The Response: The Trauma Expert's Perspective

In Part 1 of this series, I shared my raw, unfiltered story of escaping domestic violence as a 12-year-old child. Now, trauma specialist Erica Bess offers her professional insight into the psychological impact of those experiences—not just on me, but potentially on you or someone you love.

Your Child's Foundation Is Being Shattered

"At 12 years old, that's a very fragile age," Erica explains. "It's right before becoming a teenager... the last little bit of adolescence about to go into teenage years, which is like the hardest time, especially for a female transitioning into becoming a confident young woman."

When your foundation is rocked at such a critical developmental stage, it creates profound instability. This is something many parents in abusive relationships don't fully grasp—your children aren't just "upset" by what they're witnessing. Their entire sense of safety is being demolished.

As Erica puts it: "When a child's caregiver and their safety is being threatened, it causes a child to go through a period of instability and just being plain scared, because their mother represents safety and protection for them. If their safety and protection is being threatened in their mom's life, it creates the same fear and lack of protection for a child as well."

Your Children Are Co-Survivors

This is the hard truth many mothers need to hear: "A lot of times when women hear, 'your kids are going through something because you're in an abusive relationship,' many think that they're going through the majority of the trauma. But your kids are going through just as much as you are, if not even more."

Why? Because children have a natural instinct to protect their parents, just as parents want to protect their children. When they can't fulfill this instinct—when they hear their mother's screams from the other room and can do nothing—it creates a special kind of horror.

"When your child is not able to save you and hears you screaming in the other room, imagine the trauma and just the horror inside that they feel that they can't help save their mom. Their mommy is their everything, their savior, their comfort, where their love comes from," Erica emphasizes.

The Cascade of Trauma

My experience wasn't just one traumatic event—it was a series of them, each compounding the damage:

1. The Escape Trauma: "Having to abandon your home... and then having to just wake up one day thinking you're going to school and then your mom's telling you to go pack your bags... that in itself is a trauma." This sudden uprooting creates what therapists call "adjustment disorder" in children.
2. The Hiding Trauma: "Having to then escape and hide, that created a sense of fear and having to look over your shoulder while you're trying to get to safety." This introduces hypervigilance that can last for decades.
3. The Environmental Trauma: Living in a sketchy motel for nine months exposes children to additional dangers and uncertainties. "You were probably exposed to things around the area of the hotel that weren't the best situation."
4. The Financial Trauma: Moving into an empty apartment, stuffing clothes into pillowcases, sleeping on hard floors. "That's another trauma, because you don't have the finances to be able to make the house warm and cozy again."

Each of these experiences reinforced feelings of instability and insecurity. As Erica notes, "It does create that sense of not being on the right level, that you need to be societal-wise. It makes you feel less than, and then feeling less than can develop low self-esteem."

When Children Plan Violence

Perhaps the most chilling part of my story was revealing that my sisters and I had planned to murder my mother's abuser. Erica wasn't surprised by this.

"I believe that when you've gone through such a traumatic experience and you've experienced your mother getting hurt over and over, a coldness develops inside of the children, who start to think violently, because they become violent too," she explains.

"You're not a normally violent person but because of what you've gone through and experienced through the trauma vicariously, through your mom and what she was experiencing, you experienced it just as if you were going through the same thing."

Erica confirmed what I knew to be true: "Thank God mom did leave when she did, because it would have probably been within that next couple of weeks for it to go down."

The Lifelong Impact

The traumatic experiences I went through didn't just disappear when we escaped. They manifested in what Erica identifies as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which includes symptoms like:

• Hypervigilance: "Always kind of looking over your shoulder or just hyper-aware of possibilities of unsafe situations."
• Triggers: "If she hears a certain bang or a noise, that it could trigger the trauma that silenced her until her twenties."
• Emotional Reactions: Like my extreme protective response toward my stepfather, which came from a place of trauma.

"Having to always be alert and always ready for something to happen, because even when something doesn't happen, you're always ready for it—that just drains a person after a while," Erica explains.

Recognizing Your Own Trauma

If you're reading this and recognizing patterns in your own life or in your children's behavior, know that you're not alone. The way I couldn't speak about my experiences until my twenties is common among trauma survivors.

"Talking about trauma is very difficult," Erica says. "The experience itself is horrible and then having to speak about it sometimes makes you relive your trauma... But it's hard to get through it. Sometimes when you've gone through something and you're trying to explain it to somebody, you can't get through it without your throat choking up and you getting that rock in your throat and then your eyes start tearing."

The Path to Healing

The beautiful thing about sharing this story is that it creates space for healing—both for me and potentially for you.

"I believe that there's a lot of healing that took place today through Fatima even telling her story," Erica observes. "I think that what she did here today was basically healing herself on the podcast, but through healing you guys, by sharing her story."

That healing can begin for you too. You don't have to wait decades to address your trauma, as I did. There are resources available now that weren't available to families like mine in the 1980s.

In that era, as I mentioned, "There was no domestic violence awareness back then. There weren't people around that understood what that even was, knew how to recognize it. There weren't organizations out there that specifically were there to help victims. There was just the police, who may or may not care or may or may not believe you."

Today, support exists. You are not alone.

From Trauma to Purpose

Perhaps the most powerful testament to resilience in my family's story is what happened to the three terrified little girls who fled with nothing but backpacks.

"All three of us got into therapeutic fields, just differently. All three of us are about helping and healing other people."

My sister became a doctorate-level therapist. My other sister became a spiritual healer. And I became a mind shift coach, working to transform thinking patterns that hold people back.

This is the final message I want to leave with you: "If you get out, your children may take all of this garbage and turn it into something good."

Your trauma—your children's trauma—doesn't have to be the end of the story. It can be the beginning of something unexpected and beautiful. But that new chapter can only start when you find the courage to leave.

If you're in an abusive relationship and need help, visit FatimaBey.com/other-help to find resources near you.

If you are a survivor and want to start or continue your healing journey with Erica Bess, please visit EricaBess.com