Infancy trauma - any others can relate??

[Blueberry]

If I slow down any more I'll start moving backwards...But thanks thanks thanks, support is so helpful.

The feeling of going backwards in healing or moving backwards because so slow is pretty common around here too. 25 years ago I was told I needed to do less. I couldn't believe it because I was already doing way less than other adults my age, I mean I couldn't even clean one room in my apt all in one go, never mind the whole apt the way my age group did back then. Little did I know that for some reasons that I'm still not clear on I was being triggered and my energy disappeared at the mere thought of cleaning. The more I followed the "do less" (for a lot more examples than cleaning my apt), the sicker I seemed to get, my ability/energy/wherewithal to do whatever got less and less... As crazy as it may sound, doing less and less was still the answer in my case. The less-and-less might not be the answer in yours but the slow-and-slower-and-even-more-slowly might be in your case.

As Armee says, there are better days ahead. She's right, it does get better!! Probably not 100%, certainly not in my case, but better. Just as baby steps count in active healing (what I do in and out of therapy), it's good to look for and notice the tiny shifts that come to each of us over time during recovery. If you don't notice these yourself, in time forum mbrs will notice and let you know. We're often perceptive of other mbrs' progress while not noticing our own.

[Chart]

Indeed doing still more less seems impossible. But I guess I can try.

[Armee]

I know this is not too relevant to your core question of how is it different but I wanted to suggest a couple thoughts...


1. Blueberry answered really well I think about going slow and doing less. I'll add that opening these boxes can be pretty destabilizing that's part of why slow ends up being much much faster. You don't get knocked as far back. You shuffle forward instead of leaping ahead and straight over a cliff. I've learned this lesson the hard way as have pretty much everyone else here. Over and over I've learned this lesson. You'll learn it too and then you'll be able to go "oh yeah...slow is faster."

I also want to gently point out that the ongoing emotional trauma with your mom might be more significant than you are letting yourself realize right now. 

[Blueberry]

Here we have a new pathology topic, no? Prenatal and Infancy  Trauma... Often this is followed up with more trauma, if the "caregivers" are still around... but in my case not so much... My mom was (still is) pretty messed up but not so extreme toxicity as my biological father. So sometimes the major trauma comes to an end and "normal" childhood sets back in. Of course I remember my childhood and I was pretty messed up by that point. But at least the severe trauma was "past"... Or rather, no new trauma...
Course the question of this thread remains: How is infancy trauma "different" than later childhood trauma? And what are some ways to approach it to try to heal? Specific to pre-verbal and pre-memory...

To go back to some of your comments and questions here. I agree with Armee on not discounting how much you may have continued to be traumatised by your M, even if it might not have been intentional on her part. In your own words you were pretty messed up already by the time your bio F left, so having been traumatised already makes it easier for you to be re-traumatised by ensuing stuff.

How is infancy trauma different from childhood trauma? One way is that your brain is being damaged or wrongly wired from conception or birth onwards and so there is no healthy to go back to. You can't recover your emotional/mental health because you never had it in the first place. This is actually more of a difference between adult onset and childhood onset. An adult who got ptsd only (no complex in front) due to an accident or earthquake or witnessing too many bad things (as emergeny workers do) can recover a healthy self, they can reconnect with a healthy or healthier adult self from before the traumatising event. Even with childhood onset that doesn't really work, because a child by definition hasn't even nearly finished developing by the time the trauma starts.

Maybe a teen has a better chance, especially if traumatised outside the family and then supported by the family and doctors, therapists etc. Because a teen from a good-enough healthy stable family would normally have learnt some healthy behaviour e.g. knowing (some of) what emotions are which, being able to stay with the emotions briefly instead of dissociating, maybe have some healthy self-soothing mechanisms in place and some healthy belief-in-self (or not such a huge and virulent Inner Critic as lots of us have) despite everything going topsy-turvy during adolescence anyway.

Healing pre-verbal, pre-memory? I'm not sure that it's that different to healing trauma from a later date because processing and healing trauma doesn't necessarily mean being able to remember it detail for detail and talking about it. Traumatic memories are by definition usually all over the place in our brains and in our bodies. Trauma really does get stored in our bodies, like my body used to run cold, and my hands and arms used to get really painful. Long ago I thought that was really weird because I know nothing physical and drastic was ever done to my hands and arms like being tied up. It was actually emotional abuse that contributed to hand and arm pain.

The above is based on my opinion and my experiences and what I've read so may not be completely correct or completely based on scientific evidence, but it's what I believe.

There are different ways of healing trauma and I hope at some point you can find a qualified therapist again with whom you can work and who can work with you. A good therapist ought to be able to find the method or a method or even a mix of methods that works for you.

btw your FOO (family of origin) may think or tell you that their care and especially emotional care of you as well as your childhood was/were 'good enough' but if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be on the forum. My parents think they were 'good enough' too    

[Blueberry]

Well actually here is some professional information on the differing affect on traumatisation on very young children versus older children and obviously teens/adults. I came across the info quoted below in another post of my own
https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=13694.msg104359#msg104359  (or if my link doesn't work for you, then see: Physical and Psychological Comorbidities / Co-morbidities / Physical issues / Itchy lower legs  (1st post Aug. 17, 2020)

"In one of the multiple recent free trauma seminars, they mentioned how in early-childhood trauma the whole physical body slows down so it doesn't digest properly, the blood doesn't flow properly, and things like that. I know that's what happens physiologically in a dangerous situation so that you can fight the wolf or flee from the sabre-tooth tiger. It seemed that with infants or toddlers the effect is immediate and turns chronic quite early on, whereas with an older child or adult the chronic stage doesn't happen so early. Or something like that. Don't quote me on it. It would make sense though for some of my not very serious but nonetheless bothersome physical symptoms I've had since early childhood."

Although you are more interested in the long-term emotional results of infancy trauma (most of us probably are), you can't separate them completely for reasons which my tired brain can't explain rn. Maybe tomorrow.