Early childhood trauma and the impact it has on adult relationships Essay

Early childhood trauma and the impact it has on adult relationships (emotional and psychosocial) - Essay Example The stress of childhood trauma was found to have an impact on emotional, behavioral, cognitive, social and psychological effects in both Childs early stages of life and also in their adult life. In adult life their found to cause potential and chronic, mental and psychotic problems, thus causing the individual their family, community and ultimately the joy and peace of life. (1) (Bruce D. Perry, 2002) Brain is a organ, that is designed to sense process, store, perceive and act according to information obtained from the world. To achieve this the brain has a hundreds of neurons and related systems that works as a process of modulating, regulating, compensating the control over the body. In the case of stress the homeo stasis is disturbed. It should be understood that stress means traumatic form of severe stress that the child would be unable to handle. Children when faced by moderate to predictable level of stress with the presence of caregiver is usually not much affected. So the dramatic rapid and unpredictable or threatening changes in the environment activate then stress response of central and phereparal nervous system. Thus the trauma throws the individual system out of equilibrium and intern the body rapidly tries to restore the balance, robbing the individual's normal state. The usual response of human brain when confronted with unbearable trauma is dissociation, hyper arousal (the state of hyper vigilance activating stress hormones more level) or a combination of both. Thus the survival strategy range from fighting, fleeing or give up or surrender reaction. The nature intensity and frequency or which depends on individual child. Following this the child enter the phase of posttraumatic period during which the mind and body slowly tends to come back. During this period the child moves from the brink of terror through fear, alarm, etc. The heartbeat, pressure and other physiciological adaptation normalize and hyper vigilance increases. Now the child goes through phase of fear and anxiety and the event gets played in the child's mind again and again trying to make sense of what has happened. This set of living and reliving experiences is called as intrusions - that process them for a long term as a memory that disturbs their adult life. (Bell, D., & Belic ki, K. (1998). (3) Effects of Trauma on childhood period: The experiences leave the child with at times unusual visual auditory or tactile sensations. Disturbed sleep and food patterns are also altered. The child post trauma experiences persisting emotional behavior, cognitive and physiological science and symptoms - The posttraumatic stress disorder characterized by impulsivity, distractibility, attention problems, emotion problems, sleep problems, social avoidance, dissociation, aggressiveness, failure in school and delayed development.