Childhood Trauma

[The Hammer]

https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/unseen-scars-childhood-trauma

"Trauma and excessive adversity during childhood affect the body in several measurable ways, collectively termed “toxic stress.” These include changes to stress hormone regulation, neurodevelopment and immune function. Many of these effects occur at the level of gene activity and are carried into adulthood thanks to chemical (epigenetic) changes that switch genes on and off. Toxic stress can affect behavior and psychology, as well as increase the risk for physical conditions such as inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases."

Have you faced any ACE events (you can look up an ACE questionnaire on your own, we are all grownups here), how is your overall physical health? Last I checked I scored a 4.

And suffer from numerous stress and inflammatory related chronic problems (IBS, Anxiety, Depression, osteoporosis).

As a seperate segway, is Corporal Punishment of children finally on the way out? It should be , there is never a good reason to hit a defenseless child.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I got a 6 on the quiz posted on the NPR website. While I suffered from some fallout earlier in my life, I'm over it, did my best not to repeat the mistakes my parents made with me, and have moved on.

Thanks for posting this thread. Awareness is the first step in change.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

3. Emotional neglect from constant divorces and medical needs supersede emotional needs. Plus mental health wasn't taken too seriously back when. The questions kind of hit on some things but majority no where near to that extent.

 

[Secret Chief]

I think corporal punishment was banned in 1987 in British state schools and private schools that receive any public funding. Thankfully, I seem to have an ACE score of 0, so other stuff must account for.....

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Interesting topic...I've spent most of my life slowly realizing that my family was unusual, and that my experiences were not the experiences of very many of my peers.

I scored a zero of 10 on the NPR version of the test.

 

[Orbit]

I scored a 7. Gladly things got better as an adult.

 

[The Hammer]

I think corporal punishment was banned in 1987 in British state schools and private schools that receive any public funding. Thankfully, I seem to have an ACE score of 0, so other stuff must account for.....

Corporal Punishment is banned in schools here in the US, but it frequently occurs in the home as well. Being spanked or smacked can be just as traumatic anywhere.

 

[Sunstone]

The issue of corporal punishment is for many people their 'creationism'. Even for many people on the political left. There will be no 'come to Jesus moments' for them. Even the most obviously fake moments.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

As a seperate segway, is Corporal Punishment of children finally on the way out? It should be , there is never a good reason to hit a defenseless child.

Not fast enough to no.
It is downright pathetic we know and acknowledge it is wrong to hit an adult for reasons other than self defense.
But it's ok to hit a defenseless child?
Those are very strange--and wrong--ethics we have going on.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I got a six, and it didn't ask about school or religion.
And I too suffer a range of issues and hardships. Such as IBS, potentially crippling anxiety attacks, a strong distrust of people to the point I feel on edge when people are being nice to me, and dealing with the stress of a life without emotional support or guidance (and having what I did have (the church) ripped from me because it was too toxic for me).

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I wouldn't say I had the best time, no.. I had to develop out of a state of 'severe autism,' which I had according to the elementary school psychologist, and did sometimes engage in inappropriate and bizarre behavior as a kid. My dad was a massive alcoholic really, (though his health changed, and he can't drink anymore) and a high-school drop out who nearly died falling off a plank at a job site. So he would have been trying to sooth physical pain.. I know he didn't have it easy as a kid: he mentioned the supposed hardships of old-school Catholic school, and his brother did things like hold him over a pig pen. I guess he started drinking at a young age. His dad was a drinker as well

My mother came from a heavily alcoholic culture herself, and pretty much ran way from home to live in her car at a young age. In the part of the state she's from, there are no regular jobs and everyone is divorced

So there are a lot of harsh stories that come out of that developmental dynamic. One also wonders what the interplay between those two factors is, between the autism bit and the drinking parent part

You know I'm not really sure how to give a view on it. I think I integrated it all, eventually, or much of it. By that I mean that there's not much another human being could say to me at this point, that could really get to me. However, I obviously would have preferred different experiences

 

[Sunstone]

My second wife, Tomoko, was sexually abused as a child. Girls who are sexually abused before 13 or so, are put at high risk of developing Borderline Personality Disorder. A strong correlation has been established between BPD and permanent changes in the normal development of four regions of the brain. That might explain why it's usually said there is no cure for it, but at best, some therapies help with managing it.

A common consequence of being afflicted by BPD is that the person becomes a chronic abuser of anyone who does not, essentially, cower or beat them into submission. An common pattern of behavior found in people with BPD is they are perfectly charming people just so long as they feel they must be.

Tomoko changed from day into night within a week of our marriage day. Didn't see it coming, and I had known her about ten years at that point.

The greater tragedy in this case is something that might surprise anyone.

She was brilliant. The sort of person who thinks nothing of amusing herself by solving calculus problems in her head when she's nothing better to do. Honestly. She would do that. And a whole lot of other things like that which I find irresistibly sexy in women. Seems I'm what's called a 'sapio-sexual'. I get turned on by brains as much as anything else, maybe even a little more so.

At any rate, Tomoko was also as far as she could be committed to realism. She had the brains and the values both to realize she was abusive.

I came home from work one day. She herself hadn't gone to work. instead, she'd been laying in her bed crying while her heart broke ever since earlier that morning suddenly realizing something while she'd been combing her hair, getting ready for work.

It took a long time to get it out of her, but I have my ways of doing such things.

She'd connected the dots, realized she now loved me more than she'd loved any other man in her life, and that she was powerless to stop herself from abusing me, because she had spent most of her adult life trying to stop herself from trying to abuse anyone, let alone me.

I didn't believe her, of course. I already knew she was abusive and I thought I could change her. I was just as arrogant then as I am now. Of course, I could change her. Once I decide I'm a hero, I never too easily give up trying to prove it.

As for Tomoko, she knew nothing about BPD, nor what role her childhood rapes most likely had in causing it. No one had told her anything like that back then. But she was smart enough and realistic enough to grasp she was going to live with it for the rest of her life, and what that would mean to anyone she cared about.

I sometimes imagine her feeling a little like a man on death row back in the old days felt when he thought about how someone he loved was going to take the news of what almost always happened back then to men on death rows.

To me, that was the greater tragedy.

Or maybe there is a greater tragedy than that: i.e. the fact that raping children is almost everywhere on earth more common than it would be if it were anywhere on earth as systematically suppressed as humans are capable of systematically suppressing behaviors.

Then again, that's not honestly a tragedy, is it?

That's something far darker than tragedy.

 

[The Hammer]

Not fast enough to no.
It is downright pathetic we know and acknowledge it is wrong to hit an adult for reasons other than self defense.
But it's ok to hit a defenseless child?
Those are very strange--and wrong--ethics we have going on.

I agree, very strange ethics indeed. I was terrified of my parents growing up, how am I supposed to Trust someone who struck me out of anger? Should I?

Then turn around and wonder why I never talked to them about what was going on in my life emotionally, ha.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Then turn around and wonder why I never talked to them about what was going on in my life emotionally, ha.

I fully get that. :hugs:

 

[VoidCat]

“All I could think about was that these children seemed to be physiologically different,” she says. They seemed on edge, overly sensitive to noises or minor distractions and more easily frustrated than other kids. They showed signs of stress like flushed faces or rapid breathing after small setbacks, and took more time to calm down. Bush realized that these were all symptoms of an overactive fight-or-flight system, and that these effects might be biologically measurable.

That explains a lot.

 

[Martin]

I was adopted, which didn't work out too well.
I worked as a social worker for many years, and dealt with some child-abuse cases. I remember those made me feel very angry.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Scored a one on the ten question NPR, by bending one question a little (sexual abuse), and where that did seem to affect my life more that it might have done. Had lots of caning and such at school (not included as a question) but I didn't see this as being at all relevant then or now, just accepting such as part of life. Otherwise life was bliss at home compared with many, even if as a family we just got on with living and not discussing things so much - which I might have preferred to do. No smacking or shouting in our house - mostly - and little alcohol.

 

[VoidCat]

I scored an 8 out of 10 and have been through some experiences not listed. I am extremely jumpy, have trust issues, mental health problems, constipation among other things...

 

[VoidCat]

, a strong distrust of people to the point I feel on edge when people are being nice to me

I have that problem as well. I sometimes even get really uncomfortable and suspicious when people are nice to me.