This article aims to support the healing of traumatized children. Carl Jung once said, “In every adult there lies a Child – an everlasting child, something which is always becoming, isn’t completed, and requires unceasing care and attention.” This is the part that desires to grow and become whole. Healing Renew Wellness Recovery trauma is a difficult and courageous journey back home to the eternal child…returning our inherent longing to be whole.

Trauma is a severe injury or penetrating wound that can threaten one’s life. Trauma disrupts the normal course of development by repeatedly intruding terror and helplessness into the survivors’ lives. Trauma can lead to a fracture of one’s personality. This causes identity to be stifled and results in a loss of trust within the family.

Judith Herman M.D. has written in her groundbreaking book Trauma & Recovery: “Repeated traumas in adult life erode the structure of personality already formed, while repeated traumas from childhood deforms personality.” It is up to the child who has been abused to find a way out of this situation. To survive, traumatized children must resort to primitive psychological defenses. For survival to be possible, the abusers must be seen in the child’s mind as caring and competent. The primary attachment must not be lost at any cost. This may lead to the child attempting to minimize, deny or wall off the abuse. Sometimes, complete amnesias are called dissociative states. It is possible for dissociation to be so severe, that it can cause fragmentation of the personality and the creation of alter personalities.