How Do Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect You Today?
The answer will leave you speechless. Adults who experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), aka traumatic experiences as children, still pay for what happened to them years, even decades later. But what are adverse childhood experiences? And how do they affect you today? This article shall attempt to explain...
Changing the Future by Acknowledging the Past
Healing is Possible No series on how positive childhood experiences (PCEs) can mitigate the effect of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) would be complete without speaking about the future. Not only the futures of adults who are living with the scars left by ACEs but the future of children being...
Trauma and Dissociative Identity Disorder
Healing from dissociative identity disorder requires understanding what it is and how one forms it, and many other aspects of the disorder. Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is believed to be caused by trauma. This article will explore the relationship between trauma and DID. What is Trauma? Trauma is...
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Positive Childhood Experiences: Can One Mitigate the Effects of the Other?
Childhood should be a carefree time full of learning and joy. However, many children aren’t that lucky and grow up in homes that are dysfunctional and abusive. These encounters are known as adverse childhood experiences and change the future of the child forever. One question that burns in the...
Building a Life Despite Having DID
and living well Receiving the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder can seem like the end of the world. Then we endure years of treatment struggling to get free of the past that has bound us. This piece is full of hope because I am a living example of living...
Emotional Flashbacks
You walk into your living room after getting out of bed in the morning feeling apprehensive and afraid, but there is nothing to be afraid of that you can observe. An overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen permeates your thoughts, and you do not feel at...
The Neurotransmitters of Seasonal Affective Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
The brain is a very complicated organ that rules over our lives engendering how we move, think, and feel. The way our brain cells (neurons) communicate with one another is by the use of chemicals known as neurotransmitters which they pass from one to the other. We have briefly...
Healing Trauma Through Inner Child Work
So far, in this series on the inner child, we have discussed inner children, and how, when they are wounded, they can affect adult life. We learned that every person has an inner child that is part of our psyche, that is a childish self, inside all of us....
Discovering Your Inner Child
There is much psychiatry does not understand about how our psyche works. Indeed, because psychiatric symptoms are mostly self-reported, there is little evidence that mental disorders exist. However, all humans recognize in themselves the urges and responses they seem to have that echo past experiences. This piece will...
The Trauma Bond and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse
Narcissistic abuse of children is extremely harmful to their mental and physical health. These kids grow up with mixed messages about who they are and suffer other consequences from never feeling they belong. This piece will focus on the trauma bond and the healing journey that children of narcissists...