I totally agree. I was once in the camp that believed mental disorders/traumas could never manifest themselves in real, significant, physical ways. Currently, I work in juvenile dependency law (which I bring up often in comments... as it shapes my world view... a lot) where I represent our State Child Welfare Department when they intervene/work with families when parents are struggling to appropriately parent. We often work with children that have been sexually/physically/emotionally abused. These children will go in to foster care and their parents will engaged in services to address their lack of parenting skills. The parents will also, generally, have limited visitation with their children. Often, again, these children have severe issues: encopresis, extreme weight gain/loss, lack of social skills, lashing out at peers and adults for no reason, hyper-sexualized behaviors, etc... While in foster care, these behaviors often decrease significantly. Then, out of the blue, after one visit with a parent, the children see all of their issues re-arise and they completely decompensate for days or weeks or months. It is horrific to watch.
The point being, I imagine this same thing happens with adults. And I think we, as a society, do a horrible job realizing how deep trauma can run and how it can manifest itself. For children everyone accepts it as normal, but for adults the perspecitive seems to be exactly as you state it is. And this is just wrong.
It sure does make sense. Thanks for sharing your observations.
If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend looking up Gabor Maté; he's written several books and has plenty of talks/interviews on YouTube, and at least a couple of threads here on HN I think.
He’s a Canada-based physician who has spent his career researching and writing/speaking about this whole topic.
The world needs to pay a lot more attention to people like him IMO.
> The point being, I imagine this same thing happens with adults. And I think we, as a society, do a horrible job realizing how deep trauma can run and how it can manifest itself.
Uncertainty is scary. That is why trauma victims are placed in boxes, but it is wrong to do.
We have celebrated people who persevere and overcome their circumstances and we must continue to do so. We must give the gift of believe and faith to people who exist through circumstances that are destructive to the development of faith, belief, and trust.
Any victim has the potential to do that if their environment is supportive to providing that. It always depends on surroundings and belief of everyone. Everyone matters.
The point being, I imagine this same thing happens with adults. And I think we, as a society, do a horrible job realizing how deep trauma can run and how it can manifest itself. For children everyone accepts it as normal, but for adults the perspecitive seems to be exactly as you state it is. And this is just wrong.
If that makes sense.