THE INVISIBLE TRUTHS

The invisible truth that lies beneath these social issues is this: there are deep and life-altering impacts that occur for both the individual and society as a whole. Have you ever wondered what factors cause some people to become addicted to drugs while others aren’t? Have you ever wondered what lies beneath depression, anxiety; beneath sleep and attention disturbances? Why can some people adjust to society and have healthy interpersonal relationships while others just can’t seem to stabilize? How do people get to a place where suicide seems like the best option? Have you ever wondered why there is so much anger, hatred and killing in our society? How people can commit such atrocities toward one another? How do we watch the horrors presented on the news and then continue about our daily lives as if it hasn’t happened? Why do we make jokes about horrific things such as racism, rape, mass murder and yet, struggle to talk about these issues seriously?

The Answer: we are all trying to cope. Some coping skills are healthy; some are maladaptive and some have devastating consequences.

The invisible truth is that there are invisible injuries resulting from the cruelty of the world that we all sustain. A word that is hard to digest and yet one that will help explain, to some degree, the questions asked above is: trauma. Psychological trauma has infiltrated all our lives to some capacity. Psychological trauma is explained as damage to the mind [and body] that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event [in which a person is subjected to] overwhelming amounts of stress that exceeds one’s ability to cope or integrate the emotions involved with that experience (1).

A study was conducted from 1995-1997 by Dr. Robert Anda and Dr. Vincent Felitti to determine the correlation between having an adverse childhood experience (ACES) and poor health outcomes over the lifetime. Dr. Anda and Dr. Felitti sent a survey to over 17,000 HMO members asking about seven categories of adverse childhood experiences (ACES). The seven categories were later expanded to ten and include:

physical abuse
emotional abuse
sexual abuse
physical neglect
emotional neglect
substance misuse in the home
mental illness in the home
divorce/separation
mother treated violently
a household member being sentenced to prison

The doctors determined that more than half of the HMO members had experienced at least one ACE and that having ACES did have a strong correlation with poor health outcomes over the lifetime. It was discovered that experiencing something adverse in childhood disrupts proper neurodevelopment in the areas of the brain that govern:

learning
impulse control
decision-making
rational thinking
emotional regulation
interpersonal skills

From these neurological disruptions, people tend to experience social emotional and cognitive impairments which lead to the development of health risk behaviors (such as using substances, risky sexual practices, poor diet, etc.). Health risk behaviors cause disease, illness and social problems and can lead to early death. (2)

This study explains that experiencing “a severely distressing event” in childhood has deep implications for a person as they move into adulthood. This study also explains that the more ACES a person has, the more likely a person is to suffer poorer health and social outcomes. It is important to note, however, that these same impacts can occur for a person if they experience something adverse in adulthood and if they experience only one event as opposed to many. The impact of an ACE on an individual can depend on many factors including: the severity of that one event and the absence of protective factors.

The Brain

To better understand trauma and its responses, we need to understand the brain.

Please be advised, the following will be a very simplistic overview of the brain and its interaction with overwhelming events (please see the information section for more resources).

For the purposes of this explanation, our brain can be broken down into two major parts:

the limbic system
the cortex

The limbic system is responsible for our survival, memories and emotional intake. The limbic system houses our amygdala which is responsible for assessing danger and alerting us when there is a threat to our survival. The limbic system stores memories and translates stimuli into an emotional response.

The cortex is known as our “higher thinking brain”. The cortex regulates our emotions, controls impulses, allows us to think rationally and helps us to solve problems.

When one experiences a threat (or perceived threat) to one’s survival, the amygdala fires, disconnects our cortex, and launches us into a fight, flight or freeze response( whilst pumping our body with stress hormones). When we successfully avoid the threat, our amygdala calms down, the stress hormones dissipate, and our cortex comes back “online” allowing us to process the event, regulate our emotions, and think rationally. If a person is not able to avoid the threat, those hormones get stuck in the body as does one’s ability to effectively process the event. When a person is consistently subjected to unavoidable threats to survival, the more his/her body is flooded with stress hormones and the more the amygdala and cortex disconnect from one another.

Abnormal amounts of stress hormones have damaging long-term impacts on one’s body.

Additionally, the more often the cortex and limbic system disconnect from one another, the weaker that connection becomes even when not under stress.

Abnormal amounts of stress hormones are the culprit of many chronic diseases. And the weak connection between the cortex and the amygdala renders a person anxious, depressed, unable to regulate emotions, unable to focus, unable to develop healthy interpersonal skills, hyper-vigilance, hyper-arousal and affects sleep and appetite.

The brain works very hard to protect us and in doing so, adopts coping skills. Depression, anxiety, memory dissociation, isolation, mistrust, insomnia, hyper-vigilance, risky sex, substance misuse, anger and violence are all coping skills and are used by individuals as well as by society.

It should be noted that trauma is not the answer to or reason for everything that goes wrong in our world and in our lives.

However, with a greater awareness of trauma and its impacts we can begin to see that it is deeply rooted in many of the problems that we face. With knowledge and awareness of trauma, it is hoped that we can begin to better understand one another’s actions and perhaps begin to cultivate compassion.

The Brain

To better understand trauma and its responses, we need to understand the brain.

Please be advised, the following will be a very simplistic overview of the brain and its interaction with overwhelming events (please see the information section for more resources).

For the purposes of this explanation, our brain can be broken down into two major parts:

the limbic system
the cortex