A primary result of CPT is the inability to develop a sense of self in an environment of pervasive terror, and this manifests in several ways. First, secrecy regarding abuse was important to the majority of men, in most cases due to their fear of family betrayal, and in some cases due to fear of increased abuse. Some men indicated
45 See Van der Kolk (2009) for a discussion of “Consensus proposed criteria for developmental trauma disorder” which states that Criteria A includes “The child or adolescent has experienced or witnessed multiple or prolonged adverse events over a period of at least one year beginning in childhood or early adolescence, including: 1. Direct experience or witnessing of repeated and severe episodes of interpersonal violence; and 2. Significant disruptions of protective caregiving as the result of repeated changes in primary caregiver; repeated separation from the primary caregiver; or exposure to severe and persistent emotional abuse” (p. 6).
that a requirement to maintain silence was invoked either directly or indirectly by their caregivers, and most men maintained silence throughout their childhood and well into their adult lives. These men experienced feelings of helplessness and hopelessness because they were unable to escape or protect themselves and their mothers from violence. These feelings and behaviours are consistent with the research of van der Kolk (2005), who found that helplessness and hopelessness form a central proposition of the shattered self. This finding also supports assertions that children who are abused in the home experience a “biological paradox” (Siegel, 2012, p. 21-10), which refers to the dilemma of being caught between their survival instinct of getting away from their abuser and their attachment circuit which compels them to move toward the adult for protection. This paradox creates an “unresolvable war” of terror that produces feelings of
helplessness and prevents the construction of a healthy sense of self for these children (Siegel, 2012; Siegel et al., 2016).
Research also reveals that misleading explanations and a “conspiracy of silence” commonly invoked in cases of child abuse result in children organizing their behaviour around keeping the secret (Pynoos et al., 2007, p. 349), shaping their behavioural decision-making as well as their self-perception. According to van der Kolk (2005) and Pynoos et al. (2007), misleading explanations and invoked secrecy produce cognitive confusion for abused children, and they must address this confusion to develop a sense of self. To reduce this confusion, children attempt to make meaning of the violence they are experiencing, and the schema developed to facilitate meaning making impacts the development of the self (Bloom, 1997; van der Kolk, 2007). Cognitive confusion was prevalent among the pre-prison lives of all participants, and the participants revealed numerous meaning-making strategies to counteract their confusion. Almost all
participants assessed themselves as “damaged,” and described themselves in terms of being “a mess,” or “broken,” and having “low self-worth.” Many assigned blame and blame-worthiness to themselves saying that they “deserved” the abuse. This finding supports assertions of Solomon and Heide (1999), Lewis (1992) and Janoff-Bulman (in Bloom, 2001) who found that to preserve the world as fundamentally just, abused children often decide that they deserve beatings due to a fundamental flaw within themselves, or that they deny or minimize the abuse by deciding that it was just
discipline. By doing so, abused children make meaning of the violence by reducing their own self-worth but preserve the sense of “intactness of the family” and maintain a sense
that justice exists “somewhere” in the world; thus, they avoid “cognitive-emotional chaos” (Bloom, 2001, p 12). By making meaning of the violence in this way, however, the data also lend support to research indicating the abused children’s assumption of the world as benevolent and safe for them is shattered prior to ever having been established (see Bloom, 1997, 2001; Herman, 1992).
The participants indicated that as children, they felt unable to successfully navigate their way through the world, that they were fundamentally “flawed,” “different,” or that they “didn’t matter.” They felt that they had no autonomy over what happened to them and that attempts to change their experience were futile. These findings support research indicating that trauma shatters autonomy, and the impact of this shattering is that abused children who attempt to develop a sense of self in a violent environment are unable to develop belief in their significance, competence, and inner worth (Bloom, 2001; Siegel, 2016). They also fail to develop a critical developmental step, “mastery over the environment” (Bloom, 1997, p. 31), compounding their sense of worthlessness and helplessness. Further, while self-blame provided meaning and a sense that justice exists somewhere in the world, the concurrent unpredictability and unmanageability of their own experiences resulted in the loss of their belief in a just world. Lack of this belief, which posits that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, results in overwhelming anxiety, an undeveloped sense of competence, and an overall inhibited cognitive-emotional ability (Bloom, 2001).
The participants experienced both emotional confusion and limited emotionality in childhood. Most indicated that anger and shame were their dominant emotions and that they found soft emotions46 to be confusing and uncomfortable. Some men
experienced, but did not express, fear, and some men experienced suppression of all emotion, experiencing periods of “total blackout,” “clouds,” or periods where they had no memory at all. These findings are consistent with extensive research which maintains that the dominant affects of unresolved trauma are anger, fear and shame (Bloom, 1999; van der Kolk et al., 2009). For example, Bloom (1999) and Terr (2003) found
unmanageable anger to represent a signpost of unresolved trauma, and Levine (2010)
46 For a discussion of hard and soft emotions, see Sanford (2007), who explains that hard emotions, also referred to “selfish emotions,” include such emotions as anger, contempt, and aggravation, while soft, or “pro-social emotions,” include relationship-oriented emotions such as hurt, sadness, and disappointment.
explained that “aggravated rage” (p. 64) is a biologically appropriate outcome of violent victimization that is necessary for survival. Levine (2010) found that traumatized
individuals often oscillate between terror, rage and shame, and “emotional convulsion” or shutdown to such a degree that even they cannot understand or tolerate their own emotions (p. 263) and van der Kolk et al. (2009) emphasize extreme affective shifts and an inability to manage anger as aspects of Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD).
Shame researchers report that the experience of shame physiologically mirrors a traumatic experience, producing “cognitive shock” (Nathanson, 1992) and compounding feelings of weakness and inadequacy (McFarlane & van der Kolk, 2007), and
unworthiness and disconnection (Misiak, 2017). The data also lend support to findings of Bloom (1997), Levine (2010) and van der Kolk (2007) who found that due to the powerful connection between the human emotional system and the autonomic nervous system, the emotions produced by fearful, violent environments can be overwhelming and life- threatening to traumatized children. Because they have not been taught strategies to soothe emotional pain, their experience of emotional distress is heightened, while their capacity to cope is decreased (Haskell, 2012; Misiak, 2017). Unable to escape the situation, these children experience dissociation or emotional numbing. Solomon and Heide (1999) report that it is typical for these children to experience emotional numbing with underlying rage, while Bloom (2005), Levine (2010) and van der Kolk (2007) report that extreme emotional numbing may involve a physiological separation of memories from consciousness, resulting in brief or extended periods of amnesia. Emotional numbing and periods of amnesia were common among many of the participants.
Some participants reduced overwhelming emotions by avoiding people or places that presented discomfort, while many participants were drawn to people and activities that they experienced as providing a “rush” or “adrenaline rush.” The experiences of the participants support van der Kolk (2005) and Haskell (2012), who report that because traumatized children paradoxically experience “stress addiction” or “addiction to trauma,” they seek out endorphin-increasing activities. These activities produce internal
equilibrium, experienced as calm in otherwise stressful or potentially traumatic situations. These children were experienced as hyperactive and they antagonized others, bullying them in childhood and adolescence, and escalating to risk-taking behaviours and violence that provided emotional relief in adolescence and adulthood.
In addition to emotional and cognitive confusion, the deep lack of trust and the consequent inability to form and maintain relationships is consistent with previous trauma research. Almost all men indicated that they experienced extreme distrust and went to great lengths to avoid relationships. This avoidance extended to people “in general,” who participants viewed as fundamentally different, and as having different interests and emotional capacities than the participants. The men believed that they, themselves, didn’t “fit in” or “belong.” For almost half of the men, the disconnection and feeling of being different was so strong that they expressed contempt and hatred, developing a belief in themselves as the conceptual “other.” This finding is consistent with those of Perry and Szalavitz (2006) who conclude that relational loss, which they describe as the “shattering of human connection,” is the most important, and most profound, destructive aspect of all trauma. Children having experienced complex trauma and DTD often appraise themselves and others as threatening, becoming distrustful of others and withdrawn and disconnected from other humans (Heide & Solomon, 2006; Misiak et al., 2017). The data are also consistent with research that found abused children’s profound sense of mistrust may be so intense (Haskell, 2012; Misiak et al., 2017), that they harbor intense rage and hatred towards anyone the reminds them of their own helplessness (Bloom, 1997; Solomon & Heide, 2005), and that they
experience an “inner sense of hatefulness” (van der Kolk, 2007, p. 198; also see Misiak et al., 2017) that is expressed through social isolation and relationship avoidance. When participants did form relationships, they did so with people who they perceived to
represent the “other,” being “crazy” (Stuart), risk-takers (Martin), traumatized (Peter) and criminal (Ed), consistent with “trauma-bonding” (Bloom, 1997) whereby untrustworthy, destructive relationships become normal and sought out, and nurturing relationships are difficult to endure, so they seek out dangerous or abusive relationships.
In sum, the men expressed childhood and pre-prison psychological experiences consistent with the experience of “massive overload” (Bloom, 1997). As a result of CPT and their consequent shattered sense of self, they grew up cognitively shocked,
chronically hyper-aroused, stress-addicted, trauma-bonded, and emotionally confused. More clearly, they grew up feeling helpless, worthless, confused, fearful, shameful, angry and disconnected.