Unit 3. Developmental Trauma and the Nervous System

Main ideas

1. Developmental Trauma leaves a lasting unconscious imprint on the human nervous system for life.
2. Developmental Trauma memory is stored in the unconscious mind and triggered automatically by the nervous system because children who are under 7 lack the cognitive and linguistic capacity to make sense of their adversity and adversity experienced by those who care for them.
3. Students with Developmental Trauma can unconsciously perceive the world as a more dangerous place than their peers.
4. Students with Developmental Trauma can unconsciously find it more challenging than their peers to trust in connection with others, including their teachers.
5. Students with Developmental Trauma are more likely to experience bullying and struggle to pay attention in class.
6. Students with Developmental Trauma are more likely to have poor self-esteem due to Limiting Beliefs they developed about themselves to cope with adverse circumstances they could not escape.
7. Educators can help students with Developmental Trauma by learning to recognise the psychological and physical survival strategies of children under 7, to dissociate, play dead or freeze and to fawn or people please at the expense of their own needs.
8. Educators can help students with Developmental Trauma become more resilient by offering them a secure, safe, nervously regulating environment and a secure connection that is reliable and consistent.
9. Educators can help students with Developmental Trauma regulate their nervous systems by applying a Neurosequencial Model of Therapeutics; Regulate, Relate and Reason and guiding students to use healthy dissociative practices to REREGULATE their nervous system.
10. Educators can help students with Developmental Trauma regulate their nervous systems by pausing to consider what may have triggered them, without directly asking them, both in school and at home, including considering the possibility of Parental PTSD.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this Learning Unit, the learners will be able to:

• understand and discuss the unconscious effect of Developmental Trauma on the Human Nervous System and a student’s ability to learn
• recognise and identify when a student is exhibiting Developmental Trauma triggering in class or school
• restore a trauma triggered or nervously dysregulated student to a regulated nervous state