Can developmental delays from developmental trauma be reversed in adulthood if you have the right therapy?

[Luna_Moth]

I still need to do my research, but I’ve read online that trauma from the age of 5 and under can significantly affect brain development.

I spent most of my childhood with maladaptive daydreaming, dissociating, having fight-or-flight responses, and night terrors. I also had academic setbacks and would get too distracted to pay attention. Teachers would describe me as someone who would “stare into space” a lot.

I’ve had significant delays in school and had a hard time with languages.

My parents tried to make me be bilingual when I was a toddler, but I failed at it miserably.

A therapist I’ve seen has told me that my prefrontal cortex might have been under too much stress when I told her that my father thought I had dyslexia, only for the letters to be switched around in the right place when I was put on ADHD stimulants.

As an adult, I struggle with being a slow reader, but I’m trying to get better at it by reading more since I’m wanting to go to college to study psychology.

Not only that, but my sexual development was also somehow affected. I didn’t have issues with getting naked in order to bathe, but I did have the urge to draw naked women all the time when I was 6. It was a compulsion that I had and my mother shamed and demonized me for it.

Now as an adult I can’t let anyone near me without shutting down while feeling icky or going into a panic attack.

My whole life revolved around avoiding things that would cause fear or anxiety. I never had the chance to excel in life, but now I want to go back and at least try.

I don’t know, I guess I feel slightly hopeless as of now and was hoping to get some answers or be told where to look in terms of research.

 

[Sideways]

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score is a good read on this topic. He explains the neurological differences that result from developmental trauma, and some of the ways that can be remedied. Even for the changes that can’t be ‘reversed’ as such (like the way the amygdala and hippocampus have developed), there are definitely work-arounds.

 

[Luna_Moth]

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score is a good read on this topic. He explains the neurological differences that result from developmental trauma, and some of the ways that can be remedied. Even for the changes that can’t be ‘reversed’ as such (like the way the amygdala and hippocampus have developed), there are definitely work-arounds.

I’ve yet to read that book. At the same time I’m trying not to resort to black and white thinking and figure that I must “doomed from the start”.