Professor Katriona O'Sullivan

And so, you know, childhood was robbed from me.

No.

So if, for example, that was a one-off thing that happened to me, I went to my mum and said, Mum, this happened to me.

And my mum said, Oh my God, this is so wrong.

You did nothing wrong.

The consequences of abuse is the shame and also the biological change that comes when you have a continually flooding of certain parts of your brain.

But like the shame part from that type of trauma is very much lives in the child.

And then when you've nowhere to go with that.

So if I'd have been met with support, the ownership and the feeling that I did something and the feeling that there was something wrong with me would have been more challenged and less likely to have seeped in.

So I think you can integrate lots of experiences and you can learn to regulate your nervous system or to be more reflexive.

So like the change in your nervous system stays if there's a biological shift in your fear region because of trauma.

But there's another piece that grows in your brain when you actually get support and treatment, which is your reflective piece that can help manage that.

And if I'd had support, I would have been able to more manage the things that were going on.

So imagine like I'm going to school.

And I can't concentrate because I'm hyper aware of, I'm hyper vigilant for negative things.

If I was getting support for that, Ray, like I'd be like, oh, my heart's bound.

And then there's a part of me, oh yeah, doctor, this said this, breathe, tell the teacher.

So there would be mechanisms for me to be able to work through that.

And because I didn't have any of that.

than it was just me being a traumatised kid.