I’m a 58 year old adult male I was I had childhood adversity and it was never addressed my parents didn’t believe me and now at 58 I’m finally addressing it all my adult life I have had challenges have been to prison three times full blown alcoholic / drug addict and all along I always wondered what the heck happened to me as I was from very normal family one of five and everybody ended up having successful careers except the second smartest of the bunch which was me I finally the address didn’t many people want me to shut up but if I don’t face it I’ll never be free and right now I’ve been diagnosed with depression anxiety post traumatic stress disorder I have a couple tunnel I have a I had a hernia I have bad knees haven’t worked for a year and a half and about to lose everything and I wonder if I if I did the right thing by addressing it is there any help for people such as me

Bill I really respect and admire your extended reflection and introspection on your childhood traumas and your life’s course. I think you should relax a bit and feel proud. Obliteration of overwhelmingly bad childhood memories is a natural defense mechanism and there is no need to explore that wilderness. Many of your personal characteristics (no close friends, risk taking, drinking, distrust of men) may well be symptomatic responses to your childhood threats – they have helped you survive and even flourish and matters could be a lot worse. You have achieved great victories just by being able to ponder your experiences and especially by being married for 44 years and by raising children in a flourishing family.

I was discussing a point with Kate, my partner in marriage for 44 years now. We both suffered as children. I am left with little memory. Most of what I know, my mom told Kate, it is enough. Very few adverse life events were not ticked off. My mom left with myself and my 3 sibs, because “I knew your father was going to kill you”. I was 8 when we left. I cannot remember him, his voice, gone.

I brought up two points actually. The first; was there a greater amount, or degree of abuse following the Second World War and Korean War? For Boomers, there was no child protection act, not until 1961. Were the horrors of war, and resultant PTSD to blame at that time? Or, alternately, If a man “were somebody” during the war, and back home slips into anonimymity, would the pain of his family members assuage untolerable narcissistic injury.
The next idea is abstract, While CPTSD involves multiple factors biologically, hypothalamic-adreno-pituitary axis is involved to the point that it changes shape (sorry no reference on hand). Those changes and resultant changes that occur throughout the body, have a huge psycho-social aspect. My question was this: “By changing in the face of insurmountable odds, are our bodies try to save us, or destroy us?”.
I did not have a best friend till I was 12, that is when I began to have friends. I did not talk to anyone. I was shot at by the police when I was 16. I was unarmed, running away. They were dealing with a “bad egg”. Perhaps that is how the village sees us. Perhaps they want us gone.
However, I don’t have fear like other people, that can be good and bad. Every time I believed I was soon to die (MVAs, Rock climbing falls, drunken idiocy). I would watch and wait, so I could see. Nothing is ever ok. I can’t go to medical appointments, because I really don’t trust anyone, especially men. It’s hard because I have an immune system modulated disorder. Thanks so much father. It is a very hard thing to try to undo.
I would like to say, I gladly battle it each day. If I succumb, I lose and my father loses. If I live, stretch, and grow, maybe he will not walk the earth a hungry ghost. Perhaps he will never have to feel the horror that is prolonged severe child abuse and family dysfunction. My heart tells me he did, but I will not know.
Kate and I have 2 boys, 44 and 32. The elder is disabled, the younger an ER Doc. I do not share the abuse, I truly do not remember well. Instead, my expectation that no descendent of this family will ever be brutalized at the hands of another family member again. There can be no secrets or lies in a healthy home.

Shirley
Thank you, I did read that study. There seems to be more information lately about the connection of ACEs to long-term physical illness.
Sue

REPLY TO SUSAN MORRIS
(1) I have not read your memoir, but I love the title. As a family doc, one of my practice goals was to protect “sensitive” people. As humans we are all sensitive. Some people have built in protection/resistance ? genetic, ?personality, ? experience but others remain open hearted and vulnerable. There is no doubt, tho it is not scientific, that vulnerable, sensitive people are much more affected by the experience of abuse or neglect. I believe we live in a society that exploits people (for their labor) and has few cultural strategies for supporting sensitive/vulnerable people, be they poets, artists, trans, mothers, children etc
(2) In my recent review of adult physical disease associated with child abuse trauma I found no clear relationship to breast cancer. Abused people are proven heavy smokers, so the relation of ACEs
to lung cancer can be demonstrated. Breast cancer is common and random, but there are epidemiological correlates: obesity, not having children, having children at a late age, not breast feeding, smoking. Abuse trauma has not been related to breast cancer tho it may be related to the intermediary correlates.
(3) There is no doubt in my mind that relating your experiences and participating in this form is therapeutic for you – building resilience, sorting out feelings – and helpful to others – as exposing yourself feeds their courage to deal with their circumstances.
Keep up the good work!

(1) I have not read your memoir, but I love the title. As a family doc, one of my practice goals was to protect “sensitive” people. As humans we are all sensitive. Some people have built in protection/resistance ? genetic, ?personality, ? experience but others remain open hearted and vulnerable. There is no doubt, tho it is not scientific, that vulnerable, sensitive people are much more affected by the experience of abuse or neglect. I believe we live in a society that exploits people (for their labor) and has few cultural strategies for supporting sensitive/vulnerable people, be they poets, artists, trans, mothers, children etc
(2) In my recent review of adult physical disease associated with child abuse trauma I found no clear relationship to breast cancer. Abused people are proven heavy smokers, so the relation of ACEs
to lung cancer can be demonstrated. Breast cancer is common and random, but there are epidemiological correlates: obesity, not having children, having children at a late age, not breast feeding, smoking. Abuse trauma has not been related to breast cancer tho it may be related to the intermediary correlates.
(3) There is no doubt in my mind that relating your experiences and participating in this form is therapeutic for you – building resilience, sorting out feelings – and helpful to others – as exposing yourself feeds their courage to deal with their circumstances.
Keep up the good work!

Thank you for adding your information. I found a paper supporting the idea that cancer and adverse childhood experiences are linked.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5892430/
I’m sure there are others. I too had breast cancer and attribute it to ACEs. The type I had was not inherited genetically and seems to have come out of the blue.
Shirley

Hi Jeffrey
I wrote a memoir that came out in August titled The Sensitive One, which explores Ace’s and its long-term effects, both mentally and physically. It’s worth the question: Did my childhood cause my breast cancer?
I have attempted to address the Ace issue with my primary caregiver and oncologist. They didn’t know what I was talking about, which was disappointing.
As you know, the long-term effects of childhood trauma never go away; we have to figure out a way to deal with the stressors associated with it.
Keep up your great work!!

You are most insightful to observe the ” Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support programs for other people’s troubled families?’

The problem with that attitude is, even if we don’t consider the lack of compassion and caring, that according to published data about 2/3 of the homeless, 2/3 of the residents of juvenile hall and 1/2 of prisoners are people who have a history of childhood abuse trauma. Furthermore the best data show that of 66 mass shooters where childhood history is known, 60 had significant abuse history. A healthy society needs healthy thriving families. A goal we should all be working on.

Since so much of our lifelong health comes from our childhood experiences, childhood mental health-care should generate as much societal concern and government funding as does physical health, even though psychological illness/dysfunction typically is not immediately visually observable. After all, a psychologically and emotionally sound (as well as a physically healthy) future should be every child’s foremost right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.

But due to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support programs for other people’s troubled families?’

While some may justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed; and it seems that distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.