Create Your Own Blueprint For Healing Your Trauma – The Trauma Of Parental Separation Can Be Resolved

 “Speak From Your Heart And Be Heard” offers fictionalized inspiring stories, based on real life and professional experience.

When children are separated from their parents, they often endure profound trauma. It is a heart-breaking experience that can deeply affect their emotional well-being. What happens to these fragile beings when they are taken from their primary source of security and love?

This situation is complex and distressing. This form of trauma tends to erode children’s self- esteem and can manifest in many ways, including anxiety and depression. It can lead to self-destructive or anti-social behaviors. These children, who are in the process of forming their sense of self, struggle to comprehend the sudden loss of their caregivers. They are left grappling with questions that a child should not have to ponder: “Why did my parents leave me?” or “Will they ever come back?”

The resulting emotional scars can have a profound impact on their mental and emotional development, echoing through their lives long after the separation has occurred. This is a particularly relevant concern, given the children at our borders who’ve been affected. You can read my story about this topic in “Children Caught in The Crossfire” in my collection, “Speak from Your Heart And Be Heard: Stories Of Courage And Healing.”

Most of us have had experience with trauma in our lives. I’ve worked with many clients who’ve reached out to me in their times of distress and trauma. I helped a single mother whose fears of losing her children brought her to therapy. As a young child, “Charlotte,” spent many evenings locked in the car alone during her mother’s long bouts drinking in the bar. When I met her, Charlotte was addicted to prescription meds. She arrived wild-eyed, hair flying, her complexion a grey pallor. She wanted to quit for her children’s sake and longed to go to a detox center but feared social services would take her children away, as they had once before.

I vowed to help my client. Aware of the damaging effects of family separation on children, I knew it was critical to protect Charlotte and her children. I’ve understood the importance of young children’s secure and consistent attachment with a parent figure since reading the work of British psychologist and father of attachment theory, John Bowlby.

My short story, “Caught in the Crossfire,” inspired by my work with Charlotte, is about the effects of children being separated from their parents. It offers hope and resolution . . .

Psychoanalyst Dr. Nancy Burke says trauma freezes people in time. Children who are traumatized, particularly those who haven’t acquired the language to conceptualize their feelings or put them into words, can’t say what’s frightening them. As a result, many “act out,” and are not able to relate to their parents or others in a meaningful way. Research confirms neurological and emotional consequences of separation.

Tragically, despite all the hope and joy when parents are reunited with their children, it may be a shock rather than a happy ending. Parents aren’t always prepared for the long period of recovery. Even if returning children do have language, they don’t always have access to their feelings and can’t put them into words to make relationships manageable. One child couldn’t speak, but sat in his play group chewing on a Nerf ball and biting it to pieces. Charlotte’s toddler couldn’t draw, but could only chew on crayons when she returned. As Dr. Burke points out, “normal reactions to abnormal circumstances look abnormal.”

In Charlotte’s case, the system had overreached itself in the past, by taking her children away. Yet, I do believe we have to draw the line somewhere. Children neglected by parents “under the influence” are surely at risk and, of course, we need them to be protected. I feel compassion for both the children and their parents, at the same time. Fortunately, in Charlotte’s case, we were able to help her detox without leaving her home to do it. We also mandated her attendance at our parenting skills program and followed up with family therapy for a year. After her rehabilitation, Charlotte went back to school and had a successful career as a counselor.

As you’ll note, the articles on my blog on this website span topics from diversity to human relations, psychology, single parenting, immigration and children, marriage and family and much more.

Speak From Your Heart and Be Heard: Stories of Courage and Healing offers fictionalized, inspiring stories, based on real life and professional experience. The book is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle and some independent bookstores.

In her review, Liz Moulden said, “The short stories from Speak From Your Heart And Be Heard have given me a second chance and a voice, the voice I never had. What’s exciting about this book is each main character in these short stories experienced some kind of abuse/ trauma but each finds their inner voice. With help, they’re able to heal. Anyone who has ever experienced abuse or trauma as I have will be able to see snapshots of themselves in these stories.”

Kixx can be reached using the information below or by email at drkixxgoldman@gmail.com. I’m available for media interviews.

Speak From Your Heart and Be Heard: Stories of Courage and Healing is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle and some independent bookstores.