Both toxic and protective aspects of children’s environmental experiences, at the levels of family and community, exert gene transcription-modifying influences on risks for ill health and maladaptive behaviour.
– Genes, Environments and Time: The Biology of Adversity and Resilience
At the behavioral level, for example, higher levels of adversity are associated with problems in learning and memory, which in turn may be related to higher rates of academic failure.
– Early Adversity and Critical Periods: Neurodevelopmental Consequences of Violating the Expectable Environment
That which doesn’t kill you does not make you stronger. It may leave you much weaker. Neuroscientists, pediatricians and psychotherapists have been warning of how brain circuitry and the immune system could be altered permanently because of adversity during the first few years of life. Someone who has been through trauma may behave in self-defeating ways subconsciously.
Though Nicolas Nassim Taleb made this point in two books at least, The Black Swan (Taleb, 2010, p.107) and Antifragile (Taleb, 2012, p.76), a cursory search would show several articles which quote Taleb along with Nietzsche. According to Taleb, the reason it appears like adversity makes someone stronger, is that only those who are strong in the first place would survive.
In The Black Swan, Taleb calls this oft quoted maxim, “profoundly flawed” and that “every single rat, including the strong ones, will be weaker after the radiation than before”. Here, to illustrate why the maxim is untrue, he gave the example of subjecting “a heterogenous cohort” of rats to radiation in his imaginary laboratory. In Antifragile, he added, “Sometimes we see people having survived trials and imagine, given that the surviving population is sturdier than the original one, that these trials are good for them” when in actual fact, “the trial can just be a ruthless exam which kills those who fail”.
There are two ways to survive after trauma. The first is through innate resources which fortunately can be enhanced. The degree to which this might work would depend on one’s experiences during critical periods defined by when the brain is plastic or amenable to wiring.
The other is through developing personalities which are anti-social but very adaptive and which have been classified as the dark triad. Nelson and Durnam (2020) warn that “higher levels of adversity (particularly neglect) are associated with atypical patterns of social-emotional development and higher rates of psychopathology”. In Match Point, the protagonist’s shrewd manoeuvring in several ethical quagmires appears to be a nod to nihilism – that there is no need to adhere to any set of values and that the only truth which matters is that the fittest survive. This is an example of a dark triad personality.
Though these personality types allow for survival, they are not unlike, Si Ma Yu practising a highly lethal unorthodox art in The Last Swordsman (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, 1991); one sustains severe injury to self in the pursuit of one’s aims.
Though there are ways to survive after trauma, some malevolent and others not, trauma could effect negative neurobiological, genetic and biological changes if it happens during a critical period.
Also, some people never quite recover from bruising childhoods. Nelson and Durnam (2020) state that, “critical periods result in irreversible changes in brain function. If a key experience fails to occur during a critical period, behaviour will be permanently impacted with little recovery possible”.
In a paper released yesterday by pediatricians, Boyce et al. explain that there is “increasing evidence of the extraordinary importance of the prenatal period and early infancy for the developing immune system and metabolic regulation” and that there are genetic, environmental and time factors which influence “adaptive skills”, “stress reactivity”, “inflammatory and immune balance”, “metabolic balance” and even “organ architecture”.
Boyce et al. (2021) document three ways in which the environment and genes interact:
a) rGE – in which “An adolescent with a genetic predisposition to antisocial behaviour, for example, may actively seek risk-taking experiences”. It would appear like this type of individual needs saving from himself.
b) GxE – in which some adverse environmental stimulus results in negative outcomes only for those with a certain gene variation. For example, “children carrying the 7-repeat allele of the DRD4 gene have increased fat intake when reared in socioeconomically disadvantaged conditions”. Here, it would appear that some are fortunate enough to be able to go through adversity without much damage.
c) eGE – in which some adverse environmental exposure could “regulate or calibrate the timing and level of expression of specific sets of genes, resulting in differences in behaviour or disease risk.”Here, it should be noted that regardless of existing genetic makeup, there are situations which could permanently damage an individual at a biological level.
They reiterate that there are time periods in an individual’s life where certain “identified regions” in the brain are “most sensitive to the effects of experience” and that while “some neural circuits respond within months to experiences promoting maturation of function (e.g., sensory processing)”, “other circuits remain sensitive to external influences for decades (e.g., executive functioning). They add that “experiences occurring well past the end of a critical or sensitive period can still change functional outcomes”.
All this strikes a rather fatalistic tone. We may not be able to control our environment and we have even less control over our genes and neural processes. The discussion so far has been premised on the sustaining of trauma. Not all bad experiences have to be traumatic in the sense of being capable of effecting lasting consequences even if they hurt at the time. Howells et al. (2020) in A Systematic Review of Interventions to Promote Growth Following Adversity, agree with Tedeschi et al. (2018) that “whether or not an event is traumatic is in the eye of the beholder” and that the term also has a “subjective” quality.
Nelson and Durnam distinguish between stressful experiences and adversity. They give the example of “an impoverished language environment, where a child is exposed to fewer words and less complex language” and that this “is likely a form of adversity but it is in and of itself not stressful and does not activate the stress response system”. As an example of an experience which is stressful but cannot be considered adversity, they cite exam preparation. Trauma is sustained when the stress response system is overwhelmed and the experience has not been contextualised.
If left untended, maladaptive behaviours could become entrenched. It does not pay to act tough after taking a hit. When we fall and scrape the knee, we know how to use a band-aid or apply ointment. No one goes around with a bleeding knee claiming this is what strong people do. Yet, when some non-physical injury occurs, there seems to be some hesitation in getting treated. The strong don’t seek help. No, they become narcissists, Machiavellian and psychopaths and re-enact their own trauma and project their pain on others.
Perhaps the situation is changing and people are realising that to be fully functional, they need to make sense of the pain they have suffered as adults or as children. This could be why many including teachers are changing track to become counsellors and psychotherapists. Some say that talking to a counsellor or therapist is a waste of time because all they do is listen and mirror what they hear. Some people do have professional pride and not everyone is out to get the most for the least.
Also, Howells et al. (2020) say that adversity is “a relational state between an individual and their environment that includes the event and the individual’s cognitive (e.g., appraisal and rumination) and affective (e.g., distress) responses to it. A psychotherapist would be able to appraise the event, offer perspective and crucially prevent lasting or permanent undesirable changes in the brain. This would moderate the individual’s response and an affected person would not lose the sense of self. In cases where the behaviour is already entrenched, a skilled psychotherapist would be able to reprogramme the brain for healthy, adaptive behaviour.
While the term, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is well known, it is also possible to effect growth after injury. This is known as post traumatic growth (PTG). Psychotherapy done right, could bring about PTG.
After reviewing 93 papers and carefully analysing 37 of these, Howells et al. (2020) document the following forms of post-traumatic interventions to foster growth; cognitive-behavioral (cognitive-behavioral therapy), Mindfulness (meditation), Psychoeducation (resilience education), Disclosure (Expressive writing, emotional disclosure), Social Support (peer role-modelling and reflection), Sport and Leisure (Art therapy) and Others (Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing theory).
They found some interesting reports. For instance, “verbal disclosure” (talking about how one feels) and “cognitive processing” increased “positive emotions” and decreased “negative emotions” in injured athletes who were low in hardiness”. They also found that though participants of a Cognitive Behavioural Stress Management programme reported greater gains than the control group, immediately after intervention, “this difference had faded by the nine-month follow up.” In contrast, mindfulness practice was shown to have very long-lasting benefits which increased with time.
Resilience is to not allow negative events to alter behaviour in undesirable ways. This is a desirable trait and there is much social value attached to those who exhibit an ability to bounce back. There could well be those who appear to be functioning as usual because of the social status or to avoid stigma but who do so by spreading their misery.
Resilience does not mean being entirely unaffected. It means recognising the damaging potential of injury and taking action to prevent irreversible negative changes. Otherwise, though doing nothing different outwardly can give the appearance of toughness, there would be invisible and uncontrollable changes in the brain and organs which would surely manifest in sinister ways down the road.
Every force in one direction must be counteracted in the opposite direction to avoid going out of shape.
The Brain Dojo
