Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient | Hacker News Reader

Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient

time.com

36 pointspriyankanath19 comments

Some background on the author of this article:

> In 2010 Harvard found him guilty of research misconduct, specifically fabricating and falsifying data, after which he resigned.[1][2][3] Because Hauser's research was financed by government grants, the Office of Research Integrity of the Health and Human Services Department also investigated, finding in 2012 that Hauser had fabricated data, manipulated experimental results, and published falsified findings.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Hauser

Thanks for adding that context!

According to my mother I was a rather happy kid and smiled to everyone before getting into school. She taught us reading, writing, drawing and some numbers before getting into it.

They promoted me to the following grade after 15 days because as soon as the teacher asked something I already knew the answer. But in the following two years something happened and I changed completely.

The thing is that I can't recall almost anything previous to that point. My mother signed me to music lessons in hopes to revert my shyness and stuff but little changed.

Until in a conversation with an aunt my sister made me remember - I was seriously bullied in those first couple years of school, apparently because of being "smart" and my accent. Like there was some kids that hitted me so hard sometimes I couldn't even sleep because of the pain in my legs. The dance teacher bullied me too, screaming things at my ear and ashaming me in front of the whole class because I sucked at dancing (and I got an absurd abversion to it, in fact never learned to dance). Even the principal made fun of my mother because she asked them to do something about it but apparently rubbed it as something without importance so my mother took matter in her own hands, but that's another story.

Even at university I had to endure some bullying too because I grew to be kind of awkward and introvert and shy. But I just didn't remembered why I am like that - for all those years I thought that I was born like that - still feels like it's too late to do changes but at least I can understand myself.

I have trauma from being forced to write things down because I had a progressively worsening tremor in my childhood. It doesn’t sound that bad and truely it wasn’t the worst trauma someone can experience, but I still have a very physical reaction to being made to fill out forms quickly where my hands shake wildly. It makes me wonder if trauma just doesn’t respect the intensity of the experience and it’s more of result of how we form memories, I definitely know people who’ve had more difficult lives who don’t have this.

X doubt

I can't imagine that ruminating on bad experiences makes one more resilient in the long-run. I've certainly been there, and the only thing that helped me was to move on, but to each their own.

The concurrence in the explosion of talk therapy and depression/anxiety diagnoses--as well as deaths of misery, like suicide and drug overdoses--supports this claim, but doesn't prove it, obviously.

I have resisted talk therapy because it does not provide measurably good outcomes.

Speaking only anecdotally here, but I agree. I think forgetfulness is an under appreciated ability, and a lot of people would be happier day-to-day if they had a minor form of amnesia about traumatic past events. Unfortunately this isn’t a popular take these days, largely because of the “identity vacuum” that’s arisen since the fading away of local communities, strong family bonds, religion, and other things that were easy to build an identity around. The only identity a lot of people have is from their life experiences, and thus to forget those on purpose is not seen as an option.

I saw this first hand when I dropped my brother off at college and sat in on some late night group conversations. I'm only a few years older than him so I expected the vibes to be similar to when I was there, but instead of the talk of interests, hobbies, past projects, life goals, accomplishments, etc. etc. that I was used to, everyone just went around sharing the bad things that happened to them as children. I got the sense folks were trying to one up each other too. Maybe it helped them, idk. I thought it was bizarre and certifiably not-fun. But what do I know.

    And these children that you spit on
    As they try to change their worlds
    Are immune to your consultations
    They're quite aware of what they're going through

I don't understand how we can all agree that remembering how much an operation hurts is a bad thing but constantly digging up things that upset you is a good thing.

Meditating on a broken leg won't make it hurt any less, meditating on how horrible your childhood was won't let you have a good one.

There is so much wrong with what you're saying.

1. Understanding and processing is just not the same thing as ruminating. It's just not. Ruminating means you're not trying to get better.

2. Blaming talk therapy for the anxiety and depression, and actual opioid epidemic is absolutely ridiculous. Are you seriously saying talk therapy is more to blame than things like a pandemic, predatory prescription practices in the 2010's, and the societal disconnect experienced by today's youth (among the hundreds of reasons I could've written)?

Astounding.

Ruminating is not "not trying to get better."

Ruminating, the definition I'm using, is a colloquialism meaning to just bring the same thing up over and over again. There isn't a positive outcome in mind. It's just bringing it up over and over.

Like how ruminates bring up and chew their cud.

It is literally just reliving things for the sake of itself, not to try to intentionally work through anything.

You refer to the ruminates who intentionally bring up and chew their cud over and over precisely because the iterative process they're engaged in allows them to break down and digest the material over time? And indeed is the only possible way they can "work through" the material?

The hubris to suppose those who ruminate are doing it simply to pass the time...

Yes. Colloquialism. I'm learning that this might be regional that the phrase ruminate where I live means unproductive dwelling on something. I understand the process that the animals use.

It's a thing that means only part of the thing (honestly, pretty close to the opposite of the things?). Again, Apparently that's regional and I'm just now learning that.

Beware thinking "umbrellas cause rain".

> it does not provide measurably good outcomes

This is not true. I'm not going to bother sourcing because if you just talk 2 seconds to lookup papers on the impacts (good or bad) of talk therapy you will have a very long list of papers in support of talk therapy.

This is without looking at the benefits of CBT or offshoots of CBT like ACT, which also have a large body of research around them. CBT has its deficiencies, but those can easily be mitigated.

More than anything it sounds like you are engaging in an avoidance strategy.

I think moving on is the goal for everyone. You're fortunate to have sufficient internal insight plus resilience to do that on your own. I have, too - although I've also had the advantage of caring and insightful friends and partners, so I can't take all of the credit for myself. Not everyone has the same internal or communal resources, though, (or else may have really outside the norm experiences - like the kids in TFA), which is where professional help becomes important.

"Talk therapy" is a super generic term, and approaches are by no means the same. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has good results in multiple studies. Read something about it, and if you think it could be an interesting experience - just like a sports massage can be good, even if you're not rehabbing a specific injury - you might give it a try.

I cannot disagree more. This hypothesis is extremely dangerous to people suffering and on the brink.

Trigger warning for violence to children. I'm an adult who has suffered immensely from anxiety. It was hard to make it through my 20s alive. I recently remembered several traumatic incidents from my childhood that I'd completely forgotten (I grew up in a really violent area: middle school crush almost kidnapped in front of me, gay friend taken to "pray away the gay" and never coming back, friend held up at gunpoint, was personally mugged, sexually assaulted, and almost kidnapped, all before the age of 17 when I moved out on my own). Let me tell you that "closing the stress loop" on those events was _extremely_ important for my ability to move on. Before, when I could not remember the events, it was a struggle to get through life at all. One day I had a specific nightmare, and the memories came rushing back. I confirmed with my family these had happened, so it's not my imagination.

For the last two years I've used CBT, talk therapy, and journaling to process that trauma and resolve those issues. It's been a lot of remembering them, talking them through, and just what is called "closing the stress loop". I've read books about PTSD, I've talked to people about it. I've cried, yelled, gone for long runs, and had long walks in the woods. And now for the first time in my adult life I'm not feeling that crushing sense of impending doom. Sure, it still comes back sometimes, but generally it is "resolved". Sometimes I feel a stab of pain about it, but then I feel sad, process the feelings, and move on.

Perhaps for you and your trauma, moving on without processing it is the right choice, but for me it absolutely was not. If you'd asked me in my twenties and early thirties, I would've have said "no thanks, talk therapy is dumb". I'd tried it a few times with bad providers who just drugged me up but things didn't improve. Meanwhile I had A Plan that I considered several times an hour, was spending at least a hour a day crying without knowing why, and was a functioning alcoholic. I'd tried some talk therapy, and it wasn't until I found a CBT therapist at a research program who takes outcomes extremely seriously that I felt like I was getting measurable improvement.

I'll leave it with: there's a huge difference between ruminating and processing trauma. The dose makes the poison. Just like there's a difference between binge drinking a bottle of jack every night and 100ml of wine with dinner once a week. (Although I'm completely sober from alcohol now, good riddance).

You owe me $25

To claim that, you would need to back it up with data, and that would be rather difficult because there is a percentage of people who seek therapy when have problems and those who don't, so it's hard to get the staring point re. correlation even before we proceed to causation. It's just like with alcohol and overall mortality - you can claim whatever you want about moderate drinking (teetotalers have worse outcomes because they don't drink or they have worse symptoms therefore they don't drink) and there will always be people in both camps.

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