Chronic Stress Human

Childhood Developmental Stress

The nature of an adult’s response to stress is developmentally determined and is cumulatively based on one’s physical and emotional needs and expected outcomes at any point in time. For example, attachment disruption and a caregiver’s indifference to an infant’s physical and emotional need for comfort are experienced as stress to a baby. Limitations placed on a toddler’s exploration and seeking novelty from the environment are considered to be stressful when the toddler is harshly corrected by a caregiver. (Read more)

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Childhood Stress Histories

Histories of childhood adversity and physical abuse seem to underlie the later development of future psychiatric conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research suggests that genes dictate how the responses to stress will later be expressed in the nature of gene activity and polymorphisms. Twin studies have demonstrated that significant variances can exist in PTSD symptom expression; certain individuals of twin pairs go on to develop PTS symptoms, but others do not, despite shared gene patterns. (Read more)

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Autoimmune & Chronic Stress Histories

Adults having physical conditions also have childhood stressful histories. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) not only report chronically stressful adult histories (e.g. unhappy adult marriages or relationships, difficulties at work, or with children, etc.), but also present histories of difficulties in earlier interactions with maternal figures and experiences of considerable chronic threat, like devaluation, limits on control over outcomes, etc. In addition, RA patients report childhood histories that are characterized by emotional neglect and emotional abuse (like devaluation). (Read more)

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