The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

the more licking and grooming the rat pups got, the lower their levels of stress hormones. In addition, the pups of high-licker moms had a more sensitive and effective “stress thermostat.” By contrast, pups of low lickers not only had higher spikes of corticosterone in response to a stressor (in this case, being placed in restraints for twenty minutes), they also had a harder time shutting off their stress response than did the pups of high-licker moms. The licking and grooming behavior that occurred in the pups’ first ten days of life predicted changes to their stress response that lasted for the entire lifetime. Even more startling, the changes continued into the next generation,