Has anyone seen this video posted on the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICAMB) blog?
"According to Dr. Ruth Lanius, a parent's experience of trauma can impact their ability to form a close, intimate relationship with their child." Ruth Buczynski, PhD
Those of us Parenting with ACEs sure know that's the truth. Developmental trauma impacts our ability to form close and intimate relationships with ourselves, other adults and our children.
The video was released two days ago. It has over 100 comments and 4000 plus views. It's an important topic. It's great that so many of us are watching, sharing and commenting.
It's not all easy viewing though.
It's hard to hear how those of us with a history of trauma might be reacting more or less to our infants, especially when we are in dissociative states. But I can't say it doesn't make sense. It does. It rings true.
We know we can feel fear and/or shut down or alternate between both.
What those of us parenting with ACEs can do to improve our parenting, ourselves and our relationships isn't discussed. It's more about parents than it is by or for parents. The voice of parents with a trauma history is missing entirely.
I hope there is at least one follow-up video in the works with and for parents.
It's essential that the very parents being spoken of be included in some portion of these conversations and that it happen outside of a clinical setting when it's patient and provider and is, instead, peer to peer.
Our parenting rarely takes place in clinical settings. No matter how good or bad our therapy relationships, work or alliances, it's what happens when we leave that most matters for our kids.
We are living experts and can offer a lot. . We can say what most helps parents most, what doesn't, and what we need in order to more present, less reactive and to guide healthy attachments.
Plus, we can support each other and give feedback. We can converse, counter, cushion or contextualize statements such as the following made by Dr. Lanius in this video:
"What we've seen in our adult patients with a chronic history of childhood trauma is that their network (default mode network) actually looks like the network of seven- to nine- year- old children. So, of course, the question arises, is their a developmental arrest that is related to trauma? And I think really important studies that will need to be done in the future is really track these infants and children over time and compare different groups... groups of infants that have had secure attachments, groups of infants that haven't had a secure attachment, and infants that have had different types of attachments plus different forms of abuse so we can figure out you know how much attachment is playing a role here and how is it interacting with different types of abuse. But I think it's really interesting to look at how the brain develops over time and how our adult patients may be suffering from sort of a developmental arrest because of their trauma that occurred at crucial developmental periods."
Ouch. Yikes.
Did I just hear that those of us Parenting with ACEs have just been described as developmentally delayed, at least in part?
I think so. I'm not quite sure how to respond to that.
I understand how important research can be. In fact, I'm reading two books with the name of Ruth Lanius on them right now. The first, Healing the Traumatized Self: Consciousness, Neuroscience, Treatment and the second, The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic. Ruth Lanius co-wrote the first with Paul Frewen and edited the second with Eric Vermetten and Clare Pain. One can't read much on developmental trauma without seeing the name Ruth Lanius. She's a powerhouse.
But the parent and trauma survivor in me wants to know how much more we really need to parse out precisely how bad bad is when it comes to abuse? How much worse childhood, adulthood and parent-bonding are with and without a secure attachment? I bet most of us, even without a degree can guess that attachment helps bad be less bad and attachment without abuse is even better.
Isn't the ACE study enough to help show that the cumulative impact of adversity isn't good and that the distinction between types of trauma, whether neglect, abuse or household dysfunction aren't all that important to kids and families?
Isn't it less important to study the impact of each type of abuse and how it relates to attachment than it is to support secure attachment forming as much as possible and to prevent neglect, abuse and household dysfunction?
I get that knowing some of this research helps therapists know which treatments are most effective but don't we have a whole lot of research already?
Maybe we need new research inquiries and methods, as well.
Could research be done with parents and kids and not on or to us? Could researchers partner with parents to figure out which supports are needed at home, before school, in the middle of the night or while managing crisis and a commute?
Aren't we all interested in having healthy, happy families, and futures? Don't we want that most in the places where we live and spend most of our time as well as in a clinical setting or therapeutic hour?
I hope parents are supported more and studied less so we can work together to help our children as well as ourselves as we heal from childhood trauma.
We can learn together and from one another. We all have areas of expertise, even if some of us have the default network or a 7-year-old while others have the network of a 70-year old.
I've posted a comment over at NICAMB to let the professionals know about the Parenting with ACEs group. I hope we can be a place where parents can share tools, resources, stories and support and where professionals can do the same.
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