Treating the Scars of Abandonment: How to Work with the Enduring Impact
with Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Janina Fisher, PhD; Karlen Lyons-Ruth, PhD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Martin Teicher, MD, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Usha Tummala-Narra, PhD; Eboni Webb, PsyD; Martin Bohus, PhD; Megan Schmidt, PsyD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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I am not a professional therapist, and I am a person seeking therapist and healing. In my search and journey for healing, it has been super hard to find a good therapist that I can be with over the course of past over 15 years. And that drives me as well as Forces me to study healing of all kinds myself. I have had abandonment issues plus many other types of trauma in early age. I definitely can Validate through my personal experiences what Janina said about When treating the fear of abandonment, to ask a client go directly to the Compassionate mode is just not possible without being understood how deeply painful to despair these parts felt in a person, as well as the extreme amount of fear all got triggered. It is like not being in tune with what a person’s internal experiences with its sensations and feelings to prescribe a healing medicine modality or suggestion. That won’t work. Finally, I started to hear the validation of being understood of the abandonment in both early age as well as the social cultural related experiences of abandonment. As an immigrant, I have experience so much despair not being understood. People would try to use their experiences that they came to California from Connecticut or Ohio’ small town to tell me that they understood me how I have felt the isolation as an immigrant ! They had no idea what I have experienced on the social cultural context of abandonment feeling. I appreciate NICABM’s professional work from all the therapist and researchers, and Your willingness to explore with Your clients and open minded to discoveries continually! Your work and presentations are truly deserve to be applauded! Often most of the hurt I experienced are from therapists, teachers and healers who consider themselves they know it all state. They failed to listen and discover with client when the client’s experiences is not what they expected.
Thank you all, especially Ruth moderator. This information is helpful to me personally, also for friends in need and for my consultancy where I try to help individuals achieve their best states of being in order to be more productive on the job. I attended City University NYC with the intention of obtaining my Phd in Psychology, but the murders of my siblings and the resultant disruption of my family in Jamaica put an end to that.
Having myself suffered trauma in childhood and worked through it on my own, I am constantly observing people and understanding their traumas.
Thanks again,
Jennifer Stephenson-Bent
The dual responses of hyperarousal ( cry for help) and hypoarousal ( preparing for death) in the abandoned infant were very familiar and good to have identified however there is little mention in these seminars of the somatic symptoms so prevalent in complex trauma from infantile neglect/ abandonment/abuse. In my experience they may be the most significant presenting symptoms eg dysautonomia , IBS, CFS, etc
The frustrating thing is that it takes over 20 years from the time these new findings and modalities are discovered until they make it into the practicing community.