Adverse Childhood Experience Study - Is your past childhood trauma slowly killing you? Part 2

Welcome back, so in the previous post we talked about how trauma can cause severe and chronic stress and that the majority of us have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience.

What does this all mean? Again, trauma is much like a 3rd degree emotional burn that lingers long after you have gotten out of the fire.  If you have a major burn, it kind of makes sense why someone might want to use to soothe and resort to an addiction as an attempt to have an outlet.

Trauma is a form of severe and chronic stress which can translate into someone having the kind of core beliefs previously mentioned:

• I‘m not safe
• I can‘t trust anyone
• Feelings are bad (or ―I‘m bad, weak, a failure)
• I can‘t handle it (life, feelings stress etc)
• I have to be in control

Having even one of these often ongoing core beliefs can activate the stress response where the body produces high amounts of the stress hormone cortisol (among others). This is good in the short term if you have to run for your life, not so good in the long term as it will beat up your immune system, shrink cells in your brain (how is that for making ―good decisions while stressed) and as shown in the graph you were introduced to earlier, can result in disease, disability and early death.

Beliefs become biology and beliefs coupled with unhealthy ways of coping by using to soothe, e.g. smoking, drugs, gambling, over eating (obesity), lead to an even greater effect on biology (i.e. your body). If you have a core belief that you are not safe, and feel as if you are always in emergency-survival mode‖, then this will result in major physical and chemical reactions juicing up your body. And so I ask you one simple question, ―how long can you expect to run a car at 10,000 RPM‘s before something breaks down?

An interesting example of this is a UCLA study that measured the immunity of actors. Take a group of actors and have them spend a day acting out a stressful, depressing scene and their ―immune responsiveness is impaired. Have the same group of actors spend a day on a happy, uplifting scene and their immunity is better than baseline i.e. normal (Futterman, A., Kemeny, M., Shapiro, D., & Fahey, J., Psychosomatic Medicine 56 (1994):499).

Imagine what it‘s like to not just act out an emergency every day but actually live it every day. Imagine being on the edge of ―survival‖ for years and years. The end result, survival is indeed affected pushing your health more and more to the edge of the cliff (disease, disability, early death).

Of course these issues can make a huge impact on relationships later in life. It‘s difficult to know or be in a healthy relationship, if you have never seen one before.

Fortunately, there are things you can do about it. For example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, exercise, relaxation techniques can tip the scale more in your favour towards greater health and longer life.

Finally, just a bit of a word regarding stigma. The issue of stigma i.e. not seeking help for fear of judgment by others (including mental health professionals) is a huge concern for many people struggling with addiction, mental health and trauma issues and is one of the big determinants of people not seeking help (National Co-morbidity Survery 2005).

Trauma creates a "third degree emotional burn" for its survivors and addiction becomes more obvious as an attempt to soothe from painful emotions. Clinicians and treatment centres not taking a trauma history from their clients or not operating from a trauma framework, are at risk of doing greater harm to its clients and possibly re-traumatizing them.

I believe it‘s in the highest interest of the individual not to go around with a guilt or self blame statement of ―What‘s wrong with me? i.e. what‘s causing me to use and feel so weak as a person. Instead this trauma model enables a more compassionate question: What happened to me? i.e. that has lead me to feel so beat up and want to use to soothe? The past does impact the present. This beat up, anxious, overwhelming, depressed feeling I‘m feeling might be a normal response to incredible and ongoing stress.

Please don‘t let the years go by with your problems getting worse and worse before you do something about it. You deserve better for yourself.

Best of health and warmest regards, Paul Radkowski
Psychotherapist, CEO/Clinical Director, Life Recovery Programhttps://www.liferecoveryprogram.com/