Was I abused? Childhood PTSD Info And Questionnaire

[Music] everyone Patrick Tuohey in here and welcome back to my youtube channel for the past month or so I've been working on a childhood PTSD questionnaire to help my clients figure out if their present problems is in any way related to their childhood growing up and while I was doing that I figured it'd be a good idea to do a quick video on what childhood PTSD actually is so we're gonna get right into that in a moment and then the questionnaire follows afterward if at any given time in the video where you feel like it's too heavy or too much just take a break and come back to it so I hope it's helpful to you guys and we'll just get right into it so here goes so when we think of our problems in life we can look back on our childhood and ask was it really that bad you may also be wondering well what qualifies as child abuse really and isn't every family dysfunctional well let's look at a childhood PTSD research study the CDC Kaiser Permanente adverse childhood experience study from the mid to late 90s it studies health risk of childhood PTSD over time and it's actually still used and monitored by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention the a study categorizes specific types of abuse experiences the first category is abuse which consists of physical emotional and sexual abuse the second category is neglect which consists of emotional neglect and physical neglect the third category is household dysfunction which consists of substance abuse domestic violence incarceration divorce and mental illness the more aces that a person qualifies for the more health problems may be prevalent in their life these are incredibly difficult things to overcome in adulthood you can go online and take the a study questionnaire and figure out what your a score is and I find that the study is extremely helpful about correlating childhood PTSD and adult health problems however I find that the questions tend to only isolate cases of extreme abuse and low scores might contribute to erroneously ruling out childhood PTSD some of you may already know without a doubt that there was abuse in your childhood and some of you may be thinking I barely qualify for one ace why am I not happy though what gives let's take a hypothetical of two people from very different family systems the first came from an alcoholic sexually off physically abusive with constant fights a depressed parent that's like five aces and what I would call blatant abuse the other person came from a family system where there was an anxious parent perhaps religious fundamentalism deep criticism no one could do emotions is that like one ace that's what we would call a tricky family which is something we're gonna come back to here's the thing though in my experience both of these people have very similar symptoms and problems intimacy problems self-esteem problems negative core beliefs depression anxiety addictions reactions and attachment problems so what is a tricky family well a tricky family looks good on paper things seem normal and two things seem stable in terms of providing basics for kids things like food education housing things generally work but the tricky family is deceivingly emotionally dysfunctional and within that a child's emotional and developmental needs are not met here are some examples of a tricky family well one is having a parent who's emotionally shut down another is having parents with toxic intimacy between them or poor intimacy between them having a parent who has alcoholic behaviors having a parent who is rageful narcissistic or authoritarian perhaps the family has major elephants in the room family secrets and can't talk about anything or that a child is abused outside of the home and they can't bring that information to mom and dad because it's not safe or simply that someone in the family has a medical illness and the children's feelings are not processed around that meta illness so what does the tricky family have to do with the a study well remember all those categories that we were looking at and my experience culturally what I find is that we take these things at face value and we think about them in extremes only let's take mental illness for example I think when we think of the paradigm of mental illness we think about schizophrenia having a parent who's bipolar having a parent with borderline personality disorder or a parent that struggles with psychosis and suicidal ideation but mental illness and mental health can also mean having a parent who's neurotic a depressed or anxious parent a parent with untreated PTSD and trauma themselves a non protective parent or a parent who's self consumed and unavailable we can do this with the other categories from the a study for example physical abuse well that can mean beatings but it can also mean spanking and corporal punishment emotional abuse that can mean swearing at or humiliating a child but it can also mean a child who is parental ID or made into a surrogate spouse sexual abuse that can mean physical sexual abuse but that can mean having a child who's exposed to things like pornography or the adults being sexually off around the child and domestic violence that can certainly mean witnessing physical violence against a parent but it can also mean witnessing verbal assault or threat of a violence here are some takeaways and my experience childhood PTSD is greatly under diagnosed and misunderstood to childhood Pete do you need some redefining as we often define it in extremes only severe beatings sexual abuse extreme neglect and three childhood PTSD treatment is more effective when we can clearly define abuse and inadequate parenting his family dysfunction affected you if so how the questionnaire you're about to watch can be helpful in figuring that out and in targeting specific behaviors and problems to work on in treatment with the therapist who gets it or 30 of the 60 questions you can pull the full questionnaire from my website answer these thinking over the course of your lifetime not just in the present the answer choices are yes/no and maybe think of a maybe as a half yes ready here goes number one growing up one or both of my parents were rageful volatile dominating depressed unavailable or neurotic number two growing up one or both of my parents were greatly dissatisfied or negative with each other number three growing up the adults needs and feelings came first number four growing up things were not talked about emotions situations or elephants in the room number five rejection puts me in a very bad place number six I've consistently felt that there's something wrong with me and I feel defective number seven I can be addicted to things alcohol food drugs sex media even caffeine number eight I have a relationship and intimacy problems number nine I can isolate number ten I tend to get through things rather than fully experience and enjoy them vacations holidays project shopping gatherings number 11 I struggle with depression and/or anxiety number 12 I can have trouble feeling joy and/or spontaneity number 13 I can space out disassociate numb out or feel empty number 14 being wrong or right means too much to me number 15 I struggle with ambiguity loose ends things lift up in the air people not getting back to me number 16 when things are going well I don't trust it number 17 I can set myself up by being too optimistic or can miss red flags think about this and how we judge people number 18 I have food sleep or energy issues exhaustion and lethargy and/or busy energy number 19 my libido is under active or overactive number 20 small talk can make me disinterested irritated or uncomfortable number 21 I have difficulty tapping into anger or possibly have too much of it number 22 I can be overly focused on fairness number 23 I can get upset when others don't read what is going on with me number 24 I can overpower or shutdown during conflict number 25 I can have fights or arguments with people in my head number 26 I've been told I'm intense too serious we're just engaged too aloof number 27 after an intense conversation or situation my feelings our thoughts catch up with me after a delay example I should have said that number 28 I can be greatly affected by other people's moods where I'm responsible for those moves or I feel threatened and become defensive number 29 I can be reactive or deeply affected by criticism number 30 my emotions and reactions can get in the way of my functioning or prevent me from being who I want to be how to score add up all your yeses and then add up your maybes and add them to your yeses for a second score any more than five yeses points to it being worthwhile to explore childhood with a skilled childhood PTSD therapist [Music]

Channel: Patrick Teahan LICSW

Views: 1,926,321

Keywords: was i abused, child abuse, childhood trauma, mental illness, mental health, ptsd, emotional healing, psychology, depression, anxiety, life hacks, narcissism, toxic family, recovery, parenting, emotions, abuse, emotional abuse, healing, narc, triangulation, parentified, survivor, how to heal, how to heal from childhood trauma, how to heal from narcissitic abuse, how to heal anxiety, how to, narcisisstic mother, complex ptsd, adverse childhood experiences

Id: EBpF8sWycQQ

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2018