Responding to trauma
If you have difficult experiences when you are a child those experiences can change your brain and how you then develop making life more difficult, so for example struggling in school because it’s hard to pay attention and remember information and, or organise your time.
This doesn’t happen to everyone who has a difficult childhood as it can depend very much on the individual circumstances but there are some common problems.
Nadine Burke Harris, an American paediatrician explained to host Ira Glass on the radio program, This American Life, that if you’re in a forest and see a bear, a very efficient fight or flight system instantly floods your body with adrenaline and cortisol and shuts off the thinking portion of your brain that would stop to consider other options.
This is very helpful if you’re in a forest and you need to run from a bear. ‘The problem is when that bear comes home from the bar every night,’ she said.
If a bear threatens you every single day, your emergency response system is activated over and over and over again. You’re always ready to fight or flee from the bear, but the part of your brain that’s called upon to create a sentence or do maths becomes stunted, because emergencies, such as fleeing bears, take precedence over doing maths.