It’s potentially far worse than you think.
I’ve been working with EFT Tapping for over 10 years now, so I have an acute understanding of just how damaging chronic stress can be to your physical and mental health. That said, I was still amazed by a recent article in Time Magazine stating that women who experienced childhood abuse were more likely to give birth to children with Autism.
Yes, you read that correctly.
According to the Time article, these findings were recently published in the prestigious JAMA Psychiatry journal.
The exhaustive study examined more than 50,000 women, and found that those who experienced some of the worst physical or mental trauma were 60% more likely to give birth to an autistic child than those who didn’t experience any abuse at all.
The study also found that behaviors that are often associated with victims of child abuse – obesity, smoking, drinking while pregnant, etc. – played a very minor role in these surprisingly high numbers.
Although the study did not set out to find the reason for this link between childhood trauma and autism, the researchers do have a theory as to why there’s such a strong connection. What is it?
You guessed it: Stress.
Although there were no conclusive findings on the cause, the researchers suspect that victims of childhood abuse may be left in a state of enduring chronic stress, in which their bodies continued to “react” to their abuse by releasing stress hormones long after the abuse actually ended.
These stress hormones, a crucial part of your body’s stress response, are only meant to be triggered temporarily when we’re facing difficulty or even danger of some kind. Prolonged release of these hormones can lead to a variety of unwanted physical and mental effects, and the researchers behind this particular study speculate that this elevated, irregular stress response could even be passed on to the children of the victims (other studies have shown autistic children to have anomalous stress responses).
The study really made me sit up and take notice, because it points in the direction of what I’ve believed for some time now: that untreated stress can have heavy repercussions not just on your own well-being, but also on the health of your loved ones.
As more studies such as this one emerge, I expect that we’ll gradually experience a sea change in the way that our doctors and hospitals address the issue of chronic stress.
Right now, stress is regarded as secondary to more immediate physical and mental conditions, but the problem is that stress often lies at the very root of many of them. The modern Western medical approach typically treats symptoms before looking at root causes, but this needs to change.
For this shift to really take place, it’s crucial that we begin looking for ways to deal with our personal stress. Psychological therapy can be immensely helpful, but it’s often costly, and doesn’t immediately address the day-to-day stress that most of us experience at work or at home.
As I mention in my book, The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living, studies done at Harvard Medical School have shown that stimulating the body’s meridian points, as we do in EFT Tapping, can significantly reduce your body’s stress response. It’s for this reason that I’ve made it my life’s mission to share this incredible technique with the world, as everyone can benefit from a reliable method to reduce their stress, regardless of their predicament.
In my practice and through my company, I’ve seen many people treated and healed from the childhood trauma and other baggage that they have carried well into adulthood, even and especially when they didn’t realize it was there. In these circumstances, I always recommend working with a practitioner, as very painful emotions and memories linked to abuse may emerge while tapping, and it can sometimes be too much to bear alone.
Whether or not you’ve experienced abuse in your childhood, the findings of this study should make it apparent that stress – of any kind – is a far more serious issue than you may have previously believed it to be. EFT Tapping is the fastest and easiest way I know to handle and eliminate your stress. But even if it’s not a method that you choose to utilize, you definitely need to find a way to cope with the burdens you deal with every day.
Now we have further proof that untreated stress not only affects you, but your children as well. It’s a sobering realization that hopefully spurs us all into action.
One simple action you can take right now is to download our Tapping Solution App for free! The positive changes people using the app have reported are incredible!
Until next time…
Keep Tapping!
Nick Ortner
Copyright © 2024 The Tapping Solution, LLC
Thank you, Nick! Happy Holidays!