Trauma In Human Trafficking

Trauma is defined as a life event which sets a task in front of a person and her coping mechanisms that she had developed up until then, which at that moment in life she is incapable of cognitively and emotionally processing in the usual way i.e. using existing mechanisms. Hence, psychological structure faces a challenge and must adapt to the new circumstances. A traumatic event can be an isolated, one-off situation, but also continuous exposure to threatening stimuli and events that the person perceives as difficult and menacing.

When it comes to human trafficking, we are talking about complex trauma, which may be discussed from two important perspectives. Firstly, it is rarer to find cases of trafficking victims who had not had severe traumas

Nonetheless, for the purposes of the research, it is important to define splitting as a tendency to see things as either good or bad. Alongside projective identification, it is considered to be the most primitive defence mechanism. For instance, a child who is the victim of sexual violence inflicted by parents uses splitting and separates the experience of parents s/he depends on and loves from that of parents who are sexually abusing her/him. In that case the child retains the image of parents as good, while identifying with the bad, believing that s/he is bad and that’s why such things are happening. The splitting mechanism may be used to explain body-related feelings attested to by trafficking victims. The body, the experience thereof, and consequences of trafficking induced trauma on the body of the survivor are issues that have been discussed thoroughly in numerous literature texts. The topic of splitting mechanism is vastly covered, since it is understood as a way in which victims separate their consciousness from the body, abandoning the experience that the body is part of them or that it is theirs at all. The relevance of the body is accentuated for therapy of this type of trauma and the standpoint voiced that first and foremost “the body must be cleansed,” i.e. the symbolism understood which the body has for the person who has survived such brutalities that

It is then that the psychological state is stabilised, while the body completely relaxes. This very concept is necessary to keep in mind when working with unsettled clients: first signs of client’s relaxation should be interpreted as an indicator that the interventions are successful, and that we should continue in the same direction for some time so as to stabilise that state. It is essential to understand that creating a safe environment through systematic family therapy is the first task not only of psychotherapists but also all other persons who come into contact with the victims. During systematic family therapy, it is important that members go through the process in which they are stable and sincere in what they can objectively offer, their capacity to contain feelings, so giving the client wholeness and perseverance, represents the key for forming an environment where the mistrusting person starts to rebuild trust. It should be kept in mind that most victims have experienced betrayal by someone they had previously trusted, that they were in a