32 Color Slides & Notes (text) coming soon! Text of the first few slides:
Slide 1: Attachment Trauma & Child Trauma:
Prevalent, Linked to Social Issues
-42-66% Child Trauma Rate
-50% Divorce Rate
-21-45% Student Substance Abuse
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) far more prevalent than recognized
But “Trauma-Informed Care” Heals
Fifty percent of Americans suffer childhood trauma; that’s a shocking prevalence. This 42-66% Child Trauma Rate is from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a bio-medical study. It showed 42% had two or more childhood traumas and 66% had one or more.
I’ll also present data from independent psychological studies showing this 50% prevalence. In fact, I’ll present several different “silos” of research showing the unknown prevalence of child trauma. Yet I’ve found no one who puts the silos together. I’m apparently the first.
This relates directly to America’s 50% divorce rate. When we’re traumatized as kids, it’s usually done by people, so we develop a fear of people. This fear is so deep we don’t know it exists, but we can’t get close enough to sustain a lifetime marriage.
In Southern California where I live, the high school student substance abuse rate is 21-45%. Scientific tests show the chemicals per se are not addictive. These students feel such deep emotional pain from childhood trauma, that their bodies crave relief. No one recognizes childhood trauma, or treats them for it, so they buy pain relief on the street. A national rate including less wealthy areas would be closer to 50%.
I’m Kathy Brous. I’ve just published a book documenting the brain science of my own childhood trauma, Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.
Today, “Trauma-Informed Care” has been shown to heal child trauma. I was severely ill with infant trauma and I found healing. But first I had to understand the problem.
Slide 2: Over-achiever with Infant Attachment Disorder
-Successful in business
-BS in Math, opera singer
-Married almost 30 years
-Crashed after age 50
-Poor therapy failed me
-I “tried it alone”
-Uncovered infant agony
-Re-traumatized myself
“Parts of my brain are dark!”
I’m child trauma survivor with 50 years’ “lived experience” of attachment disorder. I also have a BS in Mathematics and 30 years’ experience analyzing technical data like this, in the economics and aerospace industries. I curate a website with a hundred-plus posts on brain science, AttachmentDisorder Healing.com. It has a detailed blog for every slide here.
Who knew I was ill? I was an overachiever married 27 years to my college sweetheart. But deep within was a pain so severe that a cascade of adult life crises finally triggered it.
I had no clue to the cause. My marriage collapsed, I moved cross country in 2007, my father died but I couldn’t cry, I was terrified, and went to therapy. But my first therapists didn’t know attachment or trauma. I opted to “try it alone” and treat myself, but that almost killed me.
I wrote long, fearful letters to my ex, father, and mother, but the more fear I confessed, the more surfaced. I had nightmares that I was an aborted fetus. I read a book that showed I failed to bond as an infant. Stuck on a plane with a newborn screaming, I realized that an infant’s voice was still screaming inside me.
It was far too dangerous alone. I was re-traumatizing myself.
I devoured brain science textbooks. “We can now do brain scans,” I heard a lecturer say in 2010, of orphans who got little attention as infants, and “parts of their brain are dark.” I felt it instantly: “Parts of my brain are dark!”
