A stressful childhood can result in an overactive stress response in later life
The quality of the relationships with childhood caregivers determines the capacity for a healthy stress-response, and early stress establishes a lower set point for a child’s stress-fear-memory pathway: such a person becomes stressed more easily than normal throughout their life. A child who is stressed early in life will be more overactive and reactive. They are triggered more easily, and are more anxious and distressed. Their experiences and interpretations of their environment, and their responses to it, will be less flexible, less adaptive, and less conducive to health and maturity.
Now, compare a person whose baseline arousal is normal with another whose baseline state of arousal is at a higher level. Give them both alcohol: both may experience the same intoxicating effect, but the one who has this higher physiological arousal will have the added effect of feeling pleasure from the relief of that stress. It’s similar to when you have a parched throat you drink some cool water: the pleasure effect is much heightened by the relief of thirst.
The hormone pathways of sexually abused children are chronically altered. Even a relatively “mild” stressor such as maternal depression—let alone neglect, abandonment, or abuse—can disturb an infant’s physical stress mechanisms. Add neglect, abandonment, or abuse, and the child will be more reactive to stress throughout their life. A history of childhood abuse is related to increased neuroendocrine, nervous and hormonal stress reactivity, which is further enhanced when additional trauma is experienced in adulthood.
References
- Mate, Gabor. (2010). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Chapter 18. Trauma, Stress, and the Biology of Addiction (p. 251). Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Developmental Neurology Status:☀️