Trauma and its treatment are in the zeitgeist this year and no wonder. Our culture has been ignoring the deepest needs of infants for decades and is now struggling through this pandemic, which is creating a deeper sense of instability than we have experienced in healthier times. The combination has been devastating for children.
And now experts in child mental health are discussing trauma at the level of the pre-natal experience.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement has, for at least the last 25 years, been concerned with, and has been addressing, pre-natal trauma by replicating the researched and documented activities of a normal fetus. In doing so, we have allowed young children to reprocess, at a deep non-verbal level, traumas that were so indistinguishable from the very nature of their being, as to be considered a “genetic disposition”.
Because we are “born with it”, doesn’t mean that a condition such as rage, anxiety, or sensory processing issues, is genetic. Genetic is what is given to us at conception. The entire nine months of pregnancy involves ACQUIRED experiences as we grow from a few cells to a fully formed human.
Experiences that can challenge the fetus and create subsequent trauma in the child include:
- Toxic exposures to drugs, alcohol, chemical air, food or water polution
- Exposure to the hormones of a depressed, traumatized or anxious mother
- Violence perpetrated on the mother from both physical and emotional abuse
- A denial of the pregnancy, a non-recognition of the existence of the fetus
- Fear of the pregnancy being discovered, as in a young teen who is hiding the pregnancy from her family, or a woman from China where, until recently, if not in current time, women were forced to abort a second or third pregnancy
All of these influence the child’s experience of their right to exist, their levels of calm or anxiety, their internal stress levels, and can result in a child with rages, ADHD, anxiety, the offensive label of Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and more.
The journey to more balance and regulation for children with these experiences involves traveling through the developmental stages of pregnancy and birth, using researched and documented activities that are seen in healthy infants.
One child described this process as “looking into my Big Black Bag of Ickiness”. But ultimately, for all children, the “ickiness” diminishes and a better life emerges.