My Cousin's Psyhological Trauma

Paulina stayed with her grandmother in Ecuador when she was only six years- old, her parents decided to travel to the United States seeking the American dream. They never imagined that this separation would affect their daughter tremendously. After a few months, Pauline woke up many nights crying and screaming. She was always angry, throwing tantrums and missed behaving. She cried every time when she spoke to her parents on the telephone. The teacher from her school contacted her grandmother and informed that Paulina's performance at school has decreased tremendously.

She was not paying attention in class anymore and he isolated herself from her friends. As a result Paulina became very anxious and depressed. She gained a lot of weight and did not want to go out friends. She dropped out of high school when she was fifteen. Then she moved in with her boyfriend when she was eighteen and had her first daughter. After two years she had her second daughter.

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Paulina was trying to communicate how she felt when her parents suddenly abandoned her. At such young age she could not understand what was happing? Why her parents who read to her every night, play with her and take care of her since she was born until six years of her life suddenly disappeared. She felt that she was not important to them. She also felt betrayed and learn not to trust anybody. In her relationship with her boyfriend she was always nagging, yelling or screaming at her boyfriend.

She became possessive and wanted to control her boyfriend. She felt afraid that he was going to leave too like her parents did. After a few months her boyfriend left her.

When she was twenty years old, her parents finally were able to bring her and her two daughters to the United States. She seems happy in the beginning. She enjoyed trips to the city with her parents. Her mother convinced her to finish her education and get a career. She registered at Boces to get her GED, a credential that is commonly considered equivalent to high school diploma. Six months later she was going to emotional crisis again. She stopped going to school, she was constantly fighting with her mother. She finally told her mother all the resentment that she has for both of them. She told her that the all the money and material things that she got, did not replace them. She wanted to go back to Ecuador to her grandmother. One morning the family was getting ready to go Erick's elementary school graduating, Paulina younger brother. Suddenly Paulina appeared screaming, crying and devastated unable to control her emotions of never been there for any of heard graduation or any especial moment in her life.

My cousin ended up staying to leave here she moved out of her parents apartment. She lives now with her two daughters and her son. She is leaving with her son's father. She is quite edgy, agitated. She also complaints of headaches, muscle tension and tiredness. She recently was hospitalizes for heart problems. Even though, she follows strict diet, goes to the gym and tries hard to lose weight, she still is overweight. she is insecure and very joyously person. She is depressed and feels that she is a loser. She has a hard time keeping a job; therefore, she is home with her four-year son. She is taking medication for depression. She refused psychological therapy because she believes that therapy does not help, every time that she goes to therapy she feels how she left years ago. She does not want to go back to the moment when she lost her parents, she said. It feels like part of your body is taking away.

Nuestro cuerpo

According to Van der Kolk (61) "when recover is blocked the body is triggered to defend itself, which makes people fell agitated and aroused. I noticed that my cousin is always in stage of fry or fight response. She over react to minus issues such as a water spill that her son will make. I will recommend this book to my cousin so she can put in practice the many mind-body therapies that Ven Ber Volk (1943) mentioned in his the book such as mindfulness meditation and mindfulness stress reduction which shown an increase in gray matter in parts of the brain associated with managing stress. All these promising therapies such as meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback. cognitive therapy, open new avenues to healing can be part of any patients recovery plan, no matter how deep scars of trauma or how long ago they occurred, these therapies can still benefit her. If only the healthcare practitioners would begin to connect childhood trauma to and physical and mental health and encourage their patients to explore all treatments options available to them, the patient's past, present and future will be treated. The more we learn about the toxic impact of early stress, the better equipped we are to counter its effects, and help to uncover new strategies and modalities to come back to who it is we really are, and who it was we might have been had we not encountered childhood adversity in the first place.