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Please be sure to take a look at the slide show presented in this link I included at the bottom of last evening’s post about the Center for Disease Control’s latest research on the long term suffering caused by severe child abuse that occurs during the early stages of brain-body development:
“adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs)
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I believe it is critical that this kind of “new” information be coupled with understandings about the body-brain-mind evolutionary changes that those of us who survived the kind of malevolent experiences that the above research is highlighting had to make.
The kinds of life long difficulties the research points to happen not only because of the abuse itself, but because of these changes our body-brain-mind had to make. Our bodies were designed in, by and for trauma. We were never designed to live an ordinary life with an ordinary body-brain-mind. We have to become completely clear about what these changes are and how they affect us.
Researchers and clinicians are going to continue to try to apply a piecemeal solution to an extremely complicated problem just as they always have. Their efforts will NOT bring about any more positive a solution than they have thus far — which is PATHETIC — if the evolutionary adaptation to trauma during early development due to trauma and abuse is not the PRIMARY and PIVOTAL information used to assess ‘damage’ and effect lasting positive change for survivors.
Otherwise we will continue to be looked at as flawed people. We are not remotely flawed. We were terribly wounded as little infant-children, and we endured. We are perfectly designed to survive what we had to survive or we would not be here! Even though the adaptive changes we had to make prevent us from smoothly ‘fitting into’ an ordinary world, they can still be not only recognized, but respected, honored and even applauded and celebrated for being the amazing human resiliency factors that they are. If we value human life at all, we will know this truth in our bones. And I believe for any healing to occur for us at all, this point of truth is where all efforts must begin.
The flip side of the coin of surviving intolerably horrible childhoods is that our body adapted for short-term heavy duty survival in trauma. We are not adapted to a quality of life for the long haul. THAT portion of our lives is what we need appropriate help with if we are to keep on living in a ‘benevolent’ world.
Nature designed us to live to our childbearing years and not much longer. The ‘ordinary’ world we grew up into grants us a longevity we were not made for. Sorry folks, this is the truth as I understand it as a survivor with this kind of trauma-changed body. No wonder we are likely to contemplate or commit suicide. I believe our body knows this truth. This can make just staying alive yet another choice we have to make with conscious effort.
Everyone needs to get their thinking straight on these issues! What ARE the priorities? We survivors cannot magically remake our body-brains into ‘ordinary’ ones once the traumas of our childhood have ended. These changes are with us for the rest of our lives. Nobody tells us this fact or truly helps us live better with the changed body-brain that we have. Surviving severe infant-child trauma and abuse is a costly affair.
Please, take a look at that link at the top here. The Center for Disease Control is not a lightweight institution. Their findings leave indelible marks on minds within the professional community. To allow child abuse to continue at all, and to allow those adults who survived the kinds of abuse the ACE study highlights to continue to suffer, can only happen in a culture without a conscience. For our culture to not consider the evolutionarily altered body-brain-mind development that survivors were forced to make in order to stay alive is even worse.
We will never be able to solve the problems related to severe early abuse and trauma — and survival of it — if we refuse to correctly describe and name what happens to change the course of our human development and how we responded.
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A WORD TO WISE WOMEN:
IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF SEVERE CHILD ABUSE, CONSIDER YOURSELF AT HIGH RISK FOR GETTING BREAST CANCER. Today’s release of the news article at link below does not apply to you in the same way as it does to ‘ordinary’ women. A mammogram beginning at age 40 should always be considered necessary for child abuse survivors who choose to be proactive on behalf of their well-being.
If your insurance requires a referral from your doctor, never hesitate to tell her/him the truth about your abuse history. You can also mention the Center for Disease Control’s newly published findings on the major link between child abuse and the risk for serious adult disease. We are not ‘making this up!’
Task Force Opposes Routine Mammograms for Women Age 40-49
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Stop the Storm 
Linda, have you ever considered speaking publically about your childhood? Your story alone is amazing. You have so much knowledge on the topic and could offer so much hope to those of us who suffered from ACE. When you look at the stats presented in the slide show, you can see how dramatically ACE impacts our society in general. This is the first time I have ever encountered statistics presented on child abuse related to lifespan, disease, suicide, alcoholism, smoking…….in the form of a retrospective and prospective study. This information would have helped me greatly if I would have encountered it 20 years ago. So many of my questions would have been answered and so much of my behavior would have been clearer to me and those around me. This information needs to be out in the main stream. Primary care docs should be screening for ACE as part of routine care. So much is at stake when a person is a victim of child abuse. I believe you would be a great spokesperson.
My dissociation and anxiety is at a new height in my life post cancer and treatment and being ‘out there’ in the world is extremely difficult! I hope to become more reestablished with myself in this body in the world — like I used to be. I am trying to learn about why I am like I am right now — it is scary.
One extremely important point to remember about the Center for Disease Control’s past research — and hopefully they are adjusting for this — is that all the participants in their studies have had some form of HMO = insurance! I have been so angry about this obvious discretion that I have had a hard time taking their research findings seriously.
How many of the survivors of extreme child abuse have EVER reached a level of economic well-being and job security that they have had access to insurance? What about ALL THE REST OF US? How different would their findings be if the ACE criteria was used to assess every single person that sought health care, especially in low income clinics or while using public medical assistance?
Yet I am now calming down about this because if research is showing this degree of difficulty among those who AT LEAST have insurance, and these findings are solid proof of the connection between all forms of adult problems and child abuse — then there is hope that the rest of the information from the rest of us will be gathered and made public as included in the child abuse ‘damage’ reports in the future.
Your comment is so succinct and clearly stated! Thank you for posting it. I am reeling inside from the post on kindness I just wrote — the feelings within me are so intense I cannot go back and edit it. TENDER is the word I would use for how I feel right now. That is connected to the tragedy of the 18 years of my childhood that the memory I describe is the ONLY ONE I can think of in which I felt absolutely and completely the kind of affection, safety and security and attachment and kindness that should be EVERY CHILD’S birthright! Knowing how many survivors there are, and how many children there are still being exposed to malevolent childhoods breaks my heart!