Rethinking Early Childhood Trauma as a Dynamic Developmental Process in Making Meaning, Emerging from Chronic, Repeated Experiences and Reiterated Mental Processes

The lack of a normal developmental perspective, along with a dominant psychopathological perspective framing our thinking about trauma, arguably limits our understanding of trauma and diminishes the value of trauma theory and the effectiveness of trauma-informed practices. A developmental perspective sees dysfunction emerging from chronic repeated experiences and processes, primarily external interpersonal relational experiences and internal somatic and brain—neurosomatic—processes. The repetition of trauma, even if the event occurred only once, ensues because of the individual’s ongoing endogenous reiterations of neurosomatic meaning-making processes for the traumatic event. Thus, trauma is like a bulge in a landscape that we refer to in our language and diagnoses as if it were the only feature of the landscape, but typically, trauma is in fact a more severe outcropping on the many small and large bumps making up a desolate, toxic landscape. And while becoming traumatized is hardly a game, the process of making meaning out of it and the process of a game, such as peek-a-boo, are pretty much the same. At the heart of the similarity is the repetition of endogenous meaning-making processes, which most often, but not always, occur because these single-occurrence events travel with the actual recurrence of the event. The repetition instantiates the trauma and the game into the individual’s way of experiencing and way of being in the world. Thus, what makes sense for us as a guide for therapy—for children and adults—is to take our cue from the development of meaning: Approach therapeutic change like learning peek-a-boo. Do it often, do it in multiple ways that fully engage every level of the individual, and let the individual agentically control the process.