What if I said that if I were to be able to climb inside your head that I would find a memory of trauma or evidence of multiple traumas?
Have you ever considered the effects of families past trauma’s altering DNA makeup, resulting in trans-generational trauma? Science has shown that this is a fact, and it can clearly be seen in the effects of colonisation on many of our First Nations people and those who are descendants from the Holocaust. It is highly likely that they will have a shorter life expectancy. Trauma affects all aspects of your health and being.
Early childhood trauma affects the lifespan in various ways, some obvious, some not so obvious but without effective intense intervention, it carries on throughout that person’s life and generations beyond because of DNA changes and the exposure to cumulative harm, it can be observed in things like dysfunctional behaviours that vary greatly to peers, inability to maintain relationships, self-harming behaviours, high energy responses such as anger, aggression or deep depression or suicide.
Trauma presents in many aspects, or every aspect of life when left untreated. Early childhood traumas left untreated, can result in events as an adult, many becoming a diagnosis of PTSD.
Heavy stuff, hey! This is where I can help anyone who believes that they fall in this category and even those that don’t.
What is trauma, basically there are two types of trauma, simple and complex traumas and then there is cumulative harm. Simple trauma seems like an oxymoron to me, as I see no trauma as simple, yet that’s the official term and this is when you may suffer a loss of some description. We all suffer losses throughout life. Technically with time and help you can overcome this, unless of course it is unresolved, then it is an issue.
Complex trauma, however, is multiple intense traumas that receive no intervention and cumulative harm fits here. If you imagine yourself as a cup being filled with a variety of traumas, this an analogy of what cumulative harm is and eventually it overflows, producing some form of anti-social behaviour that others generally fail to understand.
I see this often in my role as a teacher, classrooms are full of struggling kids these days, it is a sad reflection on the way our society is going, and they are the collateral damage. The largest part of a teacher’s role is in addressing the wellbeing of their students. There are various reasons, beginning with the damage that occurs in utero when a woman is in a domestic violence situation, my grandchild is a product of this kind of situation or any of the identified abuses, sexual, physical, emotional, neglect and poverty. Neglect is not always obvious because there is emotional poverty, or emotional abuse, these are harder to identify yet are every bit as damaging as the rest, if not more so in my opinion. Emotional abuse scars and breaks a child’s spirit.
I know from all of my experiences and all of my studies into this area, that art as a therapy, art simply being creative, writing as therapy to express emotions, play as therapy or play itself, ‘the 100 languages of children’ can all assist those who may be struggling to be the best that they can be each day.
Dolly Everett a 14-year-old who sadly took her life in 2018 was a victim of cyberbullying, the silent yet incredibly noisy social media bully of the modern age, open to affect your child at any hour of the day or night, if not 24 hours a day. Dolly’s final words included on her artwork ‘speak even when your voice shakes’ tell a million stories, if only an adult who first saw this, knew what they were looking at in the symbols and lack of colour that her artwork included. This one story could have ended differently.
I became an art therapist for this very reason, unpacking the red flags that I see as a teacher that allow me to refer a child on or to guide me in letting that child know that people care. The idea came to me knowing how art and writing had assisted me in my lifetime, when I was completing my first Camino and I met an Aboriginal girl whose sister had just taken her life leaving behind a baby whose name was also Dolly. I discovered that rising statistics in people taking their lives is a global scourge, there were very few people that I met that hadn’t been affected by suicide or who knew someone that was.
As this week in May 2021, we have our ‘Day for Dolly’, Dolly who has a loving and beautiful family, who have set up a foundation in her memory, that assists teachers and others to broach the topic that so many find uncomfortable. The conversation around mental health issues needs to become more normalised, just as discussion around topics such as the flu is. Unfortunately, statistics would show that at least one in four young people suffer mental health issues today. I would argue its more, as I can confidently say there are more children in my classes who do suffer some form of mental health related condition than those without.
I have continued to record the life of my grandchild through her art and her anti-social behaviours; she has complex behaviours, the kind you see kids causing havoc with on the news, yet she unlike many has a large extended family who love her. I have written to State and Federal Ministers to bring about changes, more money placed in this area, however all I have received so far are ineffective mumblings that cover their butts basically.
Her artwork has continued to be disturbing from her early drawings up to puberty when they became truly disturbing. So, you see, I speak from a personal experience, I am just like many others who live with these secrets about members of their families. Families being destroyed, good hard-working families.
I wish more than anything that I knew then what I know now. Early intervention is when we can bring about change to those who are living with complex traumas, complex behaviours. We need to work together to bring about change, after all it takes a village to raise a child. Let’s give our young a vision, a voice and the ability to dance and live…
