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

IF YOU WANT TO understand how a child’s stress response is working, try walking into the examination room with a tray full of needles and telling him it’s time for shots. By now, it seemed like I could almost guess the ACE score of a patient by the amount of commotion that took place when my nurse went in to give the vaccinations. We’d seen it all: screaming, kicking, biting, kids literally trying to climb the walls to get away from the needles. One patient got so upset he vomited on my white coat. Another ran out of the exam room and made it all the way down the block before we caught her. These extreme displays of fear were not your ordinary needle-phobic reactions; they were full-blown bear-in-the-woods reactions. Coincidentally, this natural stress-response provocation challenge gave us an opportunity to test the second, equally important ingredient for toxic stress—the caregiver’s ability to act as a buffer. The kids who had the worst responses were also the ones whose caregivers were the least likely to hug, kiss, sing to, or otherwise soothe their child. We heard a lot of “Hold him down!” and “I don’t have time for this, I have to be back at work in a half hour.”