| Trauma and Sustainable Resilience in Children of the Poor. |
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Trauma and Sustainable Resilience in Children of the Poor.
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Resilience is the ability to rebound from trauma. Poverty (particularly when linked to oppression) may serve as a chronic traumatic condition. Stress may be experienced as “permanent, pervasive and personal”[1]. Hopelessness and helplessness elbow out resilience as a response to trauma.
When a child experiences a trauma, often the whole family is affected. Likewise, trauma experienced by family members, particularly the parents, also affects the child. Children have the tendency to take on responsibility or blame, even where there is not culpability. The parents’ negative response to stress may reinforce this tendency as the child experiences the negativity as directed to him or her. The helplessness of the family in the face of poverty may be internalized by the child as another mouth to feed.
Trauma is especially difficult in situations of separation from parents, particularly when that separation is a consequence of parental abuse or neglect.
Failure to attain sustainable resilience may have long-term negative effects on the child, even to the point of impinging on brain development. Shame may become integrated in their developing personality. Difficulty in bonding, developmental regression, depression (isolation, irritability), unreasonable fears, or rage may develop.
Contextual considerations often are the basis of resilience. Even in the midst of the most oppressive of circumstances one can often find in poor communities a sense of nobility and warmth on which further resilience can be built. Through their familial experiences, children can learn to find meaning in the aftermath of trauma. In order to avoid regression, interventions need to strive for sustainable resilience.
Poor families often access resilience in their religious faith and/or church. For some Afro American communities, ritualized testimony (preaching/ shouting/ singing) is a foretaste and promise of ultimate liberation. Intimacy with the godhead through symbolic representation is important to Catholics. Buddhism often relies on fate and acceptance. Jews find identity as a people specially chosen by God. There is the expanding role of liberation theology in fostering justice and witnessing God’s preferential option for the poor.
The most effective intervention for the poor is when the agent of healing are the poor themselves. There is a network of understanding and compassion in poor communities. A way for families to sustain achieved success is to share with other families possibility and learned skills.
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[1] Mark Katz,Ph.D. Presentation "Context Trumps Character” at CMHACY Conference, 5/29/02.
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