I take notes in class. This year long training resulted in my CCTP designation – certified clinical trauma professional. 2016 was the year “The Body keeps The Score” sort of broke open what was at the time a very narrow world for the treatment of traumatized people. Bessel made up the diagnosis of PTSD in 1980. With returning Vietnam War veterans flooding already inadequate help through their administration, he created the ‘single event’ model of trauma. Fine people are no longer fine after a single traumatic event – an event with threats to body integrity, of dying, being badly hurt

This amazing development served to ensure that these veterans could not be denied funding and help. There was a sentiment at the time that whispered – maybe our recruitment was really off this time, these soldiers seem to have come in to serve with certain ‘defects’ and so this was not an occupational injury so we aren’t on the hook for their care. The DSM 3 captured a fraction of what the veterans were living with but it was enough to secure their employer’s accountability and responsibility

So, when fine people are no longer fine. Single event says, fine then trauma then fine. In actuality, a rare occurrence. A few years on in the organizational development of trauma treatment and the understanding of this is more detailed and sophisticated – the single event will unleash a cascade of stress fractures built up over a lifetime. The single event is a triggering experience – the person’s threshold for holding fear and pain is breached. The fear and pain turn out to be immune to cognitive processing – words, thinking, insight don’t work anymore because the information is held in the body and brain, not the heart and mind

In waltzes the ACE-Q material, Adverse Childhood Experiences as an assessment tool, late 1990’s

(PDF) The Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire:Two Decades of Research on Childhood Trauma as a Primary Cause of Adult Mental Illness, Addiction, and Medical Diseases (researchgate.net)

Another example of how the field is evolving, the developed in Canada Psychological Injury Index incorporates the ACE-Q into a much bigger picture of life events, pushing our gaze to the whole person – early trauma forcing the child into a negative pattern of adaptation. Isolated and enduring crushing traumatic stress, the child ends up with a default mode of being almost brittle, their loss of healthy development becoming literally like a loss of bone density, ending up prone to fractures inside themselves and in their relationships. Thank you Dr Eric Kuelker

Psychological Injury Index – Psychological Injury Index

On one hand, the amount of pain a child is forced to handle and on the other, the amount of pain they are actually capable of handling – when this gap is never helped or healed in childhood, they continue to suffer and this suffering compounds as the decades drag on. All this person knows is traumatic growth, as the original wounds and injuries of infancy warp and distort their ability to connect inside and to others

Day One of the course – months more to go. It was quite the ride. Many thanks to my class peers and the instructors