In our Functional NeuroDevelopmental Assessment, we determine whether a client feels pain immediately and appropriately. This is one of the neurological soft signs that determines the integrity of very deep levels of the brain.
When they do not feel pain there can be consequences, such as the child being careless with their own body, taking risks, injuring themselves, picking, cutting. Or, that child can be brutal to others, pushing, hitting, scratching, and biting parents, caregivers, or other children. They can be oblivious to the deep feelings, physical and emotional, of others around them. They are often the playground bully.
However in considering stored trauma, one would think that if you are numb to pain, you have not experienced a trauma. In my work, I have observed that unfelt and unprocessed pain can be a source of trauma.
In the neurotypical child or adult, there is an immediate and appropriate response to pain involving screaming, crying, falling down, kicking it away. These authentic responses prevent the child from storing the incident as trauma. However, even if the child or adult does not feel pain or respond, it becomes stored in the body as a trauma. The body still knows pain has happened, pain without any corresponding release.
Animals, arguably, do not store trauma in the same way that humans do because a healthy animal will shake off the incident, respond with protective actions, followed by a release, then will sleep through the healing. We interrupt the cycle, and in our children who cannot feel pain appropriately, we may not even recognize the level of the incident.
In short, to keep a painful event from becoming a trauma, we have to have a nervous system that feels and processes pain, immediately and appropriately. If your child or family member seems oblivious to pain in themselves or others, feel free to ask me any questions.