[Research] suggests that experience in childhood when the brain is developing, can have a long-term impact on how someone responds to stressful situations.
But study leader Professor Michael Meaney said they believe these biochemical effects could also occur later in life.
“If you’re a public health individual or a child psychologist you could say this shows you nothing you didn’t already know.
“But until you show the biological process, many people in government and policy-makers are reluctant to believe it’s real.
“Beyond that, you could ask whether a drug could reverse these effects and that’s a possibility.”
Beyond this research being super interesting and cool progress in the realm of information for child-abuse survivors: Oh my… how amazingly validating to my experience with child abuse!! That bit about if you’re a public or mental health professional that this is something you already knew – makes me a bit misty. Like many abuse survivors, it feels like I’ve been invalidated my whole life. In some ways, this is probably even literally true.
I personally struggle with stress. My team thinks it’s a combo of PTSD and ADD that causes my special mix of anxiety at even things that I KNOW are not important (like getting scared that I will get hit, because I dropped a glass on the floor and it shattered). I work very hard at trying to deconstruct the thinking that can cause these reactions. I try to relax. Deep breathing. Meditation. I just have never seemed to be able to get away from this anxiety and it is not always predictable when I will be hit with some giant, stress reaction.
It is just so relieving to read more evidence that I am NOT just making this up. My family would much rather I believe I’m just some drama-queen, loser who just can’t get anything right. Grrrr. That really makes me mad, since I make it a point to steer clear of unnecessary drama. God forbid I am jumpy if I didn’t hear someone walk up behind me and they touch my shoulder and I jump or scream… that is all it takes to make one a drama queen in my family. In fact, once when my mother did just that, I ended up getting a lecture about how I am a dangerous person, because I am startled by people tip toeing (which is exactly what she did) up behind me while I was taking a nap under a tree. She told me that my being startled made her feel bad and therefore I had abused her. Right. I’m responsible for her feelings. Silly of me to forget. *headdesk*
The nice bit is that I’m on ritalin now, which has me reacting pretty much normally to most things. Since ritalin, no one has made that face at me that tells me they think I just reacted fairly big about something relatively “small”. It’s a relif. But, what really makes me mad is that I internalized the message that I was stupid and crazy for being how I was pre-ritalin. In recent years, I could get myself cooling off and coming back from the land of panic in seconds or minutes, but even that didn’t seem to stop the faces. My guess is that folks saw my reaction on my face and were startled by it themselves, because most of my freaking out happened quietly inside my mind, where I tried very hard to keep it from showing. Ack… I’ve just felt so judged. I’ve judged myself. I’ve let other people judge me. I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s causing some reflection on how it used to be…
I wish I had been more brave. I wish I had laughed off the teasing of friends and co-workers, when they said I was tightly wound or something like that. I wish I hadn’t swallowed the idea down and let it thrive in me and break my heart for years and years. How sad.
The silver-lining would be my learning a lesson from this not to internalize the teasing or superficial judgements of others…
Yeah, I think I’m going to chew on that for a while.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
I can totally believe that research. That, along with Pavlovian conditioning, explains why, when I’m around my mother, if she raises her hand, for any reason, I duck. Case in point, when I was about 32 (and had been on my own for 14 years, and hadn’t been hit by her in at least 16 years), we were all at a family gathering (Turkey Day, I think). I got stuck sitting next to my mother at dinner, and she was talking about something and raised her hand to make a point, and I ducked away from her. She looked at me and said I must have a guilty conscience about something if I thought she was going to hit me, and maybe she should hit me, just in case. She sees absolutely nothing wrong with that thinking, which is why I haven’t seen her in 12 years and have no intentions of ever seeing her again until she’s in her coffin.
I also don’t react well to stress, and I think a lot of that is because our house was full of stress most of the time.
As an abuse survivor & one who is approaching 60, I can say that abuse does indeed have a permanent impact. I just got news within the last hour from the person I love that things may get more difficult for us soon, that his own life has become more complicated, that his very good, very responsible, long-term job may be in danger, & my first reaction was pure panic & fear…”I am going to lose you, we won’t ever be together fulltime”, etc., because I never had anything solid, anything which was really mine, anyone upon whom I could truly count. We will make it, I know that, & handle what we must, but whenever there is a scary or possibly negative change in my life or even a fair chance of one, I become frightened & insecure & take awhile to calm down. And I also fear any kind of physical violence & tend to flinch at sudden moves & loud noises.
Both of my abusive parents are dead, as are the other people who abused me in childhood, & I have no contact with the kids who made my school life hell, but every day is a struggle for any degree of real self-love, any real peace, or sense of security. And the way things are with the economy these days just increases the worry & the fear.
I haven’t been to an Al-Anon meeting in many years, but it does help to be reminded that I am far from alone, that I am not a rare freak as an aging, fat, disabled abuse survivor. Perhaps we can help & encourage each other some by sharing our experience, strength & hope & whatever wisdom we manage to gain.
And that is dead-on, Vesta44. My house was a hellhole, where I was not just abused…emotionally, verbally, sexually, often physically…but where my very life was in nearly constant danger, with attempts to kill me & many threats to do so. Love, peace, & some kind of security are life’s greatest necessities for me & doing the things which bring me comfort…wearing clothes I love, reading books I love, including repeatedly re-reading favorites, surrounding myself with familiar things, eating comfort foods…keep me alive & functioning day after day.
Where I was going with that, when I said Vesta44 was dead on, was about not dealing well with stress. It hit home for me, since I have been stressed most of the time for most of my life, & I also do not deal with it, & I am sure that it is that I had virtually no timeouts from stress when I was a child, & as an adult, a mother, etc., I also continued to live with some degree of abuse, as well as constant financial stress, which I guess is common to most of us these days.
Thank you for the validation, ladies. I will circle back to this post in a bit… right now, I am still chewing on these ideas to an extent.
The funny bit is that if I had read this article a few months ago, it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. I just happen to be in this phase right now where I’m feeling guilty for my PTSD/ADD symptoms… I need to chew on that a little bit more and then I will comment more… or maybe it deserves it’s own post… so much to think about…
There’s a body of research on Adverse Childhood Experiences and the lasting impact on health and behavior long into adulthood. A place to start is here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ACE/outcomes.htm
On one hand, this research is depressing, and on the other, validating. I think the more that people who didn’t have “adverse experiences in childhood” learn about this research, the more they will see that it’s not an even playing field for everyone in terms of health. And many people have more to “overcome” than others.
When I observed this information being presented to a group of public health professionals, they really wrestled with what did it mean — some of them kept wondering how they could “fix it.” I think the point is that there are some things we can’t fix — or maybe put more precisely — that others can’t fix, but that those of us who are survivors of adverse childhood experiences can learn to live our best with. And others need to understand that they can’t fix us.
I keep coming back here, wanting to write something, and not knowing what to say.
It doesn’t surprise me that constant stress in early development periods alter the brain, emotions, whatever for the rest of a person’s life. Like Vesta44 said, that and povlovian response.
I too have a “somebody was reaching for the light switch and I flinched away” story, but in my story, the person reaching for the light switch was my husband, who has never laid a hand on me, never abused me in any way. One day, he reached to turn on a wall light switch near me, and I flinched away instinctively. He was able to hide the look from his face, but not the hurt from his eyes.
He knew the reason I flinched away from him wasn’t because I was afraid of him, but that didn’t change the fact that I flinched. I, of course, started immediately apologizing all over myself (once I realized I wasn’t about to get hit), and we talked it over.
What your mother did, both in tiptoeing behind you to startle you awake AND then lecturing you about how you responded was wrong on her part. Part of PTSD IS an exagerated startle response. She went out of her way to startle you, then tell you that she felt abused because you reacted that way? Errr, yeah.
You are not crazy or stupid for having the reactions you have. And you have nothing to feel guilty about when the PTSD or ADD end up manifesting. Yeah, I know it’s easy to say (write) that, but it’s true.