If prudence consists in wishing well to oneself, young flirts are as prudent as old souls. After a single traumatic incident—a dog bite, an accident, or witnessing a drive by shooting—children can indeed develop basic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms similar to those of adults, even if they live in safe and supportive houses. As a result of having the PTSD diagnosis, we can now treat those problems quite effectively. In the case of the troubled children with histories of abuse and neglect who show up in clinics, schools, hospitals, and police stations, the traumatic roots of their behaviors are less obvious, particularly because they rarely talk about having been hit, abandoned, or molested, even when asked. Eighty-two percent of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Because they often are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive, children who suffer from traumatic events now receive pseudoscientific diagnoses such as oppositional defiant disorder meaning this kid hates my guts and will not do anything I tell him to do. Or these kids are labeled as having dysregulation disorder, meaning he has temper tantrums. Having as many problems as they do, these kids accumulate numerous diagnoses over time. Before they reach their twenties, many patients have been given four, five, six, or more of these impressive but meaningless labels. If they receive treatment at all, they get whatever is being promulgated as the method of management du jour: medications, behavioral modification, or exposure therapy. These rarely work and often cause more damage. And psychoactive drugs, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic drugs can actually poison your kids or make them suicidal. 

Medical drugs are chemical substances that changes the brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, or consciousness, and many times the children do not know what they are feeling or experiencing and cannot really express that the drugs are making them sick. And with more than 20 million school children Worldwide to are hooked on this dope, it is important to take into consideration that between 2004 and 2012, there have been 14,773 reports to the U.S. Federal Drug Administration on psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects including: 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 3,287 cases of mania, and 8,219 cases of aggression. And children aged 7 to 19 taking Adderall and Dexedrine and methylphenidate products such as Ritalin, Concerta, and Focalin, are four to five times more likely to die of sudden unexplained cardiac arrest than other children. As we organized our findings, we discovered a consistent profile: a pervasive pattern of dysregulation, problems with attention and concentration, and difficulties getting along with themselves and others. These children’s moods and feelings rapidly shifted from one extreme to another—from temper tantrums and panic to detachment, flatness, and dissociation. When these kids got upset (which was much of the time), they could neither calm themselves down nor describe what they were feeling. Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound. Being so agitated or shot down keeps them from being able to focus on their attention and concentration.

To relieve their tension, these children engage in chronic masturbation, rocking, or self-harming activities (biting, cutting, burning, and hitting themselves, pulling their hair out, picking at their skin until it bled). It also leads to difficulties with language processing and fine-motor coordination. Spending all their energy on staying in control, they usually have trouble paying attention to things, like schoolwork, that are not necessarily directly relevant to survival, and their hyperarousal makes them easily distracted. Having been frequently ignored or abandoned leaves them clinging and needy, even with the people who have abused them. Having been chronically beaten, molested, and otherwise mistreated, they cannot help but define themselves as defective and worthless. They come by their self-loathing, sense of defectiveness, and worthlessness honestly. Was it any surprise they did not trust anyone? Finally, the combination of feeling fundamentally despicable and overreacting to slight frustrations makes it difficult for them to make friends because they have had a breach in the protective barrier against stimuli leading to feelings of overwhelming helplessness. As you are now aware of, the trauma vortex is a rupture causing life-energy to rush out explosively. The trauma vortex is a recapitulation of past, uncompleted responses and exits outside the stream of our present life experience. Nature simultaneously responds by creating a counter vortex to balance the force of the trauma vortex, which is also called the inner vortex. The inner vortex exists inside mainstream life experience and is a primal rhythm or force that is a natural complement to the trauma vortex. It contains resources that naturally assist the healing of trauma. It is part of our instinctual nature that our attention is drawn to danger. Whenever life’s stimuli are associated with past trauma, there is a perceived danger and attention gets pulled in that direction. We tend to either get fixated in reliving or reenacting our traumas or in trying to avoid them. These responses keep us out of the present moment and in an experience of our mind’s distorted interpretations of the present. Yet it is our essential nature to be in the present moment. Past and future exist only as mental constructs. Life occurs in the now. Our wisdom is trying to provide an opportunity for our instinctual and essential natures to unite in healing the trauma. In the name of Allah, the entirely merciful, the especially merciful, all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, it is You we worship, and You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path—the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked Your anger or of those who are astray. Rest in peace, Sean Price, you are loved and will never be forgotten.