Trauma Is A Dementor

For years I have been trying to explain to others how trauma affects my children.  And for years it has felt like I'm speaking in tongues to walls.  Recently it occurred to me that I should use an analogy from popular culture to describe what it's like to live with developmental trauma:

"Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself – soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."

Does Professor Lupin's description from the Harry Potter series give you a better idea?

Developmental trauma often begins in infancy or early childhood and it begins externally.  It may start seemingly small... a baby cries and no one responds, a toddler goes hungry for a few days, a Dementor hovers over its prey, adding traumatizing experiences as time passes.  Developmental trauma is rooted in neglect and abuse - in multiple, chronic traumas over time otherwise known as adverse childhood experiences.  It often most severely affects children under the age of five in the most vulnerable positions who have not yet been able to form a secure attachment with a reliable, supportive adult.  Devastatingly, this external Dementor will irreparably affect a child's brain development and, in simplest terms, place the child into a constant state of fight, flight or freeze.  And at this point the Dementor moves from being an external factor to being an internal force as well.

My daughter's trauma is more than a Dementor who got too close from time to time while she lived in an orphanage, it's a Dementor who lives inside of her, despite the fact that she has long been removed from her external traumatic circumstances.  It rears its head every time there's a trigger, a fear, a stressor, a pressure, a memory.  And then it seeps and oozes out of her into every fiber of her life.  It latches onto family and onto friendships, it creeps into classrooms and therapy rooms and playgrounds.  It soaks into birthday parties and vacations and community outings and holidays.

My girl doesn't know yet how to cast her own corporeal Patronus to protect herself from the trauma bubbling over all the time, meaning we have not yet found a single intervention or even a combination of interventions that has allowed her to learn to reliably cope in the frequent moments when the Dementor attacks.  And while we, as her family and her village, try to serve as a non-corporeal Patronus, hovering like a mist over her developing heart and mind, offering security, guidance, love, stability, we are not a fail-safe defense against the powers of the Dementors and that fact alone rocks us to our caregiver core every single day.

Harry Potter did not know what he faced when he first encountered Dementors on the Hogwarts Express because trauma can look confusing to the untrained eye.  It might appear like bad parenting or like a child lacking discipline and self-control.  It may look like emotional dysregulation, like aggression and destruction, like self-injury and suicidal thoughts, like hugging perfect strangers, like nightmares, like poor academic performance and mental disorganization, like extreme self-reliance and need for absolute control, like lying, stealing, manipulation, and like the inability to form trusting and lasting relationships.  Developmental trauma may be (mis)diagnosed as anxiety, Reactive Attachment Disorder, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, alcohol and drug addiction, intellectual disability, sleeping or eating disorders, depression, etc.  What developmental trauma will not be diagnosed as is developmental trauma because DSM-5 does not include or allow for this diagnosis.

Not every person experiences developmental trauma or trauma at the Dementor level - though recent studies estimate that nearly half of the children in the US have been exposed to multiple significant traumatic events - and not everyone is equipped to walk alongside those who did.  But no matter what, you can raise your awareness about this debilitating epidemic and, through your understanding, patience, and tolerance, you will be like chocolate, the perfect antidote for anyone who has been overcome in the presence of Dementors, whether it be the persons who are suffering the trauma or the ones who pay the toll of caring for them and who also struggle under the weight of the Dementor's presence.

Chocolate alone, of course, will not be enough to address developmental trauma in any child's life.  Complex and varied interventions are needed and they will have to be tailored individually.  My sweet girl, for example, is not able to participate in certain treatments yet, but has seen some improvements through play therapy and neuro-feedback - neither of which is covered by our medical insurance.  But there's so much more we could explore and try with her if it were available in our area and if it were covered by insurance.  This is why we need change not only in how we view, understand and support the victims of developmental trauma in our personal lives, but also in how we acknowledge, assist, and treat them in the public areas of medicine, mental health, education, employment, and so on.  Finally, we need to reduce the occurrence of trauma in and of itself by investing in children and families who are most susceptible to the powers of the Dementors...

... because this is not acceptable - no child deserves the Dementor's Kiss:

"You can exist without your soul as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... anything.  There's no chance at all of recovery.  You'll just - exist.  As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever... lost."