CHENNAI: Trauma, attachment styles, repression — these buzzwords teem in online discourse, inexplicably altering our ideas of how we view ourselves and the world. Today, when therapy speak, and multitudes of information about mental health reign freely, what does trauma mean? Often viewed as flight and fight responses, how do we understand what trauma does to our brain? As the globe tackles the issues of child sexual abuse, how do we empathetically hear a child’s story? Peter Choate, professor of social work at Mount Royal University in Canada, speaks to CE about child sexual abuse, the neurobiology of trauma, attachment styles, and harmful sexual behaviour.
Excerpts follow:
When dealing with a case of child sexual abuse, what can stakeholders do while collecting evidence, and keeping the child’s interests in mind?
One of our first priorities is the protection of the child. A child is pre-adolescent, memory is very concrete and does not have the nuance of being abstract. What happens then is the child has a sense of the story; the first time they tell the story is the best time because how the person is listening to it influences how the child will then retell the story because they confabulate based on the response of the person first listening to the story.
The fewer times we require the child to tell the story the better; the more often, the more complicated the story becomes. It is not that the child is lying but what they are doing is incorporating the responses.
The other thing to remember is worldwide, 1.2-8% of children who report child sexual abuse (CSA) are not telling the truth, which means over 90% are telling the truth.
The vast majority of cases are never reported, when we think of the idea of protecting the child, the best thing we can do is have a good interview at the very beginning, record, transcribe it.
Anyone else who needs to hear the story can hear the recording and that way the child does not have to retell the story. In Canada, the child is brought to the child advocacy centre, and one professional — usually the police officer — will interview the child in a separate room and it will be videotaped. Outside the room are social workers who are able to watch, listen, and take notes so the child is not bombarded.
Another crucial element is how we set up for the child to tell the story. We will not get as accurate a story, versus getting down on the ground, playing with the child, and letting them tell it slowly and in pieces that make sense, over time. This is what we refer to as child-centric reporting, so the way in which a child tells the story is respected.
We’re helping the child, system, and court. The idea is if we don’t get on the ground we are not on the level of the child. If not, we are creating an authoritative space that doesn’t allow the child permission to tell.
The next is engaging in play. We can do a play where it is called parallel play, the child plays with whatever the child wants to play. If you are playing with them, you are listening to them to tell the story in a space they tolerate. You are not engaging in a way that is intimidating.
Could you elaborate on the neurobiology of trauma?
Each of us has a cerebral cortex. And down, we have the brainstem and so this is the ancient brain, and down here, you are completely in reaction mode. Up there, it’s thinking mode. When something happens that causes you to go into fear, you are down here.
In learning to ride a motorcycle, did you have a moment when you thought, ‘oh dear, I’m going to die’? You are moving down this way (to the brain stem) then, with several steps in between. But when someone gets reminded of the trauma, they go down here because they are in fear. There’s flight, fright, and freeze.
What happens is you have moved into an ‘I don’t know what is going to happen to me’ mode. That’s the notion that it is very hard to stay in this part of the brain, and you go into the lower parts of the brain that are more about fear and emotion and less about intellectual processing. This is also why memory in the actual event can be impaired.
In a previous paper, you’ve mentioned that there is no universal ‘right’ way to parent and that the idea of attachment styles can be eurocentric. Please elaborate.
Everybody attaches. Here’s an exercise I use with my students back home and my class is multicultural. The question is: your father is 75 years old and he can’t look after himself.
What do they do with him? The white students always say dad goes to a retirement home, the African students say if dad can go home to his village, they’ll look after him, the Filipino and Chinese cultures say the oldest boy takes him, and once when I did this, two young Punjabi girls said — “we don’t get the question. Dad has always lived with us. Why would that change?’ Those are cultural expressions of attachment and we attach based on cultures.
An elder in an Indigenous culture gave an example that in a communal culture, he is an elder and he is walking around the street and he sees a young man misbehaving and tells him to stop. and he will stop, nobody will question the elder. If we go to Australia, or Nepal of indigenous Aboriginals, the expression changes. The safety of the child is rooted in family structures, and reflective of culture.
With especially boys, how do you deal with their harmful sexual behaviour, how do you deal with it when it happens in schools?
We have to look at cultural, and family norms and what has been the history in the family and what other influences are there. Today, I could bring up child pornography on the Internet in two seconds, but it’s nothing compared to what’s happening on the dark web.
We have to think about how we model a child into appropriate sexual behaviour? How do we create a culture where there isn’t the idea that one gender is entitled to something at the expense of the other gender? That requires cultural institutions, laws, social norms, and communal and educational norms. Remember, sexual abuse is happening today all across the world at this moment and no place has figured it out.
What does intergenerational trauma look like in the brain?
In Canada, this is a big deal...there is social transmission. Generation Zero has an effect on Generation Two, which is the grandchildren and Generation One has an effect on three and that keeps going on.
An American researcher, Rachel Yehuda, who researched the epigenetics of holocaust survivors, still finds epigenetic markers in current generations of children who are five generations from the holocaust. But we know the epigenetics of trauma are strong which means generations one to two will be strong. Strong evidence shows (it moves) from generation, and this will continue until trauma stops. Then comes the healing period where it slowly dissipates.
In India, it’s been over a decade since the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. As a global expert on issues on children, what do you think are the gaps in our legal system? What can we do better?
Every country has gaps. Legal systems are necessary but they are not the answers, they are a response to problems in society. They are important because they create ways for us to respond, but further back, it’s important to address social norms, and what’s acceptable and not acceptable. The challenge with social norms is they fluctuate.
Peter Choate will deliver Tulir — Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse’s 11th annual lecture on ‘Neurobiology of Trauma’, at Prem Vihar Hall, Lady Andal School, on December 16, 6.30 pm.