Quotes from Tian Dayton

The effects of being traumatized in childhood don't tend to disappear on their own; they tend to reemerge later in some form of overreaction, compulsive behavior, learning difficulty, intimacy issues, addictions, or process addictions

Today there is help all around—articles abound on these subjects, 12-step rooms are around the corner, and help is down the hall in many schools and workplaces. But we have to reach out and take hold of the help. And we have to stick with it until we can create meaningful change in our lives.

They may become what family systems theorists call the "symptom bearer," symptomatic on behalf of the whole family. Children who act out, for example, can have the effect of getting warring parents to pull together in order to address what's going on for the child; thus, the family buys some more time, the focus is diverted from the parent's or the family's underlying problems, and homeostasis, albeit a costly one, is again achieved.

Healing trauma is healing codependency. As historical pain is processed rather than projected and the self becomes more distinct and present oriented, codependent behaviors begin to clear up naturally.

they assume another person will not want to meet their needs. So they attempt to meet their needs privately, within themselves and by themselves. Eventually they may feel uncomfortable even having needs, and so they try to hide them, even from themselves; they shut down that feeling within them. Their own inner worlds can feel hazy and confusing to them while the worlds of others seem clear and distinct.

Those in the system who have the clarity or courage to act as whistle blowers, who attempt to reveal the truth of the family pathology, may be perceived by the family, which is steeped in denial, as in some way problematic. Naming the dysfunctional behavior becomes the sin, not the dysfunctional behavior itself. These members may be cut off, humiliated, or even hated if they get too close to the truth, though much of this may be unconscious.

we're expressing in our adult lives the anger we had to hold in as children. Our anger might also be acting as a defense against deeper feelings of pain and helplessness. We need to get to the root so that we can change the pattern.

Simply bringing up the family's problems causes other family members, who cannot and will not see their own pathology, to want to kill the messenger. Again, the message—the truth—threatens their survival as a system. WHEN

A trigger that is part of the healing process is recovery itself. During recovery, we "remember" what we have "forgotten." For a moment it hurts all over again. But if we can get through that reexperiencing of the pain with the help of a solid recovery support network, there is freedom on the other side. Actually the fear of the pain is often worse than the pain itself.

This ability makes us more available to all of life. It builds self-confidence and inner strength.

Change comes when we have sat in the pain long enough and fully enough so that we can feel it, can open our mouths and talk about it, see it for what it is, reorder and understand it, and then walk out of it. This does not mean that we won't feel bad, hurt, angry, or triggered about our past again. It just means that if and when we are triggered, we won't catapult into an unconscious place from which we can only act out, shut down, or dive straight into self-medicating behaviors.

It's a peeling back the layers of the onion one at a time, stage by stage, examining the thinking, feeling, and behavior that were learned and became engrained at each stage of development. Physical sobriety is fairly straightforward, and abstention or regulation are its mainstays, but emotional sobriety can be more elusive.

Because emotional and sensory memory are processed by and stored in the body, the most successful forms of therapy for trauma are experiential.

The lack of sharing genuine feeling in the addicted home can also lead to isolation, a common feature of depression.

Nothing is better, no reward greater than our true connection with ourselves, and through that we can reach out and really touch another. Working through trauma pulls us from the surface of life into the wellspring from which we learn who we really are.

In working through the pain of a traumatic past, it is important to help clients to identify not only what hurt them, but what sustained them.

Distorted reasoning—which may take the form of rationalizing and justifying bizarre or unusual forms of behavior and relations—can be immature and can also produce core beliefs about life upon which even more distorted reasoning is based. For example, "he is only hitting me because he loves me.

Along with mistrust, hyperreactivity, hyperarousal, depression, and aggression, the numbing response and emotional constriction that are part of the trauma response may lead to the loss of ability to accept caring and support from others. As mistrust grows, so does the ability to accept love and support (van der Kolk 1987).

A person who escapes from an unhealthy family system while others remain mired within it may experience what is referred to as "survivor's guilt." The guilt one feels of being the one who "got away" while others may not have been able to.

People who have experienced trauma may have a tendency to isolate or to withdraw for safety into a lonely world of their own in order to avoid pain. Reaching out may make them feel too vulnerable or rejection sensitive, or they may be out of touch with their need for connection and support or not know how to bring it into their experience.

Reenactment patterns. It is a natural phenomenon of unresolved and unconscious pain that gets recreated over and over again in what psychologists call an attempt to "master pain." Memory is state dependent, so we tend to re-create familiar patterns when confronted with like circumstances.

Emotional literacy is the ability to translate our emotions into words so that our feelings and thoughts can be held out in the intellectual space between two people, shared and reflected on, so that we can think about what we're feeling. It is a natural outgrowth of sound emotional development. To attain and maintain emotional sobriety, we need to learn to tolerate our strong feelings and translate those feelings into words.

When we can use our thinking mind to make sense and meaning of our limbic mind, we develop a feeling of mastery and self-confidence, knowing that we can find a way to deal with what life throws in our direction. We feel we have the skills necessary to cope with our lives, and at those moments when we can't, we know how to ask for help.

Learned helplessness can be part of the ACoA trauma syndrome. In disaster situations, the smallest form of involvement can allow victims to be less symptomatic.