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

What I know now is that what happened in my body that night in the Mission district is the same thing that happens to my patients’ bodies when they experience a whole host of adversities ranging from abuse to abandonment. The body senses danger, and it sets off a firestorm of chemical reactions aimed to protect itself. But most important, the body remembers. The stress-response system is a miraculous result of evolution that enabled our species to survive and thrive into the present. We all have a stress-response system, and it is carefully calibrated and highly individualized by both genetics and early experiences. What makes the stress response of a child with zero ACEs different from Diego’s stress response is a complicated question that we will begin to unravel, but it all starts with the same system. When it’s in good working order, it can help save your life, but when it’s out of balance, it can shorten it.