Infancy trauma - any others can relate??

[Blueberry]

Infancy trauma here too. But I don't want to write it out this evening, don't feel up to it. It will be in other posts of mine or my Journals. Just saying - yup, it exists.

[Chart]

My mother once told me she prayed and prayed for a baby boy. She thought that because my father was abandoned by his father that having a son would change his violent behavior. I was conceived with the sole purpose to save my mother's marriage.

[Cascade]

Oh Chart, your words break my heart. 

First, please hear that you have every right to be alive, just for you.  You are your own person with your own soul and your own purpose in this life.

The more I learn about childhood abuse, the more I understand that many parents have children for the wrong reasons.  For example, my mother wanted to feel loved, so she birthed brand new human beings who would love her unconditionally.  For me, that love lasted about 40 years before I saw and truly felt what she had been doing to me with her neglect while also expecting me to fulfill her emotional needs.  When I was curious about why she left my father and asked her about it, she once told me she truly thought he would be a good father.  Then she realized he was still just a kid himself and wanted to be taken care of, too.  She never admitted to knowing about the sexual abuse he was inflicting upon me.

I can imagine that your own mother probably never expressed her guilt about her reasoning, once she saw the inevitability that having a son (or any child) wasn't going to change your father's behavior.  It sounds to me like her statement was as close as she could come to admitting the truth.  I say that not to excuse her, but in hopes of offering a perspective that might be helpful to YOU.  None of us deserved the abuse we experienced.  We are all here now, though, struggling to find meaning in this life for our own selves.

Reaching out with a warm hug,
   -Cascade 

[Chart]

Thank you cascade for your insightful reflections. They are pretty much spot on. I think we had a similar experience with our mothers. My mother has never seen the twistedness of her logic in bringing me into the world. This is just something that clearly has never crossed her mind. She, like your mother, used everyone around her to satisfy her emotional needs. She ate me whole emotionally my entire childhood. It was always her emotions that had the priority. If I wanted emotional support I knew I would have to give back twice as much as what I gave. No love at all, then having to pay for love was a horrible double whammy. This morning I looked myself in the mirror and told myself that I love me. Thank you for helping me and thank you for inspiring me to continue to try to heal.

[Chart]

Perhaps someone has information or feedback about this idea: Neurological development in principle begins at conception. Thus it stands to reason that trauma will have a different effect or outcome depending at which stage of neurological development the trauma begins. Trauma at age 30 will have certain differences compared to trauma at age 15. I think the earlier trauma begins in an individual, that is to say in-utero or very early infancy, the impact is significant regarding the stage that the brain is at in its development. I hope that made sense. I think in-utero trauma is very real, and it seems to make sense that this would impact many other aspects of the mind-body relationship. To be brief, it seems trauma also fits the description of a spectrum. And maybe that spectrum is amongst other things, dependent upon the neurological developmental stage of the individual when the trauma actually starts or happens.

[Blueberry]

Perhaps someone has information or feedback about this idea: Neurological development in principle begins at conception. Thus it stands to reason that trauma will have a different effect or outcome depending at which stage of neurological development the trauma begins. Trauma at age 30 will have certain differences compared to trauma at age 15. I think the earlier trauma begins in an individual, that is to say in-utero or very early infancy, the impact is significant regarding the stage that the brain is at in its development. 

  absolutely.

The earlier traumatisation takes place, the more of a cumulative bad effect it has on child development. Say you're traumatised at 3yo and dissociating half the time to survive, there's a lot of emotional and relational development that's going to pass you by. But both are very important building blocks for your continuing emotional and relational development! Also lots of us (maybe all of us) have all sorts of unhelpful habits and behaviour patterns we learnt and discovered in order to survive emotionally in our FOOs. They can be very deeply ingrained and it's a lot harder to catch up on all that emotional and relational development stuff and find behaviour patterns later as an adult during and around bouts in therapy. I know, I've been working on this stuff / being on the healing path for decades and I'm not the only one who's ever posted on the forum in that situation.

I hope all that made sense too!

I think in-utero trauma is very real, and it seems to make sense that this would impact many other aspects of the mind-body relationship.

Oh yes, it's real. I honestly don't know if there are any qualified/respected researchers of trauma who disagree on that, I really have no idea. If there were disagreers, I would say to them - a fetus can hear what's going on in the environment its mother is in, by the time a baby is born he/she knows their mother's voice. I know this through language development - the baby doesn't just recognise their mother's voice, he/she also recognises the language, their mother tongue so to speak. Doesn't understand cognitively but there's linguistic brain development going on in-utero. That baby can then also hear any raised, angry voices and other forms of violence I won't go into. Apparently when the baby is in-utero he/she is very attuned to the mother's moods and will absorb them, so if the mother is in a difficult or traumatising situation especially over time, the baby kind of absorbs that. Not to mention any physical harm the mother goes through - that obviously affects the baby in utero too.

I think in-utero trauma is very real, and it seems to make sense that this would impact many other aspects of the mind-body relationship. To be brief, it seems trauma also fits the description of a spectrum. And maybe that spectrum is amongst other things, dependent upon the neurological developmental stage of the individual when the trauma actually starts or happens.

All sounds very plausible. As you say amongst other things because the development of cptsd within the brain is probably pretty complicated.

[Papa Coco]

Chart,

Absolutely. I even go farther. I have found that trauma is passed down before utero. For example, my x-rays show that my skeleton is contorted with Scoliosis as if I were compensating for a missing right arm. My son's x-rays also show that his body seems to be compensating for a missing right arm. When the doctors ask about my father, all I can say is that during WWII, he lost his right arm when he was 20 years of age. I was conceived when he was 40. His physical traumas were passed down through DNA to me, and then to my son. So, if physical trauma can be passed down through DNA, I assume emotional trauma can also. There's a book, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle, by Mark Wolynn.

And when we're babies, our brains are wide open as we learn who we are, so traumas that happen in childhood set the direction for the rest of our lives, so the younger we are when trauma happens, the deeper it seems to embed itself into our wiring.

To summarize, I agree with your theories above. I think trauma definitely started early: In utero, in infancy, even in our ancestry.

[Armee]

Amazing story Papa C. Also adding into the layers...maternal stress hormones pass thru the umbilical and in an anatomically female fetus all the eggs they will ever carry are formed in utero as well. So the eggs that went on to become MY babies were formed in my mother's womb while my father tried to kill her.

[Chart]

I think this is going to take a little while to sink in...

[Cascade]

While all that great stuff from everyone is sinking in, I love that you looked in the mirror and told yourself you love you.  I'll try it for myself, too! 
   -Cascade

[Chart]

Cascade, I keep trying it, but I don't really feel it. I do however feel really really sad. Black hole sadness. I really want to evaporate. I think early early developmental trauma is perhaps yet another beast in the monster manual of cptsd. I ordered the books recommended by PapaC and Armee and Dollyvee. Threw in Van der Kolk for good measure. I think I've been pretty badly shot up. Problem is there's no blood to show just what cptsd is actually doing.

[Armee]

Facing this stuff is difficult and painful and causes a lot of sadness but that's part of moving through it and healing. There's better days ahead. Keep going, slow.

[Chart]

If I slow down any more I'll start moving backwards...But thanks thanks thanks, support is so helpful.

[Chart]

Any suggestions on the two books of Laurence Heller? The Practical Guide versus Healing Dev Trauma? You suggest both? One is better before the other? Thanks in advance.

[Chart]

Here we have a new pathology topic, no? Prenatal and Infancy  Trauma... Often this is followed up with more trauma, if the "caregivers" are still around... but in my case not so much... My mom was (still is) pretty messed up but not so extreme toxicity as my biological father. So sometimes the major trauma comes to an end and "normal" childhood sets back in. Of course I remember my childhood and I was pretty messed up by that point. But at least the severe trauma was "past"... Or rather, no new trauma...
Course the question of this thread remains: How is infancy trauma "different" than later childhood trauma? And what are some ways to approach it to try to heal? Specific to pre-verbal and pre-memory...