ANXIETY

Possible Adverse Effects Of Maternal Stress On The Unborn Baby’s Brain Development.

ANXIETY, ARTICLES / By

A study carried out by Sarkar et al. at Imperial College, University of London and published in the scientific journal Clinical Endocrinology suggests that, if a mother is highly stressed during pregnancy, her consequent excessive production of stress hormones may adversely affect the brain development of her unborn child from about seventeen weeks after conception …

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How Parents’ Anxiety Levels And Behaviors Affect Their Child’s Anxiety

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A study involving 98 pairs of mothers and infants (the infants were aged from 12 months to 14 months) was carried out to investigate how the level of the mother’s stress affected the level of the infant’s stress (as measured by the reactivity of their respective nervous systems). METHOD : The mothers were separated from …

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Reducing Anxiety By Calming The Amygdala

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, HOLISTIC TREATMENT / By

  We have seen from other articles published on this site that severe and protracted childhood trauma, resulting in the child being frequently subjected to extreme stress, can damage the development of the part of the brain known as the amygdala, which is intimately involved in generating feelings of fear and anxiety. Indeed, in individuals …

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Traumatic Memory : Flashbacks, Fragments, Nightmares And Repression

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, MENTAL PAIN, NIGHTMARES / By

  Remembering traumatic events is in some ways beneficial. For example, it allows us to review the experience and learn from it. Also, by replaying the event/s, its/their emotional charge is diminished. However, sometimes the process breaks down and the memories remain powerful and frightening. Sometimes they seem to appear at random, and at other …

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Effects Of Unpredictable, Toxic Childhood Stress And Stress Inoculation

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD / By

Many children who grow up in dysfunctional family homes find themselves living in a state of hypervigilance, never knowing how their parents are going to respond to them at any given time (for example, this is often the case in homes where one or both parents are alcoholics or in homes where the parents are …

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Childhood Trauma And Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

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  Several of the articles on this site have already examined the link between childhood trauma and anxiety. In this article, I want to consider one specific anxiety-based disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). When a person has this disorder, as its name suggests, s/he suffers recurring obsessions and/or compulsions. I define these below : …

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Why Complex PTSD Sufferers May Avoid Eye Contact

ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, SOCIAL ANXIETY / By

    Steuwe et al. (2014) was conducted to cast light upon why many with individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including those suffering from complex-PTSD, often find it excruciatingly uncomfortable every time the rules of social etiquette compel them to make eye to eye contact with another human being (I, myself once attempted …

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Early-Life Separation From Mother : What Experiments On Mice Tell Us.

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, BPD, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD / By

The Study: A Mouse Model Of Early-Life Stress : This experiment was conducted to look at the effects on mice of early-life stress. It involved separating baby mice from their mothers for three hours per day for each of the first ten days of their lives. Results Of The Study : It was found that the …

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Possible Long-Term Effects Of Highly Stressed Mothers On Infants

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Mothers who are suffering severe and protracted stress (e.g. due to an anxiety disorder) for a significant period of time whilst bringing up their infants are likely to be less attentive to their off-spring than are mothers who are mentally healthy. In such a deprived environment, the part of the infant’s neuroendocrine system known as …

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Hypervigilance And Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Complex PTSD).

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If we have grown up in a chronically stressful and traumatic environment in which we often experienced anxiety, trepidation, stress and fear we are at high risk of developing a fundamental, core belief (on a conscious and/or unconscious level) that the world is a dangerous place and that we need to be constantly on ‘red-alert’ …

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Trauma Triggers : Definition And Examples

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, BPD, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD / By

TRAUMA TRIGGERS are events/occurrences that remind us (on either a conscious or unconscious level) of our original traumatic experiences causing us to feel extreme distress similar to that felt at the time of that original trauma. We are particularly likely to be affected by triggers at times of acute stress. Some examples of trauma triggers …

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Trauma Linked To Social Anxiety, Self-Consciousness And Isolation

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, SOCIAL ANXIETY / By

  Childhood Trauma And Social Isolation: If, as a result of our childhood trauma, we develop, in adulthood, mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, we are at greater risk than average of becoming socially isolated. Indeed, I have written elsewhere on this site about how, for several …

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Childhood Trauma, Obsessions, Compulsions And Rituals

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Research conducted by Mathews, Kaur, and Stein at the University of California examined the association between childhood trauma and the development of symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. It was found that those individuals who had experienced emotional abuse or physical abuse in childhood were significantly more likely than those who had not to suffer …

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‘Distress Intolerance’ : Do Your Feelings Sometimes Feel Unbearable?

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, DEPRESSION / By

The term DISTRESS INTOLERANCE refers to a frame of mind in which we consider the mental pain, anguish, or discomfort we are experiencing to be UTTERLY INTOLERABLE AND UNBEARABLE so that we become frantic and desperate to avoid it/escape it. The emotions we feel unable to tolerate usually belong to three main categories; these are: …

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Reducing Hyperarousal Caused By Childhood Trauma

ANXIETY, ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD / By

    We have seen that the experience of severe childhood trauma can lead to severe symptoms hyperarousal in adult life due to damage incurred to the development of the brain’s limbic system. Below I provide some definitions of hyperarousal: a state of increased psychological and physiological tension marked by such effects as reduced pain tolerance, …

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Four Types Of Stress Exacerbated By Childhood Trauma

ANXIETY, ARTICLES / By

  Childhood Trauma And Stress We have already seen that those of us who have suffered severe and chronic childhood trauma are at increased risk, compared to those who experienced a relatively happy and stable childhood (all else being equal), of experiencing extreme difficulty dealing with stress in our adult lives; it is theorized that this …

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Anxiety: Personality Characteristics Which May Intensify It.

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  We have seen from several articles that I have already published on this site that if we have suffered significant childhood trauma we are at increased risk of suffering from crippling anxiety conditions in our adult lives. Such anxiety conditions, unfortunately, may be intensified if we have certain personality characteristics. I briefly outline each …

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