Developmental timing of trauma associated with depressive symptoms in adulthood | Hacker News Reader

Developmental timing of trauma associated with depressive symptoms in adulthood

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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This coincides nicely with the thoughts of my psychoanalyst. I think our first exposures to the world shape our whole experience of reality. My parents got divorced and my mum left when I was 2 and now I’m 29 and my entire life so far has had the underlying deep fear of being abandoned and not being good enough. Last year that came to a head and I had a year long depressive breakdown. I think I’m ready to start working again but I’m sure I’ll be dealing with the outcomes of my parents divorce for my whole life simply because it happened so early. When I was a kid I was glad it happened when I was young as teenagers around me were going through it and experiencing great pain, but now I realise they were very lucky!

I had a similar thing happen to me. My parents split when I was at two. At five, my brother was sent to live with my father. A year later, I was sent to live there, too. I can still remember lying awake at my father's house, crying out "I want my mummy", and my father coming in to tell me to be quiet.

Growing up, I didn't understand why everyone else found it so easy to get a girlfriend. Any time I got close, I'd suddenly get the urge to run away -- and I would.

Now, in my thirties, I have a better understanding of where that fear comes from, but the wires in my head are still tangled, and I don't know if I'll be able to get them untangled in time.

Yes, sounds very similar. For me, my earliest two memories are the following: a dream-like memory of my mum leaving and me being distraught and confused, and then the oft-told "funny" story of my dad hiding away in my bathroom while I was screaming sticking my fingers under the door.

For a long time I thought I had no trauma, because I was not abused and suffered no violence, but now I realise that's a very naive view.

After a few years I visited my mum every other weekend, which was confusing and stressful for me, since I loved being there so much, but it created a kind of tension between my "real life" with my dad, and this dream place I would go to every other weekend.

When I was a teenager the symptoms of the trauma started appearing. I was very jealous and depressed. Even today, even though I am happily married, I feel somehow hurt and confused if I think about other people having sex. I'm quite lucky I managed to get with my now-wife at 18, because she "straightened me out" in many ways.

And regarding my wife (then girlfriend), I would so often get really worried she was going to leave or that I'd upset her. I would ask constantly "are you okay?" or "have I upset you?", she was very frustrated by it. But of course, it makes perfect sense, my fundamental worldview is that the people you deeply love go away, and of course I blamed myself.

So I now find it difficult to get close to people, because I'm scared of getting hurt like that original pain. And I'm convinced everything is my fault, and every failure reminds me of that initial "failure" where, in my own subjective thinking, I was bad enough that I pushed her love away. Therefore, if I feel a sense of struggle, it literally feels like the world is ending, since that is the original fear.

This all came to a head in 2022 and 2023 when I moved to Germany and started having issues with my Physics postdoc work, and was not receiving any help from my boss. I really spiralled down into a deep sense of hopelessness, and just kind of accepted that my world had ended. I stopped going into work because as an academic no one cares if you're there anyway, and eventually I had to take extended sick leave. I'm now finally climbing out again, and I have hope again, but it has taken hundreds of hours of work with my therapist, and we've now upgraded to three sessions a week, which are definitely worth it. I'm very glad to have moved from the UK to Germany, there is absolutely zero chance I would have gotten this support in the UK, and I get my therapy totally for free too. I think she thinks I'm a reasonably worthy case for it though...

The fact I can type any of the stuff I just did is entirely a result of the therapy. At the beginning I was just purely confused. I had no idea what was wrong.

i went through similar experiences with parents seperating, getting divorced, moving around, causing us to switch schools, (grade 4 was the first time i spent a whole school year in the same school), even living with foster parents for some time.

the big difference, my parents were never close, my mother has asbergers (a fact i only learned very recently), and my dad was born late in the war, fleeing bombs, both which strongly affected their ability to show love to us children.

however my reaction to all this was very different. i didn't develop separation anxiety, i rather expunged all this dramatic experience from memory. and apparently what i learned is that it is useless to fight for someone. that made finding a partner difficult as it required them to make the first move, but then as long as we are together, and we are able to show affection for each other, things are fine, and i remain loyal and dedicated to her, but if she started to show signs of rejecting me for whatever reason i'd simply give up without shedding a tear as if it just wasn't meant to be, like all the times before.

i also seemed to have developed a fear of loneliness. not in the short term. being alone for some time, even weeks or months is fine at least as long as there is regular interaction with others. but it's very hard for me to work by myself and if someone were to tell me i'd remain alone for the rest of my life, i think i'd panic.

interestingly my brothers didn't have the same reaction. i was the only one who got married and has kids. one of my brothers got treated for depression. i suppose the stoic nature that i developed saved me from that, but in light of the article, it is probably also because i am the oldest, so the traumatic experiences hit me at an older age than my brothers.

and all of this didn't become clear to me until recently. it took that long to reflect and go through various experiences good and bad for me to figure this all out.

Just a heads up, I had a similar experience, my dad left when I was 3 and I still clearly remember that day and the day after when I was asking when dad would come home.

What I want to say is that a happy life is possible afterwards, where you feel successful (imposter syndrome is still always there) and happy. I have 2 children, a wife a nice job and I'm very happy.

Skimming, this seems like validation of common sense. I would not be surprised if it also applies to victims of frequent bullying.

As paper says in the abstract it is generally understood but this is about specific periods not just "early trauma means issues later".

well, the knowledge that the first 5 or 6 years of the development of a child are the most important and affect everything that comes after is not new either.

Just the opener is giving me the feels for kids surviving in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel….so many places right now, long roads to recovery need mental health support and science to continue.

> However, a more novel observation from this study was that there appeared to be two developmental stages when trauma exposure was associated with elevated levels of subsequent psychopathology. First, participants exposed to child maltreatment during early childhood (ages 0–5) had both depression and PTSD symptoms that were up to twice as high as those exposed during later developmental stages. These effects were detected even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, exposure to other types of traumas, and the number of occurrences of child maltreatment (i.e., the frequency of exposure). Such findings are consistent with several prospective 15–17 and retrospective studies 18,31 also showing an elevated risk for subsequent depression, in particular, among those first exposed in the first five years of life. Although the mechanisms linking early trauma exposure to subsequent psychopathology risk are not well known 56, early trauma exposure may be more damaging than later trauma exposure because it compromises a child’s ability to successfully master stage-salient developmental tasks (e.g., self-regulation, secure attachments) 57 and damages the foundation of brain architecture and neurobiological systems involved in regulating arousal, emotion, stress responses, and reward processing 58–61, which are all implicated in the onset and persistence of stress-related disorders like depression and PTSD.

> Second, we also found that participants first exposed during middle childhood (ages 6–10) to other types of interpersonal violence, including witnessing a friend or family member being murdered or being attacked with or without a weapon, had depressive symptoms scores that were about twice as high as those first exposed during adulthood. Similar results were also detected for PTSD, but were not statistically significant after adjusting the frequency or number of occurrences of child exposure. These results are consistent with at least some prior studies suggesting that trauma during middle childhood, including severe illness 41, or natural disasters 34–36 is associated with an elevated risk for PTSD relative to exposure in other periods. Although the mechanisms driving this association are unclear, exposure to interpersonal violence events during middle childhood may be more harmful than exposure in adulthood for a number of reasons: school-age children may be in a unique developmental stages where they do not benefit as much from parental buffering 62, when demands from the social environment increase (i.e., relating to peers, participating in school activities) 63, and when adaptive coping capacities are still developing 64.

Guess I'll die...

The striking thing to me is how complete the fear is. The childhood imagination becomes a detriment because of its ability to imagine and believe inutterable terror. With that early fear, it's harder, later on in life, to believe in limits to how bad things can become.

Well, shit

> Guess I'll die....

Or become a super-hero [0]

PTSD+PTG is like those comic-book character creation myths. Most people exposed to nuclear reactor core radiation or toxic chemicals, just die. Some transmute into Radioactive Man and get X-Ray vision.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_growth

I wonder how spiritual experiences resulting from psychedelics fit into this.

I have a long history of childhood traumas, but ever since using Ayahuasca and other psychedelics, I've gained a much more positive outlook in life, and have improved my life significantly since.

I tried that but unfortunately it made me way more negative and suicidal

Sorry to hear that.. I'm not sure how your set, setting and dosage was, but it also seems like most psychedelics aren't good for people with schizophrenia, bipolar and suicidal tendencies. It's definitely not for everyone.

Unfortunately the risk/reward is quite extreme. For reference:

Dosage: 100ug LSD on two close together ocassions

Set: No depression at that time, just some early childhood trauma as you mentioned

Setting: Both times in loving family environment in very safe environment

I don't have schizophrenia and bipolar, and I didn't have suicidal tendencies until I took LSD. Afterwards I did for about 4 or 5 years.

No, it is just a challenge. You are Frodo, you can destroy the Ring

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