How Developmental Trauma Can Arrest Our Development & Wound Our Boundaries

A Crash Course In Childhood Development

Boundaries can get wounded in obvious, external ways- through physical or sexual abuse outside the home, or by growing up in a war torn or natural disaster-ridden country, for example. Such shock traumas can severely wound our boundary development in ways that may have little to do with how well we were parented. But because boundary development starts in early childhood, the majority of boundary injuries happen because parents are human and make mistakes in their parenting, interrupting the natural process of healthy childhood development and putting children at risk of developmental arrests that may never get healed without proper treatment.

Boundary injuries can happen at any phase of childhood development, and people tend to get stuck in the phase that got interrupted and may never outgrow that phase unless their boundary injuries get treated. Margaret Mahler, MD, a Hungarian-born American psychiatrist, elucidated the phases we now understand as part of healthy childhood development, so let’s unpack boundary wounding through this trauma-informed lens.

Normal Symbiosis, or “bonding:” The first phase of healthy boundary development is meant to be a boundaryless phase of healthy “symbiosis.” When things go well, the newborn bonds to the primary parent, usually the mother. The child learns that it can cry when it’s needy, and a “good enough” mother responds to the need by feeding the child, changing his diaper, comforting him when he’s scared, and such. The child develops feeling safe and trusting that his needs will be met. At this point, the child can’t tell the difference between baby and mother. This usually ends between five months and one year old in healthy babies. 

Some boundary injured mothers really like this phase. You know these moms! They’re the ones who instantly want another baby right after their baby outgrows this phase. They never want baby to outgrow the symbiosis period, because it’s so blissful for some boundary wounded mothers to feel at one with this dependent, cuddly little human. 

These mothers may view their children as a narcissistic extension of themselves, failing to realize, because they can’t see the baby as a separate being deserving of becoming their own person, that interrupting the next stage of development will handicap their child’s life unless that child grows up to get good therapy one day. These mothers will try to interrupt the child’s development so the child doesn’t move beyond the bonding phase, not realizing that she will be handicapping this child relationally in ways that could impact that adult’s whole life. The boundary-wounded mother’s self-absorption, usually caused by her own unmet needs from childhood, causes her to get triggered whenever her baby starts to move into the next phase. Because the baby is fully dependent on her, her desire to interrupt the next phase may override the baby’s natural impulse to develop and grow. She wins, and everybody loses.

Sadly, not all babies get their early symbiotic connection needs with the mother met, often for reasons that are nobody’s fault and have nothing to do with how much the mother or other caregivers love them or care for them. Sometimes children are separated from their mothers for unavoidable reasons, such as NICU stays or death or hospitalization of the birth mother or a mother’s career demands. Scientists and therapists are still learning at the cutting edge of attachment theory what happens when babies are separated from the birth mother, even when connection with the birth mother is replaced very quickly by a birth father, an adoptive parent, a gay parent of a surrogate’s baby, or a nanny, for example. There is controversy around this topic, but as explored in the book Primal Wounds by psychotherapist and adoptive mother Nancy Newton Verrier, new understandings in the field of traumatology now suggest that what many believed- that any caregiver loving the baby in the first year could be an adequate substitute for the biological birth mother- might not be the case. It might be true that babies bond prenatally to the birth mother and experience a hard to treat trauma that might result from abandonment by an adoptive or surrogate parent, even when the child’s others needs are met.

As described by Laurence Heller, PhD in Healing Developmental Trauma, from what we know, which is still evolving, this healthy symbiosis phase of development might get interrupted by separation or inconsistent care from the birth mother, even if another caregiver takes over immediately at birth. Yet, even in the absence of such extreme causes of separation of the infant from the birth mother, boundary wounded and traumatized birth mothers are not always wired to give their babies the kind of love, affection, connection, attention, and bonding the baby needs in order to develop healthy attachment, which is the foundation for growing into an adult capable of healthy relationships.

Even if the baby stays with the birth mother and nobody dies or is hospitalized, babies can fail to bond with their mothers if one or both parents are abusing substances, the mother has postpartum depression, a teen mother is overwhelmed by the demands of parenting, a mother is incapable of adequate bonding because of too many successive births (as when a mother lacks adequate access to family planning), the mother is “checked out” because of her own boundary wounding, as with a narcissistic, borderline, psychotic, or dissociated mother, or parents who practice “cry it out” sleep training, neglecting the baby’s protest when in need. 

At its most heartbreaking and obvious, babies will not get this need met if they grow up feeling rejected, blamed, or even hated by one or both parents, if they are made to feel like a burden, if there is physical or emotional abuse, or if other Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) make connection with the mother impossible. A baby’s need for healthy symbiosis with the mother might also fail to get met if there are intergenerational or collective traumas, such as being born to Holocaust survivors, those who experienced Indigenous genocide, or survivors of the impact of slavery and systemic racism. Being born in wartime or in significant poverty can also interrupt this key developmental phase.

If any of these needs are not met, a series of predictable behavioral patterns tends to arise, because the need for connection with the caregiver is the most critical developmental need of any child, so if this need doesn’t get met, the nervous system does not develop properly. Without getting this need met, serious attachment wounding happens and adults tend to grow up scared of intimacy, but also craving it.

This creates an entirely different kind of developmental trauma than is typical with those who do get early needs for connection with the mother met but then fail to individuate and have a tendency to enmesh and lose their separateness in relationships. If the need for connection goes unmet, children tend to grow up with a certain lack of affect, intellectualizing or spiritualizing, rather than feeling genuine emotions. They may feel shame about needing anything from anyone and act as if they are self-reliant loners, although they’ll often feel lonely. Because real, healthy intimacy terrifies these folks but they still may want romance, sex, and connection, they tend to pick as relational partners other traumatized individuals who did not get their connection needs met and therefore don’t challenge their need for personal space. For example, they may pick long distance partners and avoid ever getting married or moving in with someone, using interpersonal distancing as a substitute for adequate boundaries. 

They may withdraw in emotionally disturbing situations, finding it hard to stay present when someone else is feeling emotional. They are seldom aware that they are out of touch with their bodies, and they tend to dissociate, having never had the support they needed from the mother to fully embody as a baby. They may fear being alone, but they are also easily overstimulated and overwhelmed by others, so they tend to isolate. They may feel like a frightened child in an adult world, having never really gotten their infant needs met. They may grow up not knowing how to deal with or appropriately manipulate their environment, struggling to make things happen and finding it harder than usual to accomplish tasks, assert themselves, or complete goals. They may also have an exaggerated fear of death and disease. 

People who did not get their healthy symbiosis needs met often feel an intense ambivalence between their deepest desire, which is for deep connection, yet this yearning for contact is also their deepest fear. Paradoxically, they yearn to fill an inner emptiness but they also fear intimacy and fulfillment of that void at the same time. They often grow up with a strong need to exert radical self-control, while also needing to control their environment and other people. They often have a great difficulty tolerating real love and intimacy, no matter how much part of them craves it. They may grow up wildly curious, wanting to know all the answers, obsessing over “why” and “how,” which tends to make them transcendentally or intellectually oriented. Because their natural infant embodiment process gets interrupted, they often develop spiritual gifts that result from chronic dissociation, leaving them access to esoteric spiritual states, but impairing their embodiment, grounding, and sexuality. They tend to be drawn to therapies, meditations, and spiritual movements that reinforce dissociation, spiritualizing their trauma, rather than helping them get their trauma treated, rather than spiritually bypassed.

Those whose early connection needs don’t get met may have shame-based identification, such as shame at existing, feeling like a burden, a sense of chronic loneliness, or feelings of not really belonging anywhere. They may also have pride-based identifications, such as pride in being a loner, pride in not needing others, and pride in not being emotional.  Many of these people get psychiatrically pathologized and categorized by the DSM-5 as mentally ill or diagnosed by doctors as physically ill, but these trauma symptoms may be simply a side effect of unmet developmental needs- and they may be more successfully treated with trauma healing than with medication, though meds may be necessary in the short run.

More than any other kind of developmental trauma, these folks tend to be particularly vulnerable to certain physical and mental health diagnoses, including migraines, ADHD, colic, dissociative disorders, digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome, environmental sensitivities and allergies, asthma, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, anxiety, and panic attacks.
On a relational level, children who miss out on this bonding phase also tend to grow up with attachment disorders that interrupt their ability to enjoy the nourishment of healthy relationships as they grow older. If this early need for healthy connection in the first year of life goes unmet, adults tend to have trouble bonding in a way that makes them capable of giving and receiving love, and this can become a heartbreaking, lifelong handicap unless it is treated with cutting edge trauma therapies, which often must begin with very gentle somatic therapies.

Because of this kind of trauma, people might tend to use walls instead of boundaries, substituting a kind of emotional concrete box instead of a relational greenhouse, making intimacy almost impossible unless a concerted effort to recover is prioritized. While some people may spew themselves all over the place, lacking any containment inside their own boundary, people with this particular kind of boundary wounded may be so contained that they can’t let anyone else inside.

As Pia Mellody writes in The Intimacy Factor:

“When someone directs emotion and thought at us and also when we are directing emotion and though at another, we will become dysfunctional in either direction if we cannot properly contain our energies behind healthy boundaries. Let us say you want the girl you have just met and been attracted to to feel strongly for you. You tell her she’s the most beautiful creature God ever created. You tell her you are bowled over and that no one else but she matters. She has become the center of your universe. This blast of energy, rather than pleaing your girlfriend, scares her. She thinks you may be crazy. After all, you hardly know one another, she thinks. She withdraws behind a wall.

When one person becomes boundaryless, we allow in too much from another person or send out too much of ourselves. We may be too loud, too sexual, too emotional, or too overwhelming with our opinions or learning. When we are sending out too much stuff and bombarding our partner, she becomes vulnerable, victimized, resentful and miserable. We have broken through her safety zon and caused her discomfort and pain.

On the other hand, when there’s too much containment, we protect the self so carefully that nothing reaches us. We have constructed walls for boundaries and made ourselves invulnerable. Your partner might tell you he cannot trust you. You are unmoved. He touches you affectionately, and you have no reaction.  He shares his opinions with you, and you seem not to have heard. You have shut down and stepped out of relationship. Without outside intervention, such as seeing a therapist, there is no possibility of change. With walls for boundaries, there is no such thing as a relationship. Intimacy has been denied.”