Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Jul 2015 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Callie Beaulieu

About this audiobook

The emotional trauma we suffer as children not only shapes our emotional lives as adults but also affects our physical health and overall well-being. Scientists now know on a biochemical level exactly how parents' chronic fights, divorce, death in the family, being bullied or hazed, and growing up with a hypercritical, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent can leave permanent, physical "fingerprints" on our brains. When we as children encounter sudden or chronic adversity, excessive stress hormones cause powerful changes in the body, altering our body chemistry. The developing immune system and brain react to this chemical barrage by permanently resetting our stress response to "high," which in turn can have a devastating impact on our mental and physical health. Donna Jackson Nakazawa shares stories from people who have recognized and overcome their adverse experiences, shows why some children are more immune to stress than others, and explains why women are at particular risk. Groundbreaking in its research and inspiring in its clarity, Childhood Disrupted explains how you can reset your biology-and help your loved ones find ways to heal.

Ratings and reviews

I struggle daily with a formidable perfect-storm-like combination of adverse childhood experience trauma, autism spectrum disorder and high sensitivity, the ACE trauma in large part being due to my ASD and high sensitivity. Thus it would be quite helpful to have audio-books about such or similar conditions involving a coexistence of ACE trauma and/or ASD and/or high sensitivity, the latter which seems to have a couple characteristics similar to ASD traits. Childhood Disrupted fails to even once mention high sensitivity and/or autism spectrum disorder. [As it were, I also read a book on ASD that fails to even mention high sensitivity or ACE trauma. That was followed by a book about highly sensitive men, with no mention whatsoever of autism spectrum disorder or adverse childhood experience trauma.] I therefore don't know whether my additional, coexisting conditions will render the information and/or assigned exercises from such audio-books useless, or close to it, in my efforts to live much less miserably. While many/most people in my shoes would work with the audio-books nonetheless, I cannot; I simply need to know if I'm wasting my time and, most importantly, mental efforts. Really, it’s no secret that ACE abuse/trauma is often inflicted on autistic and/or highly sensitive children and teens by their ‘neurotypical’ peers, so why not at least acknowledge it in some meaningful, constructive way? ... An additional unaddressed elephant in the room throughout the book is: Why does/can the author only include one male among its six interviewed ACE-traumatized adult subjects? Was there such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of life-changing childhood abuse? Could it be yet more evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset; one in which so many men, even in these modern times and with anonymity, still would prefer not to ‘complain’ to some stranger/author about his torturous youth, as that is what ‘real men’ do? That relatively so few men (a ratio of 5:1 female to male) suffered high-scoring ACE trauma is not a plausible conclusion, however low in formally recorded number such unfortunate male victims may be. Even in this day and age, there remains a mentality out there, albeit perhaps subconscious: Men can take care of themselves, and boys are basically little men.

Im on a mission to fix my self. No medication no paid therapy. I have my issuse im broken but i will mot allow my problems destroy my briliant able daughter. If i ever have an opportunity to write my life in story from and a second as a success novel. I would sell my self cheap just to make it happen. Thank you for this.👩‍💻

Double Jeopardy

About the author

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science journalist and public speaker. She is the author of The Last Best Cure, in which she chronicled her yearlong journey to health, and The Autoimmune Epidemic, an investigation into the reasons behind today's rising rates of autoimmune diseases.

Callie Beaulieu has been an actress for several decades. Classically trained, she is predominantly a theater actress, and her work has been seen around the country. Callie recently returned to the US after spending nearly a decade living in the Caribbean. She is a proud member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA.