• Feelings of Abandonment: A feeling and perception that one is repeatedly abandoned left alone to fend for one’s self, and being repeatedly adrift in sporadic stability. This can lead to family members who have weak connections or attachments, feeling vulnerable and weak, and a strong appearance of emotional reactivity.

•  Inconsistent Trust: Relationships can be characterized as lacking a consistent quality of trust in significant others. That trusting relationships are conditional and also require significant monitoring which can be related to hyper-vigilance in family members.

•           Fractured and inconsistent trust, increases tension and anxiety in family members and can be related to increased conflict and poor problem solving.

• Emotional deprivation: This is the next common element in this first environmental dynamic. Emotional deprivation is common when the attention of the caregiver is focused away from the immediate welfare of the children or family.

• Emotional damages: such as poor self worth and a sense of being unlovable, primarily because in the egocentric mind of a child if the parent ignores your wants then the child can’t be that important, lovable, or worthwhile.

• Insecurity: Develop an attitude or belief that they are defective, and be ashamed because they are inferior and unworthy of love and attention. Sometimes this leads family members to develop insecurities of many types and varieties, being self-conscious and shy and a feeling that their own wants and desires are some how unworthy and illegitimate.

• Social Withdrawal: Finally, a prominent response to this family dynamic is a withdrawal or isolation from others including other family members. If left unchecked a sense of paranoia and expectation that other people will take advantage or intentional inflict hurt if they have the opportunity.

It is vitally important that families increase their mindfulness of the environmental dynamics that they are creating, maintaining or delivering to the next generation within the walls of their own abode. The impact of developmental trauma is felt throughout society and leads to an erosion of quality and satisfying interpersonal relationships, increased academic failures in children, early onset juvenile legal contact and expanding addictions of all types with in society.

Are there elements of this story that can relate to? Do you believe that you suffered a childhood trauma as a result of being raised in an unreliable and inconsistent family environment?

If afflicted by the symptoms of depression, anxiety, or trauma we encourage you to call our office at (480) 478-4221 or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our psychotherapists and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression, trauma and conflict that may have been a result of a childhood trauma. We are located in Mesa, AZ, near the Gilbert border, in the Phoenix area of Maricopa County in Arizona.

Dr. Jeffery Young has completed a tremendous amount of work and research discovering these environmental patterns and the impact each has on individuals. Jeff is the founder of Schema Therapy which is a tremendous therapeutic approach to dealing with personality distortions that develops with in family dynamics.

According to Dr. Young there are five general environmental factors that contribute to the traumatic experience.

As each is explored in brief it will become increasingly clear how these particular family environments may create interference normal social-emotional development. If you are a therapist, social worker or counselor it would be recommended by this writer that you obtain and read Dr. Young’s material designed for professional helpers. Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide where he develops strategies to support the helper create healing moments for those that struggle to recover from these distressing family dynamics.

This article will focus on the first of the five environmental factors, one that is related to a significant number of problem behaviors that bring people into therapy, seeking to be released from the tyranny of these early experiences and the associated perceptions and expectations that have been created in their lives.

The first of the five environmental factors that can be related to interference of normal social-emotional development is manifested when there is a pervasive and chronic family dynamic that does not allow the child to predict the environment and where the child’s expectation for needed security, safety, stability, and nurturance may not be met in a predictable manner.

This does not mean that there exists a lack of love or concern for the child, but that the environment is capricious in such a way that a perception is conveyed to the child that those that they should be able to rely on to gratify their needs, appear detached, cold, rejecting, withholding, lonely, explosive, unpredictable, or abusive. This doesn’t mean that every interaction between child and family environment is always negative; it is that the inconsistency and unreliability of the family dynamic is problematic.

There are many pathways to this first environmental factor. An example might be the family where a parent or both parents are abusing or addicted to substances. Those times when the parents are not under the influence of drugs or alcohol may find them to be much more predictable. There are many other pathways to developing this environmental dynamic in a family. Unfortunately, many times this dynamic becomes a concretized into the family culture and then a multigenerational pattern of this dynamic may get transferred from one generation to another. This intergenerational transmission of a dysfunctional dynamic can act as a stressor to children and be related to the emergence of developmental trauma.

Are there elements of this story that can relate to? Do you believe that you suffered a childhood trauma as a result of being raised in an unreliable and inconsistent family environment?

If afflicted by the symptoms of depression, anxiety, or trauma we encourage you to call our office at (480) 478-4221 or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our psychotherapists and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression, trauma and conflict that may have been a result of a childhood trauma. We are located in Mesa, AZ, near the Gilbert border, in the Phoenix area of Maricopa County in Arizona.

One time a client spent considerable time trying to convince me that she wasn’t communicating anything to her husband or children when she refused to speak with them or would behave sulkily.  Of course through a discussion of this she finally came to realize that these silent communications were often louder and clearer than the verbal things she might say.

To be an effective communicator one must be able to possess certain sensitivity or sensitiveness to the messages one is sending and the interpretation of messages being sent that have no words attached to them.

Many times, people that have experienced trauma as children have some difficulty recognizing the non-verbal messages that they are both receiving and sending.  This deficit is commonly a feature in anxiety and depression, and may require support or therapy to overcome.

Many times families have tremendously good intentions and yet lack sensitivity to how members are responding.  An example of this can be found in a family that was by nature and culture a very loud and boisterous group; they were funny, sarcastic and energetic with each other and anyone that came into their circle of contact.

This family had four boys ages 12, 9, 8 and 5 before the parents finally had a little girl. During this pregnancy there were some health issues and when the little girl was born one of the side effects of the medications that the mom had taken was an increased sensitivity to light and sound, where at very low levels of sound the little girl reacted with fear, withdrawal and discomfort.

This was very difficult for this family because they had a pattern of what it meant to show love and to be with each other that was pretty set in their family.  They were very hurt that their little girl and sister didn’t like them and would go to some lengths to avoid them. By the time she was three she would scream anytime she had to leave her room.

There was no lack of love and no bad intent in this family but they struggled with being sensitive to the needs of this child who read and received the messages send by this family far differently than they were intended.

After a short consultation and a few sessions of therapy the child and family began to accommodate each other and the child through increased sensitivity.

If you find that you may need support to develop better sensitivity to ease the situations in your home then we encourage you to call our office at (480) 478-4221 or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our psychotherapists and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression, trauma and conflict. We are located in Mesa, AZ.

It’s the unusual person that isn’t connected to someone or several people. The problem is that people that are feeling isolated and alone, and this is part of the depression, they tell themselves that they don’t have anybody in their life. They tell themselves they don’t have any network of connections outside of what they normally do. Because they tell themselves this they don’t see the opportunities that they could have.

Think about whom would you call if you had a flat tire or a dead battery? Those might be the same people you might want to call if it were nearing New Years Eve and you had no plans and are feeling kind of alone.

There are also lots of people that invite even pretty relative strangers or an acquaintance to come to a Christmas meal or another event because a lot of people don’t want to see their associates unattached during the holidays.

If you’d reach out to these people because your car is stalled or if you’d call them for a ride to work, if you had somebody that you would go and help if they’d call you, those would be the people that you may want to reach out to if you are feeling alone during the holidays.

If you are afflicted by the symptoms of depression we encourage you to call our office or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our psychotherapists and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression and trauma. We are located in Mesa, AZ.

What they may find over the holidays is that a lot of their peers that they interact with on-line are not available during the holiday season and off-line and they realize that they are not as connected with people as they normally think they are and loneliness and feelings of isolation can kick in. A lot of times these people can find themselves feeling depressed, anxious and a lot of times just really lonely over the holidays.

The things that I would suggest is that they do to kind of deal with that, physical activity being one, is changing up what they do in their normal daily basis, changing their routine. Put themselves in places where there are a number of people. Put themselves in places where they can have pleasant experiences.

One suggestion to counter seasonal depression is to do some community work which is always productive and highly appreciated. In addition to that what we know is that people that do volunteerism get a tremendous boost to their self-worth and self-esteem and they feel connected.

I would recommend for people that suffer from seasonal depression around the holidays is to go out and serve in a soup kitchen to help the homeless or volunteer at a local hospital, they are always clamoring for people to visit during  the holidays, or volunteer at a nursing home. These kinds of things that put you out of your normal range of being self-absorbed really help people who are suffering from feelings of depression.

If you are afflicted by the symptoms of depression we encourage you to call our office or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our psychotherapists and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression and trauma. We are located in Mesa, AZ.