Gender dysphoria as a symptom of early childhood trauma.
I had mentioned this but just found a reference supporting my point. Post too long for email, but hear it out, it has ducks.
This post got long with a collection of semi-related things about the politicized trans issue and traditional parenting. I am going to reframe it around the topic of “boundaries” which Wendy Dean, MD, had suggested as something to work on in protecting against or treating situations with moral injury. Talk and improve relations between staff and admin was also mentioned in the last post about Hospice care.
Why It's Hard to Put Patients First — Wendy Dean, MD, discusses moral injury and burnout in healthcare, by Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson, MD May 30, 2023, The Doctor’s Art, a podcast, (MedPageToday.com).
Gender Identity Through the Lens of Developmental Trauma, Laura Wiley Haynes, Feb. 15, 2023, (genspect.org)
The old standard of therapy is no longer being used for treatment of youth who have gender dysphoria along with other mental health issues including suicidal ideation.
“Therapists expose self-hating clients to a powerful new concept: “You are not your thoughts.”” - Laura Wiley Haynes, (genspect.org)
Yet children expressing suicidal thoughts along with gender and other mental diagnoses, aren't routinely being treated with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy or other safe strategies as a first step.
“Unlike medical transition, treatments for developmental trauma are both well-validated and extremely safe.
Modalities include right-brain-focused therapies (Neurofeedback, NARM/“Neuro Affective Relational Model,” Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy),
gross-motor activities that require synchrony with others (dance, tennis, theatre, ‘catch’),
and gradually feeling attuned to and attachment repair within a safe therapeutic relationship. [Bullet points added by me.]
These experiences can re-regulate a distressed right brain and bring a dissociative child back into their body. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) can increase a youth’s ability to tolerate emotional distress, without becoming overwhelmed. DBT happens to be the gold-standard therapy for suicidal young adults with borderline personality disorder, also known as BPD, which is strongly related to early life trauma and frequently present in the population of gender distressed young people. Those who suffer from BPD also have an unstable sense of self, and struggle with self-harm and suicide.
[*When you don’t know who you are, it can be easy for others to tell you who they think you are or should be.]
And yet distressed, suicidal kids who identify as trans don’t receive DBT or developmentally informed therapeutic interventions. Instead, these miserable children have their first conclusion about the source of their problems reified by therapists, and their history and experience left unexplored. Standard practice for suicidal ideation in children is not implemented when gender is on the table. Why is this? Self hatred has nothing to do with innate identity. It always indicates psychological injury. Happy, stable people like themselves.” (genspect.org)
When I am happy I tend to sing without noticing it. When I’m not sometimes I sing on purpose to try to be braver or cheer myself up.
“One simple question: If genitalia is irrelevant to gender, why must it be mutilated?” - GregorianRant.us, (twitter.com/Fatherofseven7)
Early trauma does seem over-represented among those identifying as trans.
Those identifying as trans are over-represented statistically within four groups that do tend to receive more trauma in life than average - “children on the autism spectrum, adoptees, foster youth, and extremely gender non-conforming kids.” (genspect.org)
“Children on the autism spectrum, adoptees, foster youth, and extremely gender non-conforming kids are the four groups most over represented in children who assert a trans identification. These groups indeed experience more trauma in early life, whether from being chronically misunderstood, not getting key relational needs met, experiencing shock, loss or grief, being rejected, bullied, or shamed, suffering despair or chronic fear, or feeling psychically alone. Developmental trauma, which occurs in infancy and childhood, has profound effects on the growing brain, which reaches 90% of adult size by age three. The right brain, which learns implicitly through modeling, and governs things like self regulation, self concept, embodiment, and basic trust, is developing preferentially during this time.
When traumatic events cause enough fear, sorrow, or dissociation to thwart normal neuropsychosocial development, the child will fail to acquire certain key right brain abilities. The lack of unacquired developmental skills then follows the child as he or she grows, experiencing being out of step with peers who have successfully developed. Ultimately, a sense of “I always blow it, I’m stupid, I’m a broken worthless loser” can lodge in the child’s self concept.
Similar to descriptions of gender dysphoria, victims of developmental trauma describe intense emotional pain (“dysphoria” – no qualifier), a shaky, fungible sense of self, not feeling fully real, impulsivity/risk taking, total lack of access to emotions or overwhelmingly intense emotions, poor self control, poor social skills, and truly brutal self-hate, often targeted to the body (cutting, self-starvation, self injury). Many formerly traumatized kids will dissociate under stress, and they commonly have a very critical inner voice: “You are repulsive, disgusting, evil. You will never fit in. You don’t deserve love.”
Feelings of self-hatred and self-rejection, common in trauma, can easily be morphed to fit the rubric of gender: “I hate my body; I cannot comfortably inhabit it because I’m trans.” Do clinicians who affirm children falsely concretize this painfully-somatic sense of lack, left by early trauma, as: “you are trans”?” (genspect.org)
I am a survivor of toddler age trauma and it did leave me with similar feeling and problems with self-injury. As a teen or adolescent I did fantasize a bit about plastic surgery or just cutting off what seemed like overplump body parts. Laura Wiley Haynes recommends Dialectical Behavior Therapy or other cognitive therapy techniques to work through to better emotional regulation and self-acceptance. I later learned that my worst suicidal thoughts or self-injury phases were related to either secondary hyperparathyroidism related to low calcium - I still need to take extra calcium to feel normal. And histamine excess within the brain can cause extreme negative thoughts, feeling worthless, or can escalate grandiose mania - whatever the person is thinking becomes hugely magnified because histamine normally is a modulator, so out of control histamine means no more modulation, no more slowing the out of control car with a tap on the brakes.
Cognitive therapy tries to practice putting a pause between actions and reactions - we are not our feelings and do not have to react to feelings or other people doing something we didn’t like.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy. a type of cognitive therapy developed to work with patients with Borderline Personality Disorder which has physiological - chemical causes, and emotional, early childhood related causes. See 8.2 for more information.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Borderline Personality Disorder. [3]
Dialectical Behavior Therapy in a Nutshell, by Linda Dimeff and Marsha Linehan, PhD. [4]
A workbook for DBT: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation & Distress Tolerance," by Matthew McKay, Ph.D, Jeffrey C. Wood, Psy. D, and Jeffrey Brantley, MD, (New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2007, Oakland, CA). [5]
Early trauma can leave a person as an adult with a more toddler-ish view or fear and mistrust of life.
“Trauma-related sequelae, like emotional dysregulation, narcissism, and rage are also visibly present in adults who are trans rights activists (TRA). Indeed, specific developmental lacks are core to TRA demands such as lack of boundaries between self and other, in seeking to control others’ thoughts and words. The rage towards women, resulting in slurs such as TERF, coinciding with the desperate wish to merge with and be women, may indicate a lack of separation and individuation for TRA’s. Uncompleted developmental tasks leave a toddler-ish misapprehension of reality, still alive in the psyche of the adult. Such misapprehensions are normally confronted and revised relationally, by age three or four, assisted by a mother who can lovingly withstand the toddler’s negative emotions and engage the child in reality testing with patience and compassion.”
[…]
“Shouldn’t we be willing to get to know an unhappy child, before assembly-lining them into sterility and brittle bones? Presenting issues are rarely the core problem of a distressed person. That’s what therapy is for! Indeed, in developmentally traumatized kids, puberty can reactivate great emotional distress, because our toddler-era right brain neural networks reconsolidate in our teen years. Perhaps this phenomenon contributes to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” (genspect.org)
Yet children expressing suicidal thoughts along with gender and other mental diagnoses, aren't routinely being treated with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as a first step.
The article has more to read but isn't really long: Gender Identity Through the Lens of Developmental Trauma, Laura Wiley Haynes, Feb. 15, 2023, (genspect.org).
Saturday Night Live and other late-night comedians have been part of the child trafficking agenda for a long time, it seems. The clip in the Tweet, click though, makes it clear that they know how to create more sexual molesters - just molest children and the kids (not always) grow up to be abusers too. (twitter.com/deNutrients)
Self-injury and a sense of being no good and deserving punishment, not love, are messages that I learned as a toddler. I was dissociative then and as an adult. Self-injury may feel deserved and be increasing endorphins and adrenalin temporarily. It may substitute for being violent against others - if violence was learned but hurting others isn’t nice, was also learned, then someone might hurt themselves, feeling they deserve, that is what they had been told or learned as a young child.
Self-injury, why?, is hard to know and to stop I needed to work on phasing it out in steps. Hurting myself in lesser ways before being able to stop, or mostly stop.
Our children are in pain and they are being put into more pain with an expensive label of “help” - expensive in dollars and in long-term and shor-term risks to health and psyche. More trans people are committing suicide after the transition when you look at the statistics.
These changes are insidious aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnndddddddd we are on the slippery slope rapidly sliding into something horrific for those who accept the “help” and later learn it wasn't a solution to their mental trauma. It just added more trauma.
A description of early childhood sex trauma, (twitter.com/BrotherPhilemon):
To heal, I did need to learn that I was at home within myself - home anywhere I traveled because I am able to cope or ask for help where-ever I am. That is faith in oneself to not panic, or to recognize that panicking might happen, but you will cope anyway. My peace-is-happy.org blog has posts on this theme.
And the logic flaw in trans ideology revealed, (twitter.com/Fatherofseven7):
“One simple question: If genitalia is irrelevant to gender, why must it be mutilated?” - GregorianRant.us, (twitter.com/Fatherofseven7)
What grown men say about trans kids, two posts by Amy E. Sousa, (twitter.com/KnownHeretic) and (twitter.com/KnownHeretic):
Why would a T-shirt about a child be marketed to adult men?
My own androgynous former-girl child is now wearing two toned fingernail polish in that same blue and pink diagonal pattern as the trans kid's face. Tribalism is very strong. People want to feel they belong in a group. She seems happy though, so oh well.
Reminder that it sucks being a teen, no matter what you look like and sometimes looking good can get you treated even worse and flaking out is the abuser's goal so try not to take it personally.
This poor girl is supermodel gorgeous yet being picked on for being a redhead with freckles. (twitter.com/BobbyLWesson)
My reply to (twitter.com/BobbyLWesson), (twitter.com/deNutrients):
I gained attention online blogging in 2011 about nutrition and it was positive and negative and it was hard to cope with. I was accused of just being a narcissist seeking attention but I was being a public health educator as an independent blogger who didn't know anything about blogging.
My response to being heckled for my looks and treated like a sex symbol was to start dressing worse, wearing my hair badly, stopped using makeup and stopped going out much eventually. If I want to promote health ed, that does nor mean I want my health ruined from targeted harassment.
If it was that hard for me at 45 years old, why expect it to be easier at age 15?
and a Dad story that Twitter disappeared, okay found it, a story Thread with a surprise twist.
Girls need to know their dad has their back in a tough situation. Lengthy but an excellent read, I have given away too much. Justacon is a modern day O’Henry (author of Gift of the Magi and other short stories known for a surprise ending): (twitter.com/Justacon371209) or (ThreadReaderApp version)
Truly excellent, I’ll wait while you check it out.
Instead, of hearing him out: (twitter.com/FreeDuck), check PubMed:
Accelerated Mammary Gland Development . . . during Pregnancy and Delayed Postlactational Involution in Vitamin D3 Receptor Null Mice, Glendon M. Zinser, JoEllen Welsh, Molecular Endocrinology, Volume 18, Issue 9, 1 September 2004, Pages 2208–2223, https://academic.oup.com/mend/article/18/9/2208/2747620
Ask yourself if her name is Brown Bottle Beetle* or whether that is your name. 🤔
That is a somewhat funny meme example of the hard and fast rule of internet life:
Do not take anything online at face value. Always look for original sources.
And remember the famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, known for his honesty as a US president: “If you read it on the internet, it must be true.” or maybe it was “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it might be a duck.”
*The saga of the Brown Bottle Beetle (real insect species) is mentioned in this recent post, Humans are mammals, both genders have mammary glands that may be able to function in an emergency.
And the details and links are in this post: Brown Bottle Beetles, Red Dresses, and innate behavior patterns.
Females and others with limited social skills or intellectual skills can be at much greater risk for being sexually abused or trafficked by “their boyfriend” or sometimes by a female that seems cool, like Ghislaine Maxwell’s role in procuring girls to give massages even if they had no training as a masseuse. If someone is ofering yu money or free stuff for no really obviously good reason - it might be a duck.
They may not have a dad to call when in need or may not have been taught that men don't have a right to have sex with you just because you seem sexy to them.
Foster kids, kids on the autistic spectrum, and adopted children were among groups identified as being more likely to identify as trans in the current promotion of it in the article by Laura Haynes. That trauma is a bigger factor than body parts is something that concerned parents need to know, because the $$$ got bucks pushing this aren’t going to stop pushing it any more than they stopped promoting jabs or pandemic W.H.O policy.
Traumatized adult survivors are being used as mouth pieces for a different agenda - the dictator takeover at a global level. They may be a danger now, even if trauma was the root. We need to help the younger folks feel safe and welcomed in their schools and communities, rather than marginalized because of the actions of politicized activists.
The World Health Organization power grab is the big danger - the rapist in the room trying to get even more control over nation’s sovereign rights.
Boundaries - watch out for dictator takeovers: Some tips for resisting authoritarian takeover of a nation have been shared on the following website: LearnFromEurope.org: (learnfromeurope.org)
One more Tweet post - a warning about social media being used to entrap young females into sharing pictures with pedophiles posing as other children or teens. The youngster committed suicide. May she find peace. (twitter.com/MetaJane5)
Boundaries - the online world is a wonderful place but it can easily be used to hide behind by predators.
Brief article about how early childhood trauma can leave you with a lack of boundaries, or poor skills at normal social boundaries. Many types of relationships can be negatively impacted. What trauma does to your ability to set healthy boundaries., Michal G Quirke, (michaelgquirke.com), a therapist. I am unaffiliated.
Disclaimer: This information is being shared for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health guidance.
Thank you for a very important post. This explains so much. I've been trying to figure why the common practice now is to fast track children/youth into mutilation and causing more long term harm to themselves. Your article explains so very clearly what is now (purposefully) ignored, which I do not understand why. If the goal was to actually help/heal our children thorough treatment would be the first thing to be put into place rather than the forced rushing of puberty blockers, body mutilation, etc. whic is occurring in too many many places now. Also, I really do not grasp why the trans issue has become so political and is being used as a club to avoid effectively treating these children/youth and help them navigate through their possible childhood trauma(s.). I keep trying to think who benefits from avoiding successful treatment of these children/youth.
Hi there: One of my newsletters is focused on Parental Alienation. I have been an alienated parent and haven't seen my daughter in over seven years. Her mother began alienating me from Alexis when she was three years old, and it continues to the very day. I started supporting other alienated parents, and since the lockdowns, alienated parents are reporting an explosion of transgender kids and gender-related issues, unlike at any additional time in history. Trauma does indeed harm our kids, and parental alienation created by one parent can impact our kid's mental health, including their identity. Social media exacerbate another essential part of trauma which often transcends grounds and creates more victimized mindsets. One last point when I was ten years old, my father committed suicide. I have no memory of this next point, but I was told I didn't speak a single word to anyone for nearly six months. Now that I'm almost 57, I still don't recall the fact I didn't speak for over six months. I can confidently state the suicide of my father created early childhood trauma events and have taken many years to overcome.