How To Get Over Childhood Stress: The Process Of Getting Hurt

This is the first of two articles about how to get over childhood stress or - how does therapy work - in which I will explain how people get hurt by childhood stress (1^st article) and how they can recover from it (2^nd article “Healing from Childhood Stress and Abuse: How Therapy works”).  I have included the impact of childhood stress seen through neuro-biological eyes because it shows clearly the pathways to how the healing can take place

I have often been asked by colleagues why I use neuro-biological concepts instead of psychological concepts to explain what is going on. My answer to that is: often psychological concepts are way out there and hard to follow by people who are not totally into that side of things: take for example Freud’s or Melanie Klein’s work – very exciting … but you have to bend over backwards and jump through a needle's eye to follow their line of thinking. Whereas neuro-biological concepts can be ‘seen’ on MRI scans and we become more understanding of how our brain works. I find that exciting.

So why is childhood stress (hardship, abuse, neglect) so damaging? Why can people not follow the often given advise and just ‘GET OVER  IT’? She short answer is: Because the stressful experiences become part of who you are! Let me show you how that works: (Disclaimer: I am really not a neuro scientist and don’t claim to be an expert. I’ll give you my ‘lay translation’ of hundreds of research articles and books that I have studied).

Have a look at the picture to the left. This is a representation of the neuro pathways in an infant’s brain at birth. It is pretty much a clean slate with only a few connections. From now on each experience the baby has will create a new connection. This seems to include even some pre-birth experiences. As the parent helps the baby to regulate its inner states, for example by feeding it if it is hungry, soothing it when it is crying, clothing it when it is cold, new neuro pathways are created.

Through the interpersonal experiences with an attuned and caring parent the child is able to develop neural networks that will assist it to integrate affective states, sensations, behaviours, and consciousness. With ‘good enough’ care these networks will become functional connections that give the growing child the ability to cope with increasing levels of stimulation and arousal. We can say that the human brain does grow in response to interactions with others.

The development of the brain is not just a thing that happens by itself. It doesn’t grow like hair or fingernails do. The brain grows through continuously making new neural connection. That means that positive and negative interactions within significant others are represented as neural networks in the structures of our brains.

  By the time a child is six years old, the neural networks in the brain look like this (image to the left), whereby each connection and cross-connection represents experiences the child has had.

However, this is not all there is. These neural networks are also involved in the child’s construction of the self. They form the matrix for the developing personality through the weaving of conscious and unconscious experiences of somatic, temporal, or interpersonal nature that then become the narrative of the person’s self and identity. When a child is loved and cared for by, lets say, parents and the extended family, it will grow up feeling OK and safe and it will be trusting and engaging with people, it will have a positive outlook, and learn easily. Being cared for and loved becomes part of its personality and identity.

 Just as positive interpersonal experiences are associated with building neural structures that assist with the regulation of affective states and the development of a positive sense of self, the absence of these experiences is connected with lacking these structures. Growing up in an environment of abuse and/or neglect may cause the neural development of the child to be interrupted, arrested, or reversed, leading to the inability to regulate and control states of arousal and subsequently to a lack of self-confidence. Indeed, research using brain-scans has revealed that children with a history of abuse or neglect had brains that were less developed and smaller in size than brains of children from supportive families.

Every child is born with brain circuits ready to respond to a vast variety of experiences. And the two images above show how these circuits develop into ever increasing complexity. However, at the age of 6 something interesting happens. Because the demands of life get more and more complex for the child as it grows up, the brain has to increase its efficiency. It goes about that using a process called ‘pruning’. It’s a bit like pruning a tree. How does the brain know what neuro connections to prune away? It goes by the traffic volume. If a connection is used frequently, lets say “being reassured”  it will stay while the connection “its unsafe to climb a tree because I fell down once” will be pruned away. The image I have in my mind for this process is that of a path through the bush that is not used very often and starts growing over and becomes invisible.

For a person with lots of childhood stress (abuse, neglect, hardship) there may not be a lot of “I am OK” left after the pruning process. But not only that! There is another problem being added here: stress causes all sorts of neuro-physiological changes, for example more norephinephrine, dopamine, endogenous opioids, and gluccocoricoids and less serotonin (all terribly complicated words that you can immediately forget). Important is that these hormones interfere with – or even close down - adaptive mental processes. When the child is stressed through abuse it may not notice that the neighbour wants to be supportive because it hides away and doesn’t trust anybody. These hormones also interfere with cognitive process and memory processes leading to a break-down of an integrated sense of self and overall mental well-being. Such collapse could manifest itself in incoherent narratives of past and present experiences, disturbances of identity and self-confidence, self-esteem, self-respect, fear, over-compliance, non-compliance, aggressiveness, or elusiveness.

While this may all seem very grim, here comes the ray of hope! The brain is able to constantly build new neuro pathways – even until we die. Of course, it’s not as quick and easy as in childhood, but it does happen.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to learn a new language, learn a new skill, learn a new behaviour, or even change our mind.  Otherwise there would be no need for therapists!  Stay tuned for the second part coming asap!

Comments

[Gudrun Frerichs]

What a great and encouraging comment! Thanks Rebecca. I truly believe that there is life without therapy and your example seem to prove that resources other than therapy can be helpful as well... as long as people that them on board!

I just hope that people, who struggle on their own and find life to be a constant uphill battle with no relief in sight,know that help is available. My intention with this post was to demonstrate that you need someone caring, who puts his/her own needs aside, to recover from childhood stress. For some people it is God, for others it's a friend, a group, a partner, or a therapist.

[Rebecca Levings]

this is interesting, Gudrun. thanks for posting! I was somewhat abused mostly as a teenager, and had trouble for many years trusting people and forming proper relationships. People would say the standard "get over it", but it didn't help. Prayer and study and just TIME have helped, plus learning to build new and positive relationships as an adult, but it took a while.