Continued:

From urban child institute. org: “In contrast to tolerable stress, toxic stress refers to persistent, unhealthy amounts of stress caused by chronically stressful conditions without the protective benefits of healthy caregiving… babies are affected by stress even in the protective environment of the womb. Since maternal cortisol levels affect the developing fetus, a mother’s level of stress is directly related to the well-being of her baby. Positive and tolerable stress levels are safe, but toxic stress increases the risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight and other complications. It is also associated with impaired mental, behavioral and motor development in infancy”.

From Psychology today: “Newer research on this topic has involved scanning fetuses’ brains through their mothers’ pregnant bellies to examine the neurobiological consequences of chronic stress. In general, this research has shown that… stressed-out mothers had fetuses with decreased functional brain activity when compared to mothers who were less stressed. Importantly, infants of the stressed mothers were also born sooner, consistent with previous research linking prenatal stress to birth complications”.

From NIH National library of Medicine: “When faced with an acute stressor, the brain initiates behavioral and physiological adaptations to protect the body and prepares for a fight-or-flight response. These physiological adaptations are referred to as allostasis… In the short term, allostasis is adaptive, and physiological systems return to baseline in the absence of threat. However, repeated or chronic exposure to stressors can lead to allostatic load or overload, in which prolonged release of primary mediators (glucocorticoids, catecholamines, and cytokines) disrupts development and functioning of the brain and neuroendocrine, immune, metabolic, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. These physiological disruptions, referred to as secondary outcomes of the stress response, can lead to diseased and disordered tertiary end points that affect mental and physical health across the life span…

“For the purposes of this article, I define chronic stress as the process by which any stressor leads to a prolonged release of primary mediators and places children at risk of secondary outcomes and tertiary end points associated with allostatic load and overload. This concept is distinct from that of acute stress, which includes a temporary allostatic response with a return to homeostasis after the resolution of a single psychologically or physically threatening event. In childhood and adolescence, chronic stressors may include extreme experiences, such as abuse, neglect, or institutionalization, as well as more prevalent stressors such as exposure to poverty, food insecurity, interpersonal violence, parental mental illness, racism, discrimination, unstable foster care placement, or unsafe neighborhoods and community violence”.

These quotes give me a better understanding of the effects of my mother’s high stress levels on me when she was pregnant with me (leading to birth complication/breech birth, and low birth weight), and the effects of growing up with her expressed high stress level, and with her abuse of me, leading to a variety of my disorders: a quite severe ADD and other cognitive deficits, as well as OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome (TS), and emotion regulation deficit.

I have no doubt that my Healing, as I continue to heal, cannot be complete, given the nature of the damage. My future healing, journaled here, will be guided by the principle outlined in The Serenity Prayer: “god, grant me the serenity to accept the tings I cannot change (the damage that can’t be undone), the courage to change the things I can (to undo/ lessen the damage that can be undone/ lessened.. neuroplasticity and such), and the wisdom to know the difference“.

– To be continued…

anita