I recently cycled out of a very intense, two-week cycle of emotions that were a symptom of my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While it is fresh on my mind (and psyche!), I thought I would share what it feels like from the inside to help you understand your abused child a little better.

Anyone with PTSD might experience some form of this cycling of emotions. The symptoms will be much more intense for anyone who suffered from ritual abuse like I did.

It started with mild feelings of anxiety. I could not relax. I noticed myself slipping back into some of my anxiety-control tics, such as blowing on my hands. I could not pinpoint why, only that I was feeling a bit out of sorts.

Next came the headache. As the stress began to build inside of me, my head began to pound. I became cranky and had a shorter temper than normal. I was less able to shake off the minor irritations of life with humor, which is my normal way of coping with the day-to-day annoyances that arise.

Sleep loss came next.

As I shared on Trauma Tuesday in my post Relationship Between Anger and Anxiety & Depression, traumatized adopted children who repress their anger often struggle with anxiety, depression, or both. While some anxiety and depression can have a biological cause, adopted children who suffered from trauma, such as abuse or neglect, are very likely to be repressing their anger, which can cause or exacerbate issues with anxiety or depression.

If you are parenting a traumatized adopted child who rarely or never expresses anger, then your child needs you to teach him or her how to do it. Children who grow up in unsafe homes do not learn how to express their anger safely, so they need you to provide them with the tools for doing this.

Last week, FosterMommy wrote an interesting blog entitled Attending Support Group Combined With Training. In that blog, she mentioned a form of self-injury called “picking”:

Anxiety can cause picking the nose, ears, scalp, or any other orifice even to the point of bleeding and including self-mutilation.

“Picking” is a form of self-injury, but most people do not identify it as such because it is minor when compared with cutting, burning, head-banging, and other forms of self-injury like breaking your own bones. Picking is quite common among traumatized adopted children.

Once a month, anyone touched by foster care, kinship care, or adoption can attend a free support group meeting in town. The social worker who runs the support group also gives everyone in attendance a certificate indicating completion of two hours of training credit. All of the area foster care agencies accept these training hours towards the required annual training hours. In fact, our private agency goes so far as to encourage all of their foster parents to attend each month. After more than a decade of fostering, I still come away refreshed with renewed optimism from an evening with a support group or training session. I did not hear anything new at training, but I heard something with new ears.