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

Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades. It can tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter

Their aim was to identify two things: (1) the relationship between exposure to abuse and/or household dysfunction in childhood

and adult health-risk behavior (alcoholism, smoking, severe obesity), and (2) the relationship between exposure to abuse and/or household dysfunction in childhood and disease.

Emotional abuse (recurrent) Physical abuse (recurrent) Sexual abuse (contact) Physical neglect Emotional neglect Substance abuse in the household (e.g., living with an alcoholic or a person with a substance-abuse problem) Mental illness in the household (e.g.,

living with someone who suffered from depression or mental illness or who had attempted suicide) Mother treated violently Divorce or parental separation Criminal behavior in household (e.g., a household member going to prison)

the higher a person’s ACE score, the greater the risk to his or her health.

Sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness—we saw in our patients that these six things were critical for healing. As important, the

literature provided evidence of why these things were effective. Fundamentally, they all targeted the underlying biological mechanism—a dysregulated stress-response system and the neurologic, endocrine, and immune disruptions that ensued.

their God-given potential.

The single most important

thing is recognizing what the problem is in the first place.”

the six things that I recommend for my patients—sleep, exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, mental health, and healthy relationships—were just as important for adults.

We can’t treat what we refuse to see.

Toxic stress affects how we learn, how we parent, how we react at home and at work, and what we create in our communities. It affects our children, our earning potential, and the very ideas we have about what we’re capable of.

The first step is taking its measure and looking clearly at the impact and risk as neither a tragedy nor a fairy tale but a meaningful reality in between.