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

This study was a showstopper for me for a couple reasons. It showed the mechanism of these long-term changes was not simply genetic. The adverse experiences of my Bayview patients were factors that extended down to their DNA and likely changed them epigenetically. Meaney’s work showed me not only how moms can negatively affect their pups by not licking them enough but also how they can help them by licking them more. The fact that environment is something we can modify means there is a lot of hope for human pups born to “low-licker” moms. These pups are not damaged goods; they are not defective. If they can get a safe, stable, and nurturing environment at an early age, the biology says that this sets them up to develop a healthy stress-response system in adulthood. As we’ve mentioned, the key to keeping a tolerable stress response from tipping over into the toxic stress zone is the presence of a buffering adult to adequately mitigate the impact of the stressor. In the case of the rat pups, it’s the mom’s licking and grooming. In the case of a human, it could be a dad hugging and listening. The buffer is hugely important, not just to attenuate the stress hormones but also to prevent the kind of epigenetic changes that lead to a dysregulated stress response and the major health issues that come with it.