Find me on social media
SethOberst.com
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Free Movement Meditations
  • About
    • About Me
    • In the Media
  • Essential Book List
  • Contact
    • Contact Me
    • Work With Me
    • My Process
  • Courses
    • Stress, Movement, and Pain Course
    • Webinars
    • Movement Meditations Audio Course
    • Host a Course
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Free Movement Meditations
  • About
    • About Me
    • In the Media
  • Essential Book List
  • Contact
    • Contact Me
    • Work With Me
    • My Process
  • Courses
    • Stress, Movement, and Pain Course
    • Webinars
    • Movement Meditations Audio Course
    • Host a Course

How Childhood Adversity Affects Health

10/6/2017

0 Comments

 
I remember my first experience working with someone with trauma. She was a middle-aged woman with back pain who was quite rigid and despite us just meeting had mentioned a few negative-sounding comments about her husband. I didn't think much of it as a new clinician but some bells went off when I went to palpate her abdomen and she got very defensive despite giving me permission to do so. I felt completely unprepared to help her deal with this at the time.

​Subsequent patients came and went and they had the same vibe of behaving in a self-preserving way, some more aggressive than others. Many, when they did volunteer information, described difficult childhoods. Unsurprisingly, they now presented to me with physical pain, tension, and chronic stress. 
You don't have to be a combat veteran or survivor of terrorism to experience or encounter trauma. It's all around us.

"One in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being hit."  Bessel van der Kolk, MD. 

Trauma pulls at the very fabric of our reality and disrupts the ability to feel safe in our bodies, homes, and social settings. Regardless if you are currently in danger or not. Often this insecurity stems from adversity from ages 0-5 the most fertile time for developing attachment strategies for the child.

"Children who don't feel safe in infancy have trouble regulating their moods and emotional responses as they grow older. By kindergarten, many disorganized infants are either aggressive or spaced out and disengaged, and they go on to develop a range of psychiatric problems. They also show more physiological stress, as expressed in heart rate, heart rate variability, stress hormone responses, and lowered immune factors. Does this kind of biological dysregulation automatically reset to normal as a child matures or is moved to a safe environment? So far as we know, it does not." van der Kolk

This is staggering and if you consider how just interacting with two people can connect you with  up to a million, it affects us all. And domestic killing sprees speak to the profound affect of abuse on behavior - both the victims and likely many of the perpetrators, given the numbers.

How does this adversity early in life affect your health? The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scale, a ten question survey on negative childhood events (linked here), has been extensively studied. Scored from 0-10 with a higher number indicating more trauma, for those with a score of 4 or more depression prevalence is 66% higher in females, 35% higher in males compared to 12% in those with a score of zero. Antidepressant and pain-killer use also rises exponentially with ACE score.  There is a 5000% increase in suicide attempts when going from zero to six on the scale. ACE scores above six have a 15% or greater chance of suffering from one or more of the ten leading causes of death in the US.

"What one sees, the presenting problem, is often only the marker for the real problem, which lies buried in time, concealed by patient shame, secrecy and sometimes amnesia - and frequently clinician discomfort." Vincent Felitti, MD (ACE investigator)

So I encourage you to take the ACE survey yourself. I give it to nearly all my clients and have them report only the number to me so that I am better able to help them feel safe in their body and also help them find the proper mental health professional to co-treat the client.

If you scored high, particularly above a 3, please seek help with a qualified professional. I look for those trained in Somatic Experiencing when referring and use many of their principles myself with clients. It is important to find practitioners knowledgeable about the body, not just what is going on between your ears.

Until we solve this trauma epidemic by being compassionate and creating safe places for the people in our lives we will repeatedly and unknowingly create more trauma and violence.

And if you are a clinician, wake up. People with trauma are walking in your door every day, even if you only work with athletes. You owe it to that person to understand the basics of trauma and behavior so as to avoid triggering more stress. I recommend reading The Body Keeps the Score, In an Unspoken Voice, and Behave as a start. 

"If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”  Tolle
​- Seth
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Breathing
    Coaching
    Learning
    Lower Extremity
    Movement Baselines
    Movement Meditations
    Neck And Jaw
    Pain
    Perceptions
    Performance
    Recommended Readings
    Recovery
    Regulation And Stress
    Spine
    Upper Extremity

    Archives

    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    RSS Feed

Home
About
Contact

© 2017 Dr. Seth Oberst
This is about changing the way we perceive the world and ourselves. By knowing ourselves as accurately as possible we move more efficiently, connect with people more deeply, and live more balanced - a regulated life. 

"To know reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it." Alan Watts