Group Therapy for Adverse Childhood Experiences
Adverse childhood experiences come in many forms. The adversity may be cultural, environmental, a family system, passed down through many generations, a series of unfortunate events… None of these are mutually exclusive. Whatever happened, there are consequences that influence how lives play out.
While individual therapy is essential, group therapy provides connection with others who are coping with similar circumstances. There are opportunities for witnessing other people’s experiences and how they have evolved in relationship to their histories. In group you have a place to share your own experiences, be witnessed and connect with other people around the parts of life not readily shared elsewhere.
Adverse childhood experiences can isolate but knowing you are not alone makes a significant difference in how it is experienced.
There is therapeutic benefit to knowing you are not alone. People with similar experiences understand the complex feelings, dilemmas, and triggers that come with complicated pasts. Validation occurs through seeing parts of your self in others and when others recognize parts of themselves in you. This exchange, shared understanding, is a visceral experience that acknowledges on a gut level, the fact that we are not alone in our suffering.
The complexity of surviving an adverse childhood goes beyond “ Bad things happened to me.” Someone who experiences adversity at a young age may see the world more accurately than someone who did not. It is a privilege to be insulated from the the adversities of the world.
For example, being a child of people who were ill equipped to parent due to their life circumstances is more complicated than “I had bad parents. “ Often there is an innate understanding that one's parents were hurt too and that whatever happened to them, it has kept them from being the best they could be. This understanding, meanwhile, and the need to move away from painful circumstances, can be at odds with one another. Getting stuck between “my family is toxic and I must cut them out of my life” or “I am bad and this is all my fault” is common. This either/or turns a complex situation into a black and white choice that feels like a trap, either I loose my connections or I loose myself. Another way to frame the realization is “I understand the hurt and pain that made them who they are,” AND “It has had a significant impact on me AND I have the right to take care of myself.” Parsing out what is workable and what is not within those relationships takes time. Having a community of others who have faced similar dynamics to explore the fallout from growing up in adverse environments is an invaluable resource.
PTSD is not just what has happened to someone, it is also the context and community within which it happened, how long it went on, the way others responded, what came next and whether or not there was an ability to express freely what happened and how it affected you. To feel singled out, unseen, misunderstood or denied a voice around what occurred can add layers of complexity onto any event.
A therapy group is a community of strangers drawn together through the desire to explore the consequences of life events, to share what we do not feel comfortable revealing elsewhere. A chance to be anonymous and known at the same time. A fresh look. A way to get out of the communities that have defined us, that keep us in a place where we can get stuck. Exchanging experiences with others opens up paths out of our stories into new stories with others. It literally rewires our brains. Learning from others expands your own potentials. Group therapy offers a way to move onward from lives we did not choose.
That was then this is now
We are wired to use the past to navigate the present. Our nervous system is programmed to repeat the past in order to understand and gain control over it. When something threatening happens our brain wants to remember it, and either prevent it from happening again, or if it does to take charge of it. Without consciousness, around that we may find ourselves repeating patterns from past events, involving ourselves in the same relationships over and over again. We may be literally living out the narrative of what has happened again and again. This is not always in our best interests. Awareness allows us to make choices, to stop and assess the current situation. How is my past experience showing up in the present?
Awareness of what happened to us as kids and how that affects our current situation is necessary if we want to free ourselves from continuously reacting to past experiences in current situations.
Group therapy offers an experiential approach to working with the psychological impacts of adverse childhood experiences. Weekly doses of people who have been through something similar in intensity provides insight, guidance and nourishment for a future of possibilities rather than repetitions. The community process involves shifting through experiences, sorting out how the past is comes up in the present, sharing feelings, associations, beliefs and impulses that arise in daily life. Group members are witnessing how others cope, watching others evolve, noticing how what is experienced in group and comes up outside of group. All these things contribute to an expanded perspective of what one has endured, how one can evolve and even make use of it along the way. It’s a process of individuating from the past, separating what has happened to us from whom we identify as now. Yes this happened to me, this is how I deal with it and here is a place I can share it with others.
There is no cure for adverse childhood experiences. There will always be a mourning of what could have of been, should have been, as well a count of the losses. There is an art of staying in relationship with what has happened while moving beyond it at the same time. Group therapy provides a a consistent community that can witness, hold, and support not only what you have gone through, but also how you deal with it and where you want to go.