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?

One of the most significant aspects of this book is that it presents a structured way to form and maintain positive therapeutic relationships between the client and the therapist. It shows a frank and straightforward way to be respectful and help the client find the strengths and abilities to navigate problems and build a future of positive possibilities.

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.

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.