Mental Health/psychology Thread

@trodgers @John3:16 have either of you considered divorcing? My parents are divorced, and it was probably the worst thing that happened during my childhood (that and my Dad leaving for 3 months to do military service). Divorce is obviously tough on kids, but I'm thinking if a couple stays together for the kids and they are always fighting, that it might be worse. Thoughts?

 

I also think that defining trauma is a very interesting discussion. According to @Punk-101,

How do we define trauma? Perhaps most obvious is physical abuse.

Other definitions I'm finding online:

Okay, somewhat obvious. Let's go deeper.

Okay, more...

These all make sense to me. How serious does "trauma" or a "wound" have to be to negatively affect a child? Is it possible to have very light trauma, in which one might not even realize the experience is traumatic, that leads to future struggles or insecurities? For example, why do you think so many girls feel the need to put makeup on every morning? Is this a psychological disorder, from very light trauma that might go unnoticed?

 

I like the last definition you quoted. Trauma varies from person to person and occurs on a spectrum, consisting of anything that overwhelms our stress response system's ability to cope. "Trauma happens when any experience stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected from our bodies. Any coping mechanisms we may have had are undermined, and we feel utterly helpless and hopeless." - Peter Levine.

Helplessness is a vital ingredient in whether the body perceives a threat to be stored as trauma or not. Not being able to fight back or get away from a physical or emotional threat undermines the body's fight or flight response and triggers the freeze response, or the need to dissociate from the pain and prepare the body for a painless death. It's an evolutionary mechanism. Dissociation is very harmful on one's psychology. When a stressor is so great that the mind checks out, the mind starts creating ways of understanding what just happened. This is where we get multiple personality disorder (the actual definition is dissociative identity disorder) and IMO, psychoses like schizophrenia.

Something very crucial to understand is that "trauma" is not a memory of a stressful event. Memories are of course a symptom of trauma, but not trauma itself. "Trauma" is the PHYSIOLOGICAL change that occurs in the brain in response to an overwhelming stressor that the body couldn't cope with. The brain's stress response system rewires itself to respond to the trauma to be more or less sensitive to stress, more alert, less alert, all sort of stuff. If the trauma was a one time thing and there is support from family, then healing can occur and the brain rewires itself in response to the love to hopefully go back to close to normal. My favorite definition of trauma comes from Bessel Van Der Kolk: "Trauma is the body continuing to fight the unseen enemy."

I can't find the quotes right now, but they're from Allan Schore and Bruce perry, and they go something like this: "The most wounding experiences that lead to trauma come from negative experiences in the attachment relationships." and "The strongest predictor for resolution and resiliency from a traumatic experience is the presence of loving and supportive attachment relationships."

I think there are forms of "light trauma" that result in us growing up and doing things to try to cope with it. For example, is a child had loving and nurturing parents that also happened to have very high expectations of the child and be critical and shaming when the child made mistakes, the child will probably be psychologically "normal" in most areas, but in his/her closest relationships, all of that internalized shame, frustration, and hurt will come out after years of hiding it away, being helpless, because the child cannot let it out on the parents. It will come out on the spouse and those closest to that person. The person will be very argumentative, critical, and never admit fault. They will re-enact what was done to them onto others. Trauma reenactment is very common. Victimized children commonly victimize other children and adults who were exposed to abuse or DV as children grow up to marry abusers. Our unconscious drives us to seek resolution of past trauma, and to seek the familiar. "The human brain prefers the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty." - Bruce Perry

I'm not sure how trauma may drive girls to need to put on makeup every morning. It is certainly possible that they have experienced emotional trauma in the form of shaming parents and they have come to feel "good" by looking good. I think there is also societal shaming in the form of media and advertising that makes girls feel as though their value is in their beauty, so they feel compulsed to maintain that feeling of value.

These are my favorite books on trauma:
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by Bruce Perry
Trauma Through a Child's Eyes, By Peter Levine
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, by Allan Schore
(I haven't read these last two yet, but they look great and im familiar with their work) Google or youtube all of these guys if you're interested.

 

Punk, I know you say your specificity is with working with children. Would this include Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA's) too?

 

I don't work with any adults as my actual clients, but I spend as lot of time with the parents of the children I treat, and many of them are ACOAs. Why do you ask?

 

I ask because of my girlfriend. She has some major psychological issues because of her alcoholic Dad. There is a lot more to it than that, but I won't make you read a post as long as a book ... A big part of it is that she can't get help because of where she is in her life. I guess I just want to know how I can help her. I know I am not a professional, and I have read some literature, but I love her and am scheduled to move in with her in January, yet I feel like she is just going through too much. If there is anything I can do to lessen the burden if you will, I'd do it.

 

I agree with John. If she has psychological issues, she needs professional help. Maybe there is some advice that we can give you to help her/you in those moments.

Without going into great detail, what things did her dad do (beat up mom, physically abusive to her/sibs, sexually abusive, verbally/emotionally abusive)?

What are your girlfriend's psychological issues/symptoms and what triggers them?

 

physically abusive to her Mom, they've had their fist fights too. Heavily verbally and emotionally abusive. I was there in the aftermath of when he said that he didn't have a daughter because she was moving away for her PhD.

I have pushed her to get professional help, but considering she just started her PhD and is making that transition she doesn't think she could handle it at this time.

Her triggers? Without sounding mean or cruel, pretty much anything. If I tell her, that I will do something (but we don't set a day/time) and a few days go by ... she thinks that I don't care about what she wants and it "hurts her to her very core" because that is what her Dad would do ... say that he would do something, get drunk, and then not do it or just get pissed off and go off on her and not do what he promised. I've learned to not promise or to say that I will do anything because if I forget or plan it too late in advance she'll get hurt. Asking for confirmation of what we are doing is a trigger. Not getting things done is a trigger, being optimistic and idealistic, doing things for her ... instead of with her ... all these tie back to her Dad in one way or another. She hasn't explained them all to me but I know in one way or another they are because of him.

 

Dang man, that's a really tough situation. I'm sorry to hear it. Unfortunately, all of her childhood fear, sadness, and anger towards her father that she had to keep inside at the time as a little girl is all going to get displaced onto her closest male relationship...you. It's not a healthy relationship for you or her. She NEEDS to be in therapy. It won't be in the way of her PhD. That 1hr/week will be time well spent because it will actually make the rest of her life easier. I'd almost make therapy an ultimatum for your relationship. Does she have insight and understand that the way she is and the way she treats you are really just displaced daddy trauma issues or is everything "your fault"?

There's really nothing you can do by yourself to make things better. All you can do is be the guy her dad wasn't no matter what. "Love me the most when I deserve it the least, because that is when I need it the most" is going to be your motto with her. When she acts the way she does, that's what she's really trying to say to you. Her template for what a man is is her father. Our brains unconsciously seek out and create familiarity, meaning: she unconsciously is trying to push and push you until you act like her father, confirming her template and returning to some familiarity.

 

Honestly, at times she does. There has been times she has hurt me pretty bad and she realizes it then. She apologizes, and I forgive her because I would never hold that against her. I would say 9 out of 10 times, and perhaps even more than that, things are my fault in her eyes.

I do love her no matter what even when she is at her worst. I am a month and a half away from moving out with her but after knowing her for a year I am feeling less and less confident. The times are the best of my life when things are good, but often she can be a walking contradiction and its often like navigating a mine field even knowing many of her triggers. Maybe its the way she has been lately, and life for me in general lately, but I just feel like our relatinoship is doomed. She deserves someone to love her unconditionally ... and I do. I fell for her and while I know I have no responsibility to bear a "burden" I feel that all other guys would have given up on her within a few weeks into the relationship. She loved me at one point but because of everything she doesn't know if she does anymore ... I still love her and I have given her everything I have ... my heart and my soul. So I have no choice but to move out there and give this a real shot.

 

You're a good man, dude. Things are gonna be extremely tough for you guys. She needs to be in therapy. Good luck!

 

What do you all think about psychiatry?

 

I personally don't support it in most, if not all, cases. I think that drugs (alcohol, weed, more extreme drugs, anti-depressants) are all temporary fixes to issues we face. I actually think it's pretty disgusting that we're in this culture where we have doctors prescribing mind-altering drugs to help people's psychological issues. Drugs are only temporary fixes to get your mind off the situation. If you're struggling with a mental issue, I think you need to actually face the issue 100% to overcome it.

 

I strongly agree with your approach to the issue of psychotropic meds, but not quite to that extreme. Masking symptoms is all psychiatry seems to be concerned with. They go to school far longer than I, yet I routinely talk circles around them in understanding the "why" of the symptoms. Most psychiatrists are clueless in their understanding of how and why clients get to function the way they do. They see mental illness in the medical model, not through the lens of the many intricate biopsychosocial variables in each individual's life.

Where I do support psychotropic meds is in two areas:
1. As a temporary crutch to numb the symptoms enough to work through some things in therapy while building social supports. Facing something 100% isn't a good idea. Our stress response system has a threshold, and once crossed, we go into survival mode and aren't ourselves, and can't make progress in therapy. We need to face 100% of our problems eventually, but at the right pace. Maybe you meant the later.
2. To treat severe psychosis. An actively psychotic person cannot make progress in therapy without medication. If there are voices telling that person to run into traffic every 5 minutes, he needs some meds to make the voices go away so he can work through some things in therapy.