Much has been written about the effect of childhood trauma in making subconscious decisions and forming subconscious beliefs. These beliefs mostly refer to the image formed about the self, the world and the cause of trauma. These beliefs can be. for example: " The abuse/abandonment is my fault", "The world is a dangerous place", "I am bad". But there are also beliefs formed about the future, as a way of coping with trauma. They come as a defence to a devastating present and they misplace the reparation of the present with some promise that will be fulfilled in the future. So, the future holds the key for repairing an intolerable present. For example, the child who lost her parents, cannot face the reality of the devastation, so she places the following projection to the future: through her own marriage, she will create her own family and her future family will then heal her present loss. Through this future expectation, her pain in the present becomes bearable and some sense of hope and meaning is created. Another example: a child feels acute sense of shame and worthlessness because of childhood abuse or parental abandonment. He places a future promise to achieve a successful career in some worthy cause, for example medicine, and this would heal the worthlessness and inferiority by proving to others and to himeself that they are not true. A third example, an institutionalized child, rejected by her parents, places a future promise that her grief and jealously of the other children (cared for by their parents) will heal when she will give birth to her own child and raise the child with the love and care she never had. Some meaning is created about intolerable, unexplicable loss and a sense of hope, justice and purpose. After all, chldren need to be future oriented. Especially, if maltreated.
Understandably, these expectations can cause huge problems...They were functional at the time of trauma, as they created a sense of meaning, sanity and hope. But they become completely dysfunctional in the long term, especially since the individual normally doesn't have much control over the manifestation of the promises. Instead, his or her dysfunctional beliefs may actually block the manifestation. So what happens when the 'compensation' promises don't manifest? What happens when no matter how hard the person tries, they don't turn out to be true?
If the adult abused as a child still holds on to the 'reparatory' nature of the expectations, the consequences of the disappointment can be devastating: both present and past losses get activated. In the first example, the orphaned child may not get married, or she may have a betrayed, broken marriage. Then she will have to grieve both her adulthood loss and the expectation that somehow the childhood loss would be resolved through a happy adulthood outcome.If not, why did the childhood loss happen? What was its meaning? Her sense of even a compromised, delayed justice is shattered. And what about all the other things she neglected in the expectation of this marriage 'resolution' (for example, a career she abandonned, or hobbies she didn't pursue etc). In the second example, what happens if the successful medicine career never happens? What is often overlooked is that most of trauma experts and speakers come from affluent Western countries where 'anything is possible' and the motto 'make your dreams come true' abounds. Yes, in some countries opportunities and freedom to make use of them are everywhere.But this is not the reality in most countries of the world. The dream career may indeed be not possible for the adult survivor who lives in a poor community and tries to survive from day to day.What happens then? He becomes devastated with even more shame, more sense of failure? Does he manage to resolve the childhood sense of inadequacy or does it get compounded with the adult loss of dreams? In the third example, the institutionalized child who grows up may not be able to have her own child.She may be infertile, she may not meet an appropriate husband, she may have a miscarriage.What happens then? Are her hopes of restoring her lost childhood shattered? What happens when she no longer has the chance to repair her childhood according to the scenario she had in her mind?
The key term is : scenario.The grown adult has a scenario in mind about how a successful a healed life should turn out. But very rarely scenarios turn out true. The key is to recognize the scenario for what it is and the purpose it served and to re-examine it as possibly not appropriate for the present (medicine may not be the right field for everyone!). Also, to disengage the expectations about the present from the past and to find alternative methods of compensation for the past.
This is one of the hardest aspects of childhood abuse: not only one loses one's childhood, but one loses a significant part of adulthood trying to cope with that past childhood trauma. The present cannot be shaped to compensate for the past. Allocated time and resources can be devoted in the present to focus on past losses and other slots of time on present situations and present losses. The two need to be disentangled and the adult needs to become flexible to face the unexpected, without demanding any specific outcome. Even though much current research suggests links between childhood trauma and adult life, it can be damaging to form solid, one-way causalities, such as 'my childhood abuse ruined my marriage' etc. If there is religious belief involved, it is important not to blame God for not meeting the person's expectations, but, instead to practise seeing the unexpected forms of God's benevolence and consolation as they unfold in each and every moment. The fewer expectations about specific outcomes conceived as compensatory scenarios in the past, the greater the sensitivity to discern actual postive outcomes in the present.
Prekate Victoria, 23/10/21
