Change Your Brain Every Day - Overcoming the Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma: ACE Scores & EMDR Therapy

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

In this week's episode, the Amens discuss the impact of childhood trauma on the brain and how it can set the stage for long-term physical and mental health problems. Tana also shares deeply personal insights into her own traumatic upbringing and healing journey. 00:00 Intro 00:42 Overcoming the Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma 01:48 ACES Study 03:56 The ACES Questionairre 09:44 Overcoming Trauma 11:44 EMDR 16:45 ACES/SPECT Study 19:09 Sponsor 19:32 Face Recognition Study 20:45 Trauma and the 4 Circles 25:58 The Most Important Lessons from Trauma 29:19 Post-Traumatic Growth 30:06 Comparing Traumas 31:51 Resources/Wrap Up   EMDR International Association: https://www.emdria.org

For me, when I think about childhood adverse experiences and the social circle, a big part of that in my mind is learning to draw healthy boundaries. Because if you grew up in crazy, you know what I'm talking about. Boundaries are critical. I love you and I miss you is something I learned how to say to certain people. Or if I couldn't fix the relationship, if I couldn't help to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with some of these people, then I had to love them from a distance. And that just had to be okay. Because there are some people that just weren't healthy for me. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it

worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. On today's podcast, we're going to talk about overcoming the lasting impact of childhood trauma. One of your favorite topics, you actually wrote a whole book about it called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. I love your book and I love your story. Yeah, I first became interested in this. Um, I don't know if it was even because I would really wanted to, it's because I learned that I would die 20 years earlier if I didn't start figuring out what to do. You know, it's like, you can't do anything, but if you have had, um, early childhood trauma, um, we're going to talk more about this. We're going to, we're

going to start with the ACE test, the ACE score. Um, if you score a certain level on the ACE score, we'll, we'll get into this. If you score a score of six or more, you die 20 years earlier. And it wasn't a matter of opinion. It was a matter of a very long-term study. So I really decided, oh, I need to know about this and what can I do to mitigate that? So it was a study of over 17,000 people at Kaiser Permanente, sponsored in part by the Center for Disease Control, because some researchers were noticing that childhood trauma increased the risk of many illnesses and, in fact, early death. Almost all chronic illnesses that were leading to people dying early was increasing all chronic illnesses. And so at first they thought, well, yeah, because maybe it's because it's increasing the risk of addiction. That's not why. And when they really dug into it, they realized,

oh, it's because it changes brain development in children, children who are exposed to chronic adverse experiences to trauma as a child, it changes their brain development, which increases cortisol, which then changes a whole bunch of stuff in your life and not in a good way. And it led to all kinds of problems and people dying early. So let's talk about what we mean by childhood trauma. And then what we'll do here at Amen Clinics, we actually just published a huge study on adverse childhood experiences and the brain. It's the world's largest brain imaging study on childhood trauma. And I want to give one disclaimer.

When we do this questionnaire, this was the questionnaire. They only came up with these basic questions of what happened inside your family. They were not talking about being, say, raped or attacked on the street, anything that happened outside of your family. They were not talking about being, say, raped or attacked on the streets, anything that happened outside of your family. It was only in your family. And so there's more. Right. There's way more that could have happened to you that wasn't a part of this questionnaire that led to childhood trauma. So we're going to go through 10 questions and we just want you to write down which ones

that you had and there while you were growing up during your first 18 years of life. So that's for all of them. One, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often. So it's not if it just happened once, swear at you, insult you, put you down or humiliate you or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt. And so when I was little, I got beaten up a lot by my older brother. So that would be yes for me. Well, and you didn't like the way your dad talked to you. I didn't, but he worked so much that I might have that distorted how often it actually occurred.

But it occurred a lot with my brother. In fact, when I was 50, my dad sent us home movie videos. And every video I'm in when I'm under seven, I'm getting beaten up. And I'm like, why didn't you stop him? And he said, somebody had to take the movies. And I'm like, no. Like I often say, my dad's two favorite phrases, first one was bullshit. And the second one was no. And I'm like, bullshit, no. Two, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? Or ever hit you so hard that fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way or attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? And the number of people who answer that question, yes, is startling. It's like over 30% of girls. Four, did you often or very often feel that no one in

your family loved you or thought you were important or special? Or your family didn't look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? Five, did you often or very often feel that you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? Or your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if needed. Six, were your parents ever separated or divorced? Seven, was your mother or stepmother often or very often

pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her. Sometimes, often or very often, kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard, or ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes, or threatened with a gun or a knife. So did you witness domestic violence? Eight, did you live with anyone who had a problem drinking or was an alcoholic or who used street drugs? So you write about that in your book. Nine. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill?

Or did a household member attempt suicide? And ten. Did a household member go to prison? How many? Eight. I try to like go, well, How many? Eight. I try to like go, well, that one's gray, but it's eight for sure.

And people who score four or more have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. People who score six or more. Die 20 years early. Die 20 years early. And that was the statistic that really got your attention. I'm like, wait, I'm not okay with that.

This wasn't my fault. So what'd you do about it? I just got really serious about trying to understand it because if you can understand why it's happening in my mind, you can begin to take preventative measures, um, with, you know, the same things we always talk about bio, psycho, social, spiritual. Um, so for me doing EMDR, changing my diet, changing my sleep, um, you know, meditating, doing all the things that we do, because when I really began to understand why that happened, why that was happening, um, the increased cortisol, the brain changes, the, you know, all the things, if you understand what's happening in your body, that's causing that increased blood sugar. So I wear a glucose

monitor, right? I meditate. I do all these things to decrease the cortisol. Like you want to increase and improve your brain activity, decrease blood sugar, decrease cortisol, improve sleep. Like you have to just mitigate all of those things. Our first day. Um, and I was taken with you from the, the moment the, that we started talking to each other. We talked, I guess, for a couple of weeks before we ever met each other. And so, you know, like I do with everybody in my life, I just wanted to sort of get to know you. And so I asked you about your childhood and you said, and I asked you why you were a nurse. And you said you

were a frequent flyer when you were young. And when you were four years old that, um, you started having upper and lower GIs and you had a lot of gut issues and just- You tried to shrink me. Just say it. I didn't try to shrink you. Stop that. I didn't try to shrink you. I was curious of somebody who I thought I was going to care about. And I'm like, and this is, trust me, how hard it was.

I just went, what happened when you were four years old? And what did you say? I said it wasn't connected, but my uncle was murdered. A drug deal gone wrong. Your uncle was murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. Because of my other uncle, who then tried to commit suicide with drugs. And you witnessed your mother and grandmother screaming as they fell to the floor, crying. Yeah. And I was very lost in all of it because they, you know, I mean, they were well-meaning.

They didn't want me to hear and see what was going on. And so they were pushing me out of the way, but I was terrified. So I didn't know why I was being. I just, I wanted my mom. And so I was being shoved out of the way and pushed into the other room and I was freaked out. So yeah. But that didn't. I went and hid. But that didn't have anything to do with. Absolutely not. I'm a trauma nurse. I don't, I don't do like.

I don't, I don't do like, I don't do feelings. And so I let it go that day, made a little note. And I remember my first gift to you was 10 sessions of EMDR. Now I didn't do it, but I love it. Oh, it's amazing. It was life-changing. It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And it was developed in the late 1980s by Francine Shapiro, who's a psychologist in Menlo Park,

who realized when her eyes went left and then right, left and right, whatever was upsetting her didn't upset her as much. And then developed this whole theory. And we sent you to actually one of the original EMDR trainers, Dr. Kurt Brownson, actually his wife, Lisa. And I paid for 10 sessions, but I think you actually went for like two years. Yeah. It was amazing. At first I was very reluctant. I wasn't really, I wasn't really a therapy kind of person at that time. I didn't think, but I loved EMDR because it felt like a shortcut to me and I didn't understand why it worked. It was weird. It was very weird in my mind how it worked, but I couldn't sort of figure it out.

I just knew it did work. And it was sort of a quick way through a lot of the stuff. Can you give an example of a session? Yeah, well, and at first I didn't. So I'll try and give you an example. But so you bring up a negative memory. And, you know, it's like, where do you feel it? How, like on a scale of one to 10, how, you know, how intense is the feeling?

And then you, you do the eye movement while you're thinking about it at that level, at that intensity. And you let it go where it's going to go. And so often it would go to places. I'm like, it makes no sense. And Lisa was like, everything makes sense. Just tell me what came up for you. And something completely in my mind that was unrelated would pop up. And she's like, everything makes sense. Just tell me what came up for you. And something completely in my mind that was unrelated would pop up.

And she's like, really? You don't think those are related? And I'm like, oh, like sort of like you with the gut and my uncle being murdered. And it would go down this crazy path. And pretty soon I'm like, wow. Like it was like connecting dots that I never knew would connect. And then all of a sudden it takes, I don't even know why, but it takes the emotion out of it. And you're just like, you, you, it's not that it goes

away. It's that the emotional intensity sort of just dissipates. And then you sort of replace it with what you'd rather have. She does a session where you replace it with what you'd rather have there instead. What would you rather feel like? And so I did this with a whole bunch of negative. You saw, I have an ACE4 of eight, so I had to do a lot of it, but we did this for two years and it just, like, I used to think there's nothing wrong with me. Like, like I think that's a normal, um, defense mechanism that a lot of people who grew up in trauma have is they, it's like, it was garden variety dysfunctional. You know, it was just like, whatever. It's not as bad as other people had it. And that's something that

we tend to say if we don't want to, those of us who don't want to be victims, like I refuse to be a victim. So it's like, it wasn't as bad as other people had it. And that's what you tell yourself because that's how you survived it. And so, because there are other people in my family who were just like the ultimate victims and that was not going to be me, but there's a, there's a difference between honoring what you went through and moving on through it. Well, but let's say there was nothing wrong with you, that you're awesome. I love you. That's what you said to me. Right? But you could be better, right? If you're not being triggered by the pain from the past. And I think it's one of the reasons you and I get along so well is because our past isn't interfering with the present. And why EMDR is better than just talking about it

is when you just talk about it, it's almost like you get re-traumatized again. What EMDR does is it increases, it activates the memory, but the eye movement, the bilateral hemisphere stimulation. So when you're going left, right, left, right, you're stimulating one side, then the other one side, then the other it's called bilateral hemisphere stimulation. What it's so powerful. And I did a study on EMDR with police officers who had been involved in traumatic shootings. And they all had what we call the diamond pattern in the brain. And after an average of eight sessions, that calmed down. How exciting is that? And so I got interested in large part because of you, adverse childhood experiences.

I gave all of our patients at Amen Clinic, give all of our patients for the last three years, the ACE questionnaire. And then we took our first 7,000 patients and we looked at their scans. And what we found was increased activity in an area of the brain called the default mode network. So it's the anterior cingulate gyrus. It's the brain, I think it was the brain's gear shifter, allows you to go from thought to thought, move from idea to idea, be flexible, go with the flow. And the posterior cingulate gyrus, top back part of the brain, sort of like the chatterbox in your head that's always generating your internal thoughts. So we saw that.

We saw increased activity in the right lateral temporal parietal junction. And that's an area of the brain that reads the intentions of others. So it's called theory of mind. What are you thinking? And when that's activated, you're thinking they're going to hurt you, right? So you get stuck on negative thoughts, you're a bit paranoid, a bit, right? Not really paranoid, but a bit. And it drops the function in your prefrontal cortex. So you have problems sort of supervising the trauma that happens. And EMDR helps to balance your brain. So childhood trauma leaves a lasting imprint on the brain that can be remodeled. And I think that's exactly what you did. Yeah, no, it's really interesting.

You remodeled your brain. Well, and there are some things that are, you know, that it's not like you're going to be an entirely different person, but you, I released a lot of the, like it just took, it just took the emotion out of it. But there are things, I mean, you grow up in trauma, you get attacked when you're a kid, you know, you get assaulted when you're a kid,

you're gonna always have eyes in the back of your head. Like that's just something that's not going away. Um, you know, I don't know what else to say. This podcast is brought to you by the change your brain foundation dedicated to ending the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Go to changeyourbrain.org to learn how you can support our mission. So we do a study at Amen Clinics called Total Brain. And I love this study so much. And it measures like 17 different cognitive functions.

And one is how well you are at recognizing faces. Oh, you and I go around and around about this. And you're very good at recognizing faces. And how fast you recognize negative versus positive faces. And my ACE score is two, but I recognize positive faces very fast. And you recognize negative faces much faster than positive faces. And I had a program to actually train you how to change that. You wanted to change me. And you had no interest.

I was so annoyed with you. I'm like, why would I want to change that? This is the dumbest game I've ever seen in my life. I learned how to survive by knowing how to read negative faces. I want to be able to see the guy on the street with a gun. I want to know the guy that's going to attack me from behind. I want to see the terrorist. I don't care about the guy smiling at me. No, unless he's carrying a gun, I don't care about him. So we got into an argument over that. I'm like, this is so stupid. So you can see how childhood trauma changes who you are over time. But the exciting news is you can change it back. Now, people have higher ACE scores.

They have higher anxiety disorders, more mood disorders, more substance use disorders, more PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. But I just want to highlight how powerful the right therapy is. So in my mind, this is not something you just go talk about. This is something that if you do something like EMDR can be incredibly beneficial in the context of what you said, bio, psycho, social, spiritual. So biology, you're talking about lowering your cortisol level because high cortisol level puts you at high risk for a lot of immune system disorders. Well, that was a big part of what they found was causing a lot of the problems was because it was like when you're a child and

that happens, it not only changes your brain function, the cortisol is jacked up so much. It's like having a tiger around the corner all the time that you never knew when it was going to jump out. So you end up, your flight or fight is constantly flipped on, never off, and you're always ready for it. And that's not how we're supposed to live. And you also had thyroid cancer when you were in your 20s. It came back repeatedly. Yeah.

And so it negatively impacted your immune system, odds are. One of the reasons that you got so serious about being healthy right so biological get your body healthy psychological learning not to believe every stupid thing you think so mdr killing the ants and And EMDR, I think, so important. And then also practices that you do on a regular basis, which is meditation and journaling. In my new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain, I have a new journaling technique. It's actually the technique I use with all of my patients, every five years, write down what awesome things happened in your life and what awful things happened.

If you just too often, therapists are going for bad. And I always want to go for balance, right? I want to talk about the bad things. And we'll do EMDR with those. But I also want to know the good things. And you had a lot of good things growing up, right? So every five years, write that out. And then for EMDR, we'll pick the top 10. And we tend to go with the worst problem first, because you can get the bad boys first. People get confidence because they see how helpful it is. And then biological, psychological,

social, the parenting episode we did, I mean, it's a social intervention, right? The better you get along with me and the better you get along with Chloe, the happier you are. Well, and for me, when I think about childhood adverse experiences and the social circle, a big part of that in my mind is learning to draw healthy boundaries. And so, because if you grew up in crazy, you know what I'm talking about. Boundaries are critical. I love you and I miss you is something I learned how to say to certain people. And, or if I couldn't fix the relationship, if I couldn't help to, you know, figure out how to say to certain people. And, or if I couldn't fix the relationship, if I couldn't help to, you know, figure out how to have a healthy relationship with some of these people, then I had to love them from a distance. And that just had to be okay because there are some people that

just weren't healthy for me. Well, and if you were up in trauma, you often grow up in guilt because you're interpreting things at a much earlier age. And not so much you, I think, but other people, they're like, that was my fault. And so I have to fix it. And they spend their lives trying to fix people who don't want to be fixed. And then spiritual. And when you and I wrote The Brain Warrior's Way together, you talked about turning pain into purpose. I think it's so important. When some of the coolest people that we meet who have been through really horrible things, I mean like really tragic things, but seem really normal.

And it's because they have turned their pain into purpose, because they have figured out how to help other people. And it just, yeah, it's very interesting how much that can change how you view your tragedy. Well, and coming up, we have episodes with Pastor Paula White, who clearly did that, an A score of eight or nine, with Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped. She was amazing. And turning pain into purpose is just so powerful. asked you the single most important lesson you learned from your ACE score, what do you think

it would be? Well, there's two resilience and responsibility. Yeah. Those are the two big ones. Say more about it. So resilience, um, because I, you know, it's funny for so long, I just, you know, was angry about some of the things when I was a kid, some of the things that I went through. Um, but now I'm not because it's who I, it's why I am who I am. And I like me and I'm tough. Like I'm, I'm very, like I'm competent and I'm tough and I'm, I can handle things, you know? And so I wouldn't take that back. I don't know that I would be that person without those experiences. So that's resilience.

I think of myself as the opposite of a victim and I like that about me. So that's the resilience aspect. The responsibility aspect, this always gets me a little bit of, you know, some of my DMs are not so positive, but I stick by it. When I learned this the first time I heard it, I didn't like it either.

When someone asked me, actually, it was my uncle who was the heroin addict, who was somewhat, well, basically responsible for my other uncle being murdered. He ends up making this full circle. And when his life was back together and I was a mess in my twenties. And he was teaching a seminar. He was teaching a seminar. For Jack Canfield, right? No, not that was a different one, but yeah, basically was working with that, those groups. And he, I was a mess. I was going through, I was, had filed bankruptcy, put my job,

dropped out of school because I was sick because of cancer. And my life was just sort of all over the place. And he looked at me and said, how much responsibility are you willing to take? And I was pretty angry about it. I'm like, this isn't my fault. And he said, I didn't ask you to take the blame. I asked you how much responsibility you're willing to take because it's the ability to respond. And I think my past has taught me that, that I want as much responsibility as I can take. Not blame, but responsibility. Because that just puts me in the driver's seat. And those are the two big things I think I learned from my past that were life-changing and empowering. I love that so much. I actually use that story a lot with my patients.

It's like, let's talk about responsibility. In fact, when I talk about relationships, I use the acronym RELATING. And the R is responsibility. Yeah. How much responsibility do you want in this relationship? And it doesn't mean being codependent and taking on all the problems of other people and taking responsibility for things other people do or taking blame.

It just means your ability to respond, your ability to have control over the outcome. So can I respond in this situation in a way that's healthy, in a way that furthers why I believe I'm on the planet. Right. It was life-changing for me. And from a spiritual standpoint, we often talk about post-traumatic growth. And that's pain to purpose.

Well, for me, I have, I have a lot of faith for me. God is a huge part of my life. There's something bigger than I am. So for me, that is the most important thing to me, but also pain to purpose is a big part of that. So being able to use what happened to help anyone else. I didn't want my story told. I didn't want to, when you wanted me to write a book, I thought you were insane. And it took me about five years to ever come to grips with that. But when I realized if only one person benefits from one thing in that book, then maybe I have a responsibility to do that. And maybe that would help me and someone else. So I think one thing I would like to say to anybody who has gone through trauma in their past and they try to bury it because they say, well, it wasn't that bad or someone else had it worse. I did that for so long.

I couldn't say the word molested. So that was like not something that happened to me. Um, and I was like, well, it wasn't that bad. Other people had it worse. It could have been so much worse. You know, I think. And then I asked you if somebody had done that to Chloe, what would you do? Yeah. And it became very clear. I would rip their beating heart out of their chest and feed it to my dog. Yeah. And watch them. I think I had that same. I'm like, Oh yeah, it was very clear to me, but I couldn't, I couldn't put it in context with myself. Right. It's probably how I dealt with it, but I think it kept me from getting help for a long time because it's like, well, I didn't

almost like I didn't deserve it because it wasn't bad enough. And I think it's really important to not compare your trauma to anyone. You're awesome. You could be awesomer if you just wherever you're at, just honor where you're at and don't compare yourself to other people. Just be willing to go to that place. And it's not about anyone else. It's just about you. And it's about your recovery. And it's about your ability to move forward.

And it doesn't need to be better or worse than anyone. And if you notice that it interferes with joy. If it interferes. Or relationships. With your relationships. Which it did for me. Are you getting what you want in life um get help and there are resources you can go to amenclinics.com look um perhaps coming to one of our 11 clinics so we could look at your brain and then work to get it better. If you want to learn more about EMDR, there's a great website, emdria.org,

E-M-D-R-I-A, the International Association of EMDR, emdria.org. We'll put links for you. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you found this valuable. Please subscribe. Leave us a review. If you have a comment, story of transformation, a question, you can DM either of us, Tana, on Instagram at Tana Amen or me, Doc, D-O-C, underscore, Amen. Thanks so much.