The following article is taken from chapter 2 of From Broken To Beautiful – My signature book.
Most people with Adrenal Fatigue push themselves over their physical or emotional limits and don’t take the time to look after themselves, they don’t do relaxation, and they don’t prioritise themselves.
Some of these destructive behavior patterns may be attributed to someone having experienced some type of early childhood trauma. A big part of my recovery from burnout was learning about the relationship between early childhood trauma, which is referred to as “adverse childhood events” or ACE’s and fatigue related illnesses, like burnout.
There is a huge amount of research now to demonstrate that if you were exposed to early childhood trauma, you are much more prone to complex illnesses like chronic fatigue, depression, burnout, cancer, and other serious illnesses.
After listening to “Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue” with Niki Gratrix,1 I learned that a huge study of 17,000 people revealed if you had four ACE’s, you had a 400% increase risk of depression, and Alzheimer’s. There is solid peer reviewed research to demonstrate that exposure to ACE’s lowers your stress response threshold.
You may be thinking, oh I don’t have any childhood trauma, however, there is research to support that you can inherit your trauma from your parents, which is called inter-generational trauma. So if your parents experienced trauma, then you may have inherited it.
Unfortunately, I experienced a significant amount of trauma throughout my childhood, and now that I understand how trauma affects your stress response and brain, I understand why I felt anxious most of my life and how that contributed to me experiencing a burnout so extreme, that it changed my life forever.
The huge study of 17,00 people revealed that almost 67% of people had experienced one ACE. 2
So What Is An ACE?
The ACE’s are things like parents separating or divorce, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, things like physical or emotional neglect, domestic violence, mental illness in the family, substance abuse, or incarceration by a family member. It can also be being bullied at school or witnessing violence and racism. If you have those kinds of things in your childhood, you have a 600% increase risk of getting things like chronic fatigue in adulthood according to Niki Gratrix. 3
Niki Gratrix states that early life stress changes the epigenetic expression of the entire genome, but specifically your stress response system. 4
“What essentially happens is that the threshold of what triggers the stress response, the cortisol response, the HPA Axis response—the threshold is lowered with children that have had early life stress. It takes less of a stress to trigger them and they’re more likely to stay stressed for longer.”
Research also clearly demonstrates that babies who had an insecure attachment relationships with their caregivers—(which is where the baby doesn’t experience unconditional love)—will feel some level of abandonment. According to Niki Gratrix, attachment trauma can lead on to developmental trauma, where you may potentially experience increased emotional regulation problems, depression, anxiety, and cognitive issues.
Sadly, research confirms that 50% of all adults have not attached properly in the first two years of life with their primary caregiver. It might be that mum and dad were arguing a lot, or mum’s was very stressed and not available emotionally for the baby.
Niki Gratrix explains that; 5“If you didn’t get unconditional love from your caregivers, you would have experienced abandonment and even though it’s unconscious to you— you you may feel ashamed. You may feel you have to earn love. You have to earn it somehow. You are driven by the beliefs of—If I work hard enough — If I prove myself and my status—I will earn it.”
Niki also explains that children experiencing emotional trauma sometimes try to numb the pain they are carrying from the trauma by developing destructive behavior patterns like being a workaholic, super achiever, or perfectionist. 6
I can certainly relate to being an overachiever and perfectionist, and I had to work hard on myself to change that pattern of destructive behavior. If you can relate to this and see yourself as a perfectionist or workaholic or overachiever, you too will have to work hard to change that pattern of behavior. Chapter 4 will explain how to create healthy habits and change your behavior patterns.
Other behaviours that result from childhood trauma include being a risk taker, or obsessive, anxious type. According to Niki Gratrix most trauma comes from insecure attachment.
If you have had early childhood trauma or feel you didn’t have a secure attachment relationship with your parents, then the probability if quite high that you now have a lowered stress threshold response and need less external stress to trigger your stress response.
You may be the type of person who has really worked hard on yourself to try to sleep well, eat well, meditate and do all the right things to reduce your stress, but still find you’re feeling anxious, depressed and or not sleeping. That was me, as I had suffered early childhood trauma, that lowered my stress response. I felt anxious most of my life, despite doing everything possible to reduce it, like meditation, yoga, eating a good diet, visualisation and affirmations. My anxiety levels are now significantly improved, as I have worked on resetting my stress response, combined with creating new behavior patterns and habits that support my health (which you will learn in this chapter).
If your stress response has been lowered, this means that you are potentially spending most of your day in the flight or fight mode, and not in the rest, digest and detox mode.
In order to heal your Adrenal Fatigue, burnout, or whatever disease you have, you will need to work on resetting this stress response. If you’re in the flight or fight mode, you will be continually exposing yourself to the stress hormones that weaken your immune system, increase blood sugars and lead to obesity, disease and increase your burnout symptoms.
If you have early childhood trauma and don’t commit to working on resetting your stress response, you can adopt all the strategies in this book, like changing your diet, sleep habits, hydration, setting boundaries, pacing yourself, and you will improve, however, to fully recover permanently, you will need to reset your stress response.
There are many simple daily things you can do to reset your stress response, which you will learn about soon.
The first step in resetting your stress response is to become aware of your childhood trauma, which could stem from an insecure attachment and realise that these events have impacted your stress response and may have contributed to whatever illness or disease you have now. Your energies and patterns may shift by just becoming aware of any trauma you may have experienced during childhood—this can make a huge difference.
You may even feel relieved to know why you have suffered with more stress-related illnesses, anxiety and experience less resilience than other people. I know I did, and it gave me a whole new perspective on my life, more compassion for myself, and a stronger resolve to love myself more and practise my daily rituals to reset my stress response.
Another reason to be committed to reducing your overall stress load, is that the latest research into mitochondrial function reveals that your mitochondria (the part of every cell responsible for energy production) actually have another function, which is to down regulate your energy production if your are experiencing stress. It turns out that your mitochondria are sensing for stressors from all sources all the time and if they detect stress will down regulate your energy production as a survival mechanism.
How to Reset Your Stress Response
To reset your stress response, you need to change or reprogram your neural pathways, which are stuck in a state of stress. Your aim is to create daily rituals of going to safe space — which will trigger your parasympathetic rest, digest and detox mode—a state you need to be in to heal from any disease.
You can achieve this by scheduling a complete rest for 20 minutes twice per day. I would advise you to lie on your bed or somewhere, and first do a tense and release or progressive relaxation exercise to reduce the physical tension in your body and then either listen to a guided meditation, or do a simple breath meditation or simply watch your breathing. You could also do one of the HeartMath exercises, which are explained in chapter 2.
If you don’t like the idea of laying on your bed or somewhere for 20 minutes twice a day, you should do what works for you. It could be a gentle walk in nature, a chat with a good friend who doesn’t drain you, a massage, yoga, meditation, or tai chi. Whatever it is you decide to do, your aim is to completely relax twice a day and do something that gets you out of your head, present, relaxed, in the moment and not thinking!
That’s your prescription to reset your stress response and change your neural pathways. Not only will this help to reset your stress response, it will also help you recover from Adrenal Fatigue or burnout.
The other problem we face is that is that we live in a culture that celebrates achievement, which places a huge pressure on many people to push themselves over their limits. Unfortunately, if you continue to push yourself over your limits, your body will need to take a break or say no at a time that is not convenient for you.
Burnout is now at extremely high levels in our highly competitive, achievement focused society. To recover from burnout, you will need to redefine what achievement is. Achievement now for me now is living a life that supports my health and well-being, like spending time with friends, eating and sleeping well, pacing myself so I don’t overdo it, managing my finances so I can make choices in life, and growing my organic vegetables—which are delicious!
1 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
2 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
3 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
4 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
5 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
6 Niki Gratrix, Healing Trauma To Heal Fatigue, The Energy Blueprint, https://theenergyblueprint.com/heal-trauma/
