disconnection between mind and body

• Difficulty identifying their feelings and internal experience

• Experiences of dissociation

• Unstable sense of self

• Difficulty relaxing

• Preference of withdrawing from others 

• Challenges developing healthy relationships and attachments with others

Healing 

It is important to first normalize the fact that developmental trauma exists. Without specific events to point to, it can be harder for someone to understand what they’ve endured or even consider it trauma. Being able to name an ongoing experience as developmental trauma has power. It allows the individual to depersonalize. They can start to tell their own narrative. They can begin to create some integration of “this happened to me” rather than simply believing something was wrong with them. 

Without integrating a traumatic experience, it is difficult to move beyond the stuck place. Individuals with unprocessed trauma can repeat unfulfilling relationships and continue to self-abandon. It is important for the individual to develop a coherent story of what happened to them and also develop awareness of what happened somatically. How did their body react when this trauma was occurring? How does it continue to respond to similar situations now? Creating this sort of mindfulness helps to build insight, eventually restore the mind-body connection, and increase the individual’s capacity for having relationships with themselves and others.

Recommended Read: Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship by Laurence Heller, PhD and Aline LaPierre PsyD.