When we truly understand what is going on inside a child with Attachment Trauma, we can make skillful, useful responses geared toward healing, rather than getting lost in anger and frustration.

Trauma falls into two categories:  Single Episode and Complex Trauma.

Single Episode Trauma:
A child getting lost at a grocery store is an example of single episode trauma.  In this instance the child becomes anxious, fearful and alarmed.  The parent’s sudden absence stimulates adrenalin and the child is gripped with fear for survival.   When the child finds its parent, the impact of the trauma may show itself as increased insecurity.  A return trip to the grocery story may “trigger” a recurrence of fear and anxiety.

Complex Trauma:
When a child experiences traumatic episodes that are repetitive, occur over a long time, involve violence or neglect by caregivers, and occur without warning or predictability,  the impact is intense and enduring.  This type of trauma causes long-lasting symptoms, alterations in personality structures, and serious neurophysiologic changes.   Real-life examples of complex trauma include:
· A 4 year-old girl who was left at home unattended repeatedly in days-long drug-seeking binges of her birth mom.  The child scoured the house for food and could only find uncooked pasta in the cupboards.   She endured intense hunger, was terrfied to be left alone, feared she would starve.  When her mother did return she feared the next episode.
· A two-year old born in Eastern Europe who initially was raised by his birth parents for a year in squalid conditions.  Malnourished due to poverty, the child was removed by authorities due to squalid conditions, parental neglect, and malnourishment.  The child spent months in an Eastern European hospital with multiple caregivers and in physical pain without adequate comforting.  After hospital discharge, the child spent two susbsequent years in an orphanage.  Adoptive parents visit the orphanage to pick up their adopted child at age 4 and witness verbal abuse of orphanage staff toward the children.

Complex Trauma conditions the child to be always on guard for the next abandonment or trauma.

Brain Development
During a traumatic episode the nervous system goes into high alert and produces adrenalin, the neurochemical which helps us respond with “fight or flight.”
When complex trauma occurs early in life, a child suffers a developmental double whammy.
First, the developing brain is bathed in chronic adrenaline, altering its formation, and reinforcing neurological pathways of insecurity, lack of safety, self-protection and defensive reactivity.

Second, when a child in a caring, functioning family has a single episode of trauma, the parents are there to comfort and sooth the child, developing neural responses that reinforce adaptive coping. The child in the dysfunctional, abusive situation has no outer support to reinforce adaptive coping.

The child is highly reinforced into fight or flight, adrenaline-based responses in the Reptilian Brain or Brain Stem.  At the same, due to lack of nurturing caregiving and the co-regulation of affect,  the child suffers from inadequate development of the Cerebral Cortex, the part of the brain that accesses reason, logic and creative solutions to problems.

The Attachment Cycle and Navigating the First Developmental State of Trust vs. Mistrust:

Attachment is the child’s internal sense that its caregivers are responsive to its needs and that the world is safe.  Consider this moment in the healthy development of a child:  The child feels an uncomfortable sensation in its stomach, its hunger causes it to cry out (dysregulation), attentive parents feed it, and the uncomfortable sensation goes away.   The child feels content, safe, secure and is “regulated.”  The child then starts feeling uncomfortable sensations because it has a wet diaper and cries out.  This is “dysregulation.” The crying or tantruming is a way of getting help.  Attentive parents change the diaper, the uncomfortable sensations go away and the child now feels regulated again.  Similarly, when the child feels alone or unsafe, it cries out and gains holding from attentive parents and the “dysregulation” is successfully resolved.

This Attachment Cycle of dysregulation, met by parental response, leading to regulation is played out dozens of times each day.   The parent-child dyad is building a sense of security for the child, and neurologically the child is laying down the pathways of attachment and connection: When I have a need, it is met, I am soothed and the world is a safe place.  Neurologically this becomes encoded in the child’s neurological structure, and when there is a dysregulation, the child begins to anticipate that its needs will be successfully met.

When a child’s parents, through neglect, abuse, or abandoning behaviors, fail to provide the regulating soothing or action, the opposite process is reinforced neurologically – the child learns that no one is coming, the world is unsafe, people I should be able to count on I cannot.