Table of Contents
Also by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley
Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence
For Alice Miller, whose work showed us that the child is indeed the father of the manand inspires those of us in her shadow to have the courage to do the same
For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.
MICHAEL ONDAATJE , Divisadero
PREFACE
Confronting challenges to our health, we typically consider potential causes like germs, genetics, diet and environmental toxins. But we often overlook one of the most formative factors of allthe pervasive role of early emotional trauma. Experienced without detection early in life, then held without repair, trauma may lie unseen at the root of many forms of illness that we currently dismiss as genetic or as the inevitable results of aging.
Scared Sick began as our effort to answer a question we have been frequently asked since writing Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence. Released just as school shootings erupted across the country, Ghosts drew upon emerging science to explain how child abuse and neglect can alter the brain, paving the way for aggression and violence. But many readers wondered: What happens to the majority of abused and neglected children who dont become violent? Do they actually emerge unscathed?
What we found is surprising. While it is true that most abused or neglected children do not become violent, chronic early trauma exacts an enormous price not only in emotional but in physical and behavioral outcomes. And child abuse and neglect are only the tip of the iceberg. Early emotional trauma is also a common by-product of many routine practices unrecognized as traumatic, experiences that range across cultures, religions, ethnicities, race and income levels.
The equation described in the following pages in fact applies to all of usour lives, our families, our futuresand those of everyone we know. The degree to which emotionally traumatic experiences pave the way for disease is a unique calculation for each individual, mediated by several factors, including genetics, timing, the intensity and frequency of trauma, and the presence or absence of repair. Because most chronic disease builds slowly and does not manifest until later, diagnoses are typically disconnected from their early developmental roots.
Before we begin, a few qualifiers are in order. First, it is clear that when we get sick there are often many factors at work beyond emotional ones. Genes and germs, injuries and aging play obvious roles. Second, we know that fear and trauma are inherent in the human condition. The point of Scared Sick is that with heightened awareness we can greatly reduce the rate of emotional trauma in our youngest children, when fear renders developing nervous systems relatively more vulnerable to later trauma and disease. Finally, we recognize that many of us have experienced trauma. For those of us far from childhood, Scared Sick also shows us that there is much we can do at any age to heal and reduce the cumulative toll of chronic fear and trauma on our health.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Scared Sick is conceived and written with deep gratitude to the thinkers who have paved the way for all of us to comprehend and heal trauma in our lives: Dr. Bessel VanderKolk, Dr. Bruce Perry, Dr. Allan Schore, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Bruce McEwen and Dr. Robert Anda; and especially to Dr. Vincent Felitti and Dr. Robert Scaer, who helped shape this manuscript through long hours of conversation and explanation of their pioneering work.
Without the contributions of several additional people, this book would not have come to be. Including:
Wanda Kaczynski, who spent hours sharing her memories of her son, Ted. Her wisdom and courage in the face of her familys tragedy is inspiring. As is her younger son, David, who not only facilitated the interviews with his mother but has devoted his life to the elimination of the death penalty and is an unwavering and powerful advocate for the rights of crime victims.
Jordan Karr-Morse, who volunteered his professional skills and considerable talent as a filmmaker to film Wanda Kaczynski and to produce a book trailer based on the interview to help get the word out.
Arielle Bernstein, who juggled demanding jobs, graduate school and personal commitments to provide us with whatever we were looking for and who kept a highly informed eye on all the details.
Mitch Douglas, our agent and friend, who has been there for us all along.
Colin Karr-Morse, who once again survived the brunt of the daily demands of producing a book and supported us every step of the way.
Also, a thank-you to David Kass, Miriam Rollin, Jeff Kirsch and Amy Taggert-Dawson, the senior management team at Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, who went out of their way to allow Meredith to juggle her job requirements to spend blocks of time working with Robin.
INTRODUCTION
Fear has shadowed human life since our species emerged. But the velocity of change in our current environment and the nature of the fears we face as a consequence have evolved much faster than our biological systems for dealing with them. We are currently witnessing a fracturing and amalgamation of cultures unprecedented in human history. And as technology shrinks and transforms our world, the advances we have made that enabled us to defeat many kinds of physical challenges have in turn created complex threats of their own. Among these is our failure to recognize and protect our elegant, intrinsic systems for perceiving and responding to threat.
On a societal level, Americans regularly wake up, work, parent, drive, play, eat and sleep with the twin offspring of fearanxiety and depressionholding court in their brains and bodies. This is our shared daily bath: in our homes, on the road, in the workplace. The result? Soaring rates of addiction, anxiety, depression, attention disorders and post-traumatic stress. And an epidemic of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and inflammation-driven conditions like arthritis signals that something is very out of balance in our systems.
Not only physicians and traumatologists but sociologists are pointing out parallels between growing rates of individual and societal trauma and impulsive, often irrational decision-making, including overconsumption. A 2010 article in the New York Times Magazine by Judith Warner, titled Dysregulation Nation, explores the lack of systemic regulation that has presaged major disasters affecting us in the past several years. Warner observes that the oil fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 was only the latest example of the dysfunction of key regulatory systems. Scrutinizing the 2008 banking meltdown, the collapse of the housing market, and the failure of the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Warner illuminates similarities between the regulatory dysfunction of large systems and the lack of self-regulation within individuals, including appetite, emotion, impulse and cupidity, which, she argues, may well be the defining social pathology of our time: The signs that something is amiss in our inner mechanisms of control and restraint are everywhere.
