- Hey everybody, I am joined again by the wonderful Dr. Alexa Altman. She is a trauma specialist
and a psychologist. Anything else that I'm missing? What else do you do? - So yes, I'm a Clinical Psychologist, specializing in trauma,
and trauma that includes childhood trauma, adult trauma, any overwhelming like, event. - Yeah.
- All us humans go through. - And I did a series
with Alexa awhile back. If you're a new viewer, I
encourage you to check those out. I'll link them in the description; we did a whole trauma series. But today I brought Alexa on specifically to talk about childhood trauma, and kind of the ramifications
as it could follow us through our lives. Or in our family, like
if we have children, do we pass that trauma on? And so I think the first way I wanna start is just defining trauma or how do we know if we've been traumatized? There's a lot of different
words people use, and I hear from many of you
that you don't always know what that means or how do we
know if that's happened to us. - Right, so trauma is defined
by an overwhelming event that overwhelms our capacity to cope. So it's really subjective. So what may be traumatizing for one person might not necessarily be
traumatizing for another. And sometimes people will ask me, well, what's the difference
between trauma and stress? Because stress is a good thing, and we need to have stress in our lives. - Yeah, it's a motivator, right? - Right.
- To some extent. - To some extent.
- Yeah. - Right, like unless it
surpasses that capacity. But then when it's an
accumulation of stress, it can become really toxic. - Oh, true, because it's
overwhelming our system. - Right.
- I love the Inside Out. I use the movie Inside Out
as an analogy all the time. If you guys remember,
they put marbles together, and memories are marbles. And that's why I like the
like, overwhelm for our system, because the marble can't be put together and it can't be rolled away. It almost like, shatters on the floor. And I think that's why it is so subjective and why we can have a
sibling that grows up with us in the same exact, you know, environment, yet we are traumatized and they aren't. - Right, and I read
somewhere that cortisol, which is that stress hormone
when we're experiencing stress or trauma, its life in the system where it's not toxic is like, 30 seconds. - Oh, wow. - Like the idea that
we're supposed to have an experience of stress and
then physiologically release it. But if you think about it, if we kinda keep accumulating it, and it overwhelms the system, it has not just mental health outcomes that are really negative,
but also physical. - Yeah.
- And our immune system shuts down.
- Oh, interesting. Because I remember back on our old videos, I had done some research
about Peter Lavigne, and the somatic experiencing,
and how animals like, shake it off, like they get stressed and then they shake it off. And I wonder if that's why the cortisol's supposed to hit and then come down. We're supposed to like, shake it off. - We're supposed to shake it off, or we're supposed to
protect or defend ourselves. - Yeah, fight or freeze. - I think about sometimes
if there was a bear, and we had that intense stress response to hopefully flee and not fight the bear. But what if that bear is the parent, and that bear comes home every day? - Yeah.
- Right? And so every day, you're preparing. - You're getting that hit. - Right, and living in
a chronic state of fear. - Yeah, and what does that do? So as a child, let's say
that's happening to us. Okay, we're in a constant state of fear. How, if we don't treat it early, how does that affect us as we grow up? - Well, I think that
there's a pivotal study, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But what the research shows is that when all of our resources are going towards survival, which is really the limbic system, which is the survival part of the brain. If we think about like, blood
flow and all of the nutrients in the brain going to that
part to protect ourselves, then there's less blood
flow for connection. - Yeah.
- For planning, for learning, for education. So if you think about a person who's in a constant state of fear, and then they're in a classroom, how receptive are they to
taking in new information? - Probably not much.
- Not very receptive, no. - Yeah, because essentially it's like, because our bodies are
adapted for better or worse, right, they're there to help us survive. And I learned that with
eating disorder treatment. The reason that people,
and I know any of you who are recovering hate this,
but when you regain weight, you gain it around your middle,
because your body's like, "I need to protect my vital organs." And our bodies adapt to
protect us, to keep us alive. And essentially, learning
isn't as important as survival. - Exactly, anything. I feel
like survival trumps everything. - Yes, it's like, just the bare
bones of what we need to do. - Exactly, and I think too,
that when we think about, well, if you're in a
constant state of survival, what's adaptive that is,
well, then I have to learn how to not always in an adaptive way, regulate that state
through alcohol, drugs, cutting, whatever that might be. So if you think about it, I'm like, it is an adaptive strategy in some ways with long-term implications
that are really negative. - Yeah, and so if it's
affecting our ability to learn, our ability to connect with others, I'm assuming that, then
even if our children aren't traumatized by
something we have done, is there a way that we
interact with potentially our children or other
members of our family that would create that in them? Do you know what I mean, like a trickle down, generationally? - So the research is fairly new in this, where they're showing
that trauma is actually passed down through the genes. - Oh, interesting. - So you know, we pass on our DNA, and then there's something
called the epigenome, which sits on the DNA strand, and it can either turn on or
off the expression of a gene. So they did this study, and I just think it's really interesting, where they had these rats, and they conditioned the rats to be afraid of the smell of cherries. - Oh, interesting. - Which, ethically, we
could go on about that. - Yeah, that's-- - And I had my reactions to that, but so the adult rats were
afraid of the smell of cherries. And their offspring, and
their offspring's offspring were also afraid of the smell of cherries. But they were reared separately, so it wasn't a learned behavior, right? - Oh, there was no way they learned it? Yeah, they didn't see them be afraid? - Right.
- It was genetic. - It was passed on. You can think about racism, you can think about genocide, you can think about
those things that we know maybe happened to our ancestors, but we have a fear response
that we might not know where it originates from. - Which is really important
I think for the understanding of people, because a lot of people, especially when we talk
about other issues, not just trauma, but generational trauma. Like yeah, if your family's Jewish, and you had family
members that were part of or in a concentration camp, let's say, it doesn't matter that
it didn't happen to you. It's like, technically in your DNA. - Correct.
- Wow. - And it can sound like
a devastating tale, when you think about it that way. - Yeah, of course. We can't escape! - We can't escape years and years of generational trauma,
so if we think about well, if the genome expresses trauma, it can also express resilience, too. - Of course, yeah. - And I know we're gonna
talk a little bit more about the resilience
factors, but when we think about our behaviors today
are affecting the next two, three, four generations,
it makes you think twice about your next move, right? And who and how you're affecting. - Totally, because if you
know what you're passing on, not through behaviors,
because I feel like most of parenting focuses on behaviors. How do you discipline a child
without traumatizing them? How do you communicate with your child, and teach them to properly
communicate how they feel? But more than that, it's like, how do I feel, how do I act on my own, separate from being a mother or a father? - Correct.
- Wow. - Right, I mean, it's a lot
to think about and process and take responsibility for, if there's an action to be taken. To kind of really work
and clean up what we can in our own selves, if you will. There was this
groundbreaking study in 1997, it really changed the way we
think about childhood trauma and it's called the ACE Study,
Adverse Childhood Events. Experiences, I'm sorry,
by Vincent Felitti. And it involved 17,000 adults. I think the average age was like, 50. And these were adults
that were middle class, I think 80% were college-educated, and what he did was he
assessed for their average childhood experiences. He had 10 categories. So they looked at physical
abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, illicit drug use in the home, domestic violence, incarceration. And there were a few more
other childhood categories. And so they rated how many events, not how many in each category, but how many categories
did each person have. And what they showed was
that if a person had even two adverse childhood experiences, their rates for depression,
suicidality, drug use, were exponentially higher. And the statistic that
really blew them away is that if a person had six ACE scores, they were, I mean, this
is a staggering number, 40,000 times greater to have
a likelihood of suicide. - Wow. - And basically, you don't
hear statistics like this. - No, and people don't
talk about it enough. Because this came out awhile ago. - Right.
- So it's not like, it is new information,
but it's not brand new. It's not like 2018. - Right, and shifting life
expectancy by 10, 15 years. - Yeah, wow. - So if we think about mental health, and the epidemic, really,
in our healthcare system, with these kids that are going to, and then, of course,
there are their offspring that are impacted by
their childhood trauma. - Wow, those are staggering statistics. And staggering numbers. And I know when that study came out, myself, I didn't even
have words to describe. Like, it was so shocking to me. So if someone does have, well, I guess, going back
to our original conversation about like, how they define it, how does someone assess, or how do we know if there are ACEs, right? 'Cause you're talking about
having those ACE scores. Having one, two, at
least two, we see like, physical and generational ramifications. How do we assess them, or how do we know? - Right, because it's not necessarily like a child's gonna tell you. - Yeah.
- And more often, I think what you see is
maladaptive behaviors, which is a kid acting out at school. Maybe they're hyperactive. Perhaps the coach sees an
attitude that's being thrown out. - Extra aggressive, yeah. - In a way, if you think about it, all of those behaviors
are adaptive in the sense of a kid who's probably running
on fear a lot of the time. - Yeah, and essentially, if
they're struggling in school, going back to what we
talked about earlier, they don't have any time
to focus on learning. - Right.
- Because they're in fight, flight, or freeze.
- Right. And our ability to regulate
our emotions is really tapped out because it's really regulated by more of the frontal part of the brain, not the survival part of the brain. So if you think about it,
that part of their system is not really online. - Yeah, because they have
no energy to put into that. - Exactly, so you're gonna
see all of that acting out as I say it, like it's
really a call for help. And oftentimes, those
kids, understandably, rules and boundaries are
important to get punished without that intervention in the home. - Yeah, and I feel like my
brain automatically went there. Like, wow, so they're
like, screaming for help, and instead of helping them, we're like, "No, no, you're bad.
Something's wrong with you." - Right, similar to our prison system. - Yeah, where we don't treat the problem. Instead we treat the symptom.
- Correct. I feel like we could say that's true-- - Yeah, 90% of the time.
- Culturally right now. - It is.
- Right. We just wanna kind of treat the symptom. And I think one of the
things that the study also shows, and what
research is coming out, is those protective factors that when these kids get a consistent, stable relationship, and
it could be in the form of a coach, or a teacher, or a neighbor, it's just somebody who
provides a consistent, nurturing, and protective
presence goes so far. This research that came out
that showed a pro-maternal, nurturing behavior that rat
moms licked the rat babies at birth, and part of the
licking is they produce this protein, and this is a
really protective protein. And those babies grow up
to live amazing rat lives. (laughing) They have really good coping skills, and their ability to regulate stress-- - Oh, interesting.
- Is really high. - Yeah.
- And then the rats that don't get licked and
don't get nurtured early on, go to show anxiety and
act out in aggression and all the things that
we would expect to see without that nurturing.
- Yeah. - But the thing is that they
showed that even those pups that didn't get it, if they
did get that nurturance later in life, they were still
able to produce that protein. Right, so even if we don't get
it from the very beginning-- - This is good news. - I know, I feel like so far, so much of this isn't good news. - Well, we have to learn. I feel like in order
to make things better, we have to learn what's... It's like, you can't fix something if you don't know how it's broken. - Exactly, and I think we
have to look under the hood and kind of assess the whole thing. - Exactly. - Instead of the patch job along the way. - Yeah, which is what we
were just talking about, we're doing patch jobs when
we're treating symptoms. So now we know if they
don't get nurturance, they can act out in bad ways, but any time you can get
nurturance later in life, it doesn't mean that you
can't still be loving, communicative, connecting. - Right.
- All of the things that people might have. - And if you didn't get it
and you are in a character viewing position, there's
so many places you can go to get those skills. Because I think so many people are like, "But I didn't have that, I
don't know how to give that." Thank God we live in the
time we live right now. It's not that difficult
to find a way to receive, to learn how to express. - Totally, I used to, for
those of you that don't know, one of my first jobs, before
I even went to graduate school to see if I really enjoyed counseling and wanted to be in the therapy realm. I worked at this parenting
teen girl foster home. (laughing) It was a lot. But I taught parenting classes there, because a lot of them didn't
have nurturing parents or any parents around in general. Some of them lived on the streets. And so there are tons of resources and ways to learn parenting skills and nurturing and
communication strategies. I mean, therapists like
us, and counselors, and even at schools, there's groups, and there's always different ways. Even online, you can take
courses and you can learn. That's the really cool thing,
is there are resources. - I think the other thing that comes up when you say that is I think sometimes we discount our reach. That as an adult, if you
have children in your life, even if they're not your
children, is to really understand the significance of your own presence. That our reach, being a
present other for a kid that might be struggling is so great. And I think sometimes that
we don't have that awareness to realize the implications of like, those kinds of gestures. - Yeah. - When I work with
clients, so often I'll ask you know, if they've had
a ton of childhood trauma. You know, who were your surrogates? Because we all find some
substitutions along the way. - Yeah, with the good enough mother. - Exactly, that come
in the form of a coach or a counselor or some kind. - Or a friend's parent.
- Right. - I had a client who
found a friend's family, and it was like, the surrogate family. And that, she felt, helped
her graduate high school. - Exactly, it's like that resource. And I find that the resilience
in the people I work with, are often the kind of people
that they don't even know why they're looking for
it or how they found it, but they knew they needed to find help. - Yeah.
- If their parents couldn't give it to them. - Well, and I don't know, I always feel like,
good job brain and body! Because it's like, we could have come out of like a really bad situation,
but we're resourceful. We reach out.
- Right. - And I think like, discrediting that is doing you a disservice for like, all of the strength and
resiliency that we innately have. And I think that's why I
said a good enough mother, because there's this
study from like, the 50s, and it could not be done now. And let's not get into the ethics of it. But it was these monkeys that they took away from their mothers too early, and some got like a wire frame with a little bit of cotton batting, and that was the good enough mother, and they would hold onto
the good enough mother. And so I say that because sometimes, even if it's not this perfect person who's very nurturing,
we'll take what we can get. And we'll reach out to
find what fills the void. And that's really great,
that means we can heal and we can grow. - Exactly, it is good news.
- Yeah. (laughing) - I think it's like, one
of the antidotes, I'd say, is human connection.
- Yeah. - It can come in the form of
our communities, in faith, in religious gatherings. I think that's what
they're really showing. And I think intuitively
when you said that, it makes a lot of sense
that when we can start using that attachment system, and starting to trust the world again, 'cause that's one of the
implications of childhood trauma is the world's not a really safe place. - Well, that's what our
experience has been. - Right.
- And it is adaptive in the same way our brain
can be adaptive for good or for bad, right? It protects us. It's like, "Don't trust adults, "adults have hurt us. "All adults are not safe." And that's a nice segue into
why I wanted to have you here today, and why I picked
this particular topic. About two weeks ago,
YouTube reached out to me and asked if I would come to
a screening of a documentary that they were part of, and
it's called The Price of Free. And it comes up on YouTube,
you can watch it on the 27th of November, I would
encourage you to do so. It'll be on SoulPancake's channel. But the whole documentary,
it follows this guy, Kailash Satyarthi, who is
working to end child slavery. And the thing that struck
me about the video, obviously the whole
documentary is heartbreaking, because they're finding these children working for little to no
money for 16 hours a day, and they don't get to go to school, they don't get to have a
childhood, essentially. And it was really hard for me to watch, and I was curious about the
mental health ramifications. Because that's what I think
of it, when you said like, not feeling like the
world is a safe place. When they get these boys
out of these horrible working environments, they
won't make eye contact, they don't want to
touch the adults at all. They cuddle together, the children, because probably those are the only people that were there and were safe. And I was just really wanting
to get into the ramifications of child slavery, and
why it is so important that we work together to end it. And while watching this documentary, when they go to rescue
the children, essentially, there are signs of emotional
abuse, physical abuse, neglect, and it's just really difficult to watch. You really feel for these
kids, and it just led me down this rabbit hole, as
any therapist, I'm sure. Like what are the ramifications
of this, long-term? Not only for the children in the moment, because that's what the
Kailash Foundation does, is they rescue them and
they take care of any physical ailments, and they love them, and they nurture them, and they give them food and understanding. But what's the trickle down from this, if when they grow up to
have children of their own? And that's why I wanted
to talk more about like, how this can affect them later in life and even affect their own children. So based on kind of what we know and the fact that trauma can trickle down, and it can affect us later in life, that's what research really shows. I would assume then, the
best way to combat that would be early intervention, right? - Right, the earlier you get a child, the particular sensitive
areas of development where the brain has access
to all the nourishment, whether it's through food
or emotional nourishment and support, the better. - Yeah, and so then if we
want to intervene earlier, my guess would be, and the
way that I tell my teenage patients it's their friends
that are the first line. When we're younger, it'd
probably be teachers, coaches-- - Pediatricians.
- Yeah. - Neighbors. I think one of the things
that I really learned through my patients
and through my research is that I think a lot of
adults are afraid to ask, or friends are afraid to ask. They might think or suspect
something's going on, but you know, I don't wanna make the other person uncomfortable. - Well, and I always
think it's interesting that you say that,
because I talk about that when it comes to suicidality, and it's okay to ask
someone if they're suicidal. You're not gonna cause
them to be suicidal. And people are like, "Well, I don't wanna
make them uncomfortable." I'm like, no, you're uncomfortable. - I like that. - And I think it's okay
to be uncomfortable, because the other option is it going unnoticed or untreated. - Exactly, I think
that's what we've really been outlining today, is unnoticed and untreated leads to like, a whole trickle-down of kind of horrible, potentially horrible things. - Physical and mental.
- Right. For many generations. So the risk of asking is
short-term discomfort, for long-term gain. - So definitely we should
encourage those around us, if we see it, we should
say something, essentially. And we talked a little
bit about the symptoms, like children acting out. Is that pretty much, if you are a teacher, or a coach, or a parent,
that you have a play date with another child and you notice things, is that what they should look for, is just acting out? - I think acting out or acting in. I think it's sometimes
because it's really withdrawn. And they seem really tuned
out and not able to focus. That maybe it's not ringing any bells. - Yeah, because it's not
always these huge actions. It can, a lot of times, be
like in the documentary, The Price of Free, like
the lack of eye contact, the struggle, and not wanting, the movements when someone
would try to touch them. It was like a defense. I felt like it was fight or flight, constantly, that response. And so if you notice anything like that, don't be afraid to speak up. It's not going to make anything worse. Yes, it might be a little uncomfortable for that little bit, but like Alexa said, it's like, long-term gain. We're looking not only for their lifetime, but the generations to follow. So if you are that teacher, that coach, or that other parent, how do you ask? What is the best way to approach a child, potentially, and ask them,
you know, what's going on? - Exactly, because I think
one of the biggest obstacles is you're not gonna
necessarily sit down and say, "Hey, are you being abused at home?" - Yeah, because children, I mean, often, especially if it's still happening, they're too scared to
say anything or speak up, especially to adults. Like we said, adults might not be safe. - Right, so you might wanna
just wanna start by asking, "Hey, how are you?" Just an inquiry, a sit-down,
a real deep inquiry. "How are things going? "This is what I'm noticing. "This has been a big
change in your behavior." So I would start with like,
what's observable first, and just stick with like,
this is what I'm seeing, I'm trying to understand what's going on. And I would start to
just ask little things, like, "Hey, are you
able to sleep at night? "Do you have nightmares?"
- Oh, yeah. - You know, "Are you able to eat? "Do you feel..." Like you could just start
asking more about the symptoms versus the content, so they
can just start talking. And then say like, "You know,
sometimes scary things happen. "Is there anything scary
going on right now?" I would start general, and
then you can get more specific. - Yeah, as they open up a little bit more. - Exactly. - And kinda build a relationship. - Yeah, a relationship. And you can talk about
why you're a safe person, that you're here to protect them, and that you care about them, and that you've always cared about them, if you have a long-time
relationship with the person. And that the reason you're
asking these questions is because you really wanna help. - Yeah, well, I think that's really great. Because there's a lot of like, when I was watching the documentary, a lot of it was like,
I don't even know how. How do we speak up? How do you ask? We often feel like we need
to have actions we can take and things we can do. And something wonderful
that you can do today is you can donate to
the Kailash Foundation. And join Alexa and I as we support Kailash in his efforts to end child slavery. And you can do that by clicking
the blue Donate button. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise. It's so incredibly helpful.
And please come back again. (laughing) And please watch The Price of Free. It's a documentary, again,
it comes out November 27th, on SoulPancake's channel. I will link their channel
in the description. Please check it out,
it's really important. And again, please donate
to the Kailash Foundation, they are doing great things. And every child deserves a childhood. So click that blue Donate
button, and donate now, and I will see you next time. Bye!
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