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What is Toxic Stress?
Early childhood is a crucial stage in a child’s development, which comes with many different ages from birth to around five years of age. Psychological stress is also an inevitable part of growing up. This means that every child will be under pressure from many different people and situations that can cause stress.
We can encounter stress either as a result of external factors such as our daily challenges or as a result of internal factors such as pressure at home, e.g., domestic violence or school. As children grow up, they face a variety of challenges that put a lot of pressure on them. However, there are ways to help children cope with this. Some are discussed below.
Children have various reactions to stress and the intensity of stress varies with the child. Some children will react to stress by developing anxiety, anger or depression. Some children experience multiple types of stressors that result in toxic stress. These types of stressors have effects that affect their physical and emotional well-being. These effects can be harmful to them and to others.
How toxic stress affects children
It has been found that toxic stress response systems in children who have a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) including abuse are at a much higher risk of suffering from long-term effects. Children exposed to substance abuse during childhood have been shown to have a higher risk of experiencing depression and anxiety as adults. There is evidence to suggest that the harmful effects traumatic childhood experiences can last for the child’s entire adulthood.
During the course of a child’s lifetime, exposures to toxic stress can affect their brain development and physical and mental health. Children exposed to toxic stress are at increased risk of suffering from asthma, allergies, asthma symptoms, headaches, depression, autoimmune diseases, headaches, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, sleep disorders, chronic pain, and learned helplessness.
These children often show signs of chronic inflammation and compromised immune system. They are also at greater risk of developing conditions such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, phobias, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular conditions and chronic pain.
There is the potential to be lifelong damage here and many of these effects can be devastating. For this reason, you need to make sure that you are doing all that you can to help your child lead a healthy and productive life if you suspect he or she might have experienced childhood trauma.
How to help children deal with toxic stress
A healthy development is absolutely vital in children. In order to help them overcome the symptoms associated with stress, as a parent, you must ensure that they have a healthy development and one that does not involve prolonged activation of their stress response systems.
The other thing that you can do is to help your child change their environment and strengthen their coping skills by providing them with supportive relationships. A healthy development means that they need to have plenty of supportive relationships where they can turn to when they feel overwhelmed.
It is also important that they know how to deal effectively with the stressful conditions in their life so that they don’t develop serious anxiety and depression. These supportive relationships can be strengthened through family therapy and educational programs
If you suspect that your child may be dealing with toxic stress, it is important that you work with them to develop a plan for healthy development through intervention. This plan should involve both you and your child.
Consequences of Toxic stress in Adulthood
Many of the children that experience toxic stress are at a greater risk of experiencing emotional and behavioral problems in adulthood. In addition, these children are at higher risk of experiencing emotional and behavioral disorders such as irritability, behavioral disorders, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, verbal disturbance, adjustment disorders, depression and substance abuse.
These children are also at greater risk of encountering drug and alcohol abuse. It has been hypothesized that toxic stress, through chronic exposure, alters the functioning of the brain. In other words, these children have a less than optimal positive stress response.
Finally, when your child has reached adulthood and begins to face the challenges that most adults face in life, they may still have unresolved issues regarding toxic stress response systems. These unresolved issues will continue to build up over time and may lead to unhealthy eating patterns, addictive behaviors, substance abuse, and other serious physical and mental health concerns.
The challenge presented by the toxic stress response is that the body reacts to adverse events with a negative stress response. One theory suggests that the stress response may be a learned response as early as possible in life.
Recent studies show that children exposed to abuse and trauma are at an elevated risk for experiencing chronic levels of stress in adulthood. This may lead to a chronic state of stress over their lifetime.
Studies also indicate that individuals with higher levels of stress may have greater difficulties with learning new tasks and coping with daily activities. It is likely that these children will experience early life adversity and negative stress responses and that these responses will impact them throughout their lives.
Perhaps the greatest mistake that parents make is not trying to develop the necessary coping skills and attitudes early in their children.
It is important to address toxic stress early and to teach our youth that their lives do not lie on the fate of this world. However, it is also important to teach them that their lives do lie on the fate of this world and that if they experience early life adversity, they can work through it. The support of an attentive parent or caregiver can be vital in allowing a child with toxic stress to make healthy changes in their lives as they transition into adulthood. With a little care, the resilience of a child can be strengthened so that they can grow into healthy adult.
The problem is that the toxic stress response systems in the brains of children are often hard to change, but change is certainly possible. By recognizing the destructive and stressful conditions in their lives and working with them to help identify and modify the negative behaviors and reactions, your child, and even as an adult, can learn new skills.
Such skills can help to develop a healthy, functional, and effective response to the traumatic events and stressful conditions in their lives. You and your child will both benefit from this work.
The most important thing to remember is that although toxic stress can have serious consequences, there are available solutions to address this problem in childhood as well as in adulthood.
