The Body keeps the score

[Darviridis]

In subsequent years, I have encountered a similar phenomenon in children who have been abused: most of them suffer from crippling shame over the actions they had to take to survive and maintain a connection with the person who abused them. This was especially true when the abuser was someone close to the child on whom the child depended, as is often the case. As a result, confusion is born: a person can no longer understand whether he became a victim or took part in it voluntarily, because of which, in turn, the concepts of love and horror are mixed in his head; pain and pleasure.

[Darviridis]

the effects of psychological trauma can be the same as or have something in common with the effects of physical injuries such as strokes.

When traumatized people are reminded of something from the past, their right hemisphere reacts as if the event that gave rise to psychological trauma is happening right now. Since the functioning of the left hemisphere is suppressed, they may not realize that they are re-sensing and re-experiencing the past - they simply become furious, horrified, burned with shame, or fall into a daze.

In people who have experienced trauma, the levels of stress hormones take much longer to normalize, and with the slightest stress they jump quickly and disproportionately.

If they remain calm and responsive to their needs, children often survive horrific incidents without serious psychological trauma.

[Darviridis]

Trauma survivors tend to “continue the same actions, or rather make the same (futile) attempts at action, as at the time of the incident.

While a smoke detector usually does a good job of detecting a hazard, psychological trauma increases the risk of misidentifying it.

They may start to flinch in fear at any loud sound, lose their temper at the slightest displeasure, or freeze when someone touches them.

Trauma that started “out there” begins to play out in their own body, usually without awareness of the connection between what happened then and what is happening inside right now.

Children who throw a tantrum tend to get attention and get the help they need, while children who withdraw into themselves do not bother anyone, doomed to lose their future piece by piece.

When a person is unable to fully surrender to the present, he goes to places where he felt alive — even if those places are filled with horror and suffering.