Sublime

Developmental trauma refers primarily to the psychologically based issues that are usually a result of inadequate nurturing and guidance through critical developmental periods during childhood.

The critical issue is whether they can incorporate a feeling of being viscerally safe with their parents or other caregivers.20

If the healing process can’t run to completion, the person’s nervous system is never able to relax all the way back down to the ground state, and their body continues to hold some chronic tension.

What we witnessed here was a tragic adaptation: In an effort to shut off terrifying sensations, they also deadened their capacity to feel fully alive.

In the traumatized person, these resources are diminished. Often, any stimulus will activate the frozen (trauma) response rather than the appropriate orienting response (i.e., upon hearing a car backfire, a traumatized vet may collapse in fear).

For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.

IFS recognizes that the cultivation of mindful self-leadership is the foundation for healing from trauma. Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care.