The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor discusses childhood adversity and how the ways children adapt to adversity follow them to adulthood. That’s coming up in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.
Childhood adversity is defined as any negative experience that requires the average child to adapt significantly. Although adversity can be good for us in many ways, a child should not have to learn how to cope in a tough environment from such a young age.
Children are constantly absorbing whatever is in their environment, and form beliefs based on what they’re taught, what they see, what they hear, and how they’re treated. This translates into a framework of the world that will persist through adulthood, unless challenged or dealt with during childhood or adolescence.
Topics
- Defining and understanding childhood adversity.
- The physiological and psychological effects of childhood adversity.
- How toxic stress manifests in adulthood.
- Why no child with adverse childhood experiences arrives to adulthood unscathed.
- Avoiding the use of labels, and separating experience from identity.
key takeaways
- Adversity can make us stronger, but only when we experience it as adults – no child should not have to learn how to cope in tough environments from such a young age.
- The way a child is treated influences how they see the world.
- Repeated exposure to negative stimulation throughout childhood creates chemical imbalances that affect us psychologically and physiologically.
