I grew up in constant fight or flight mode. My mother, in her sociopathic rages, would beat the living shit out of me, and then literally 2 minutues later - it was like she forgot what she had just done to me - and she would just continue on like "normal". Leaving me to pick up the pieces of my shattered world and self, only to wait for the next idiopathic outburst of rage directed at my small body.
Growing up was hell.
It's interesting that you mention this topic because I was thinking about this in my psychology class the other day.
Fight or fight mode raises levels of cortisol which breaks down soft and hard tissue in the body and hampers proper immune responses to inflammation. At the age of 10 months - I was hospitalized for some sort of intestinal complication (my mother used to beat my brother and I as we sat in our highchairs - close fist punches in the face, at every meal time.
By the time I reached public school, grade 3 - I had developed Crohn's disease - an idiopathic inflammation of the intestine (your immune system thinks your intestine is a foreign object and tries to destory it)... at seven years old!! At the time, I was one of the youngest cases on record.
I feel VERY strongly that developing Crohn's Disease was caused from early childhood trauma of a physical nature.
My aunt, she was diagnosed with Crohn's 2 months before I was, and she too was raised by my mother (because their mother was highgly histrionic and couldn't fathom staying at home and raising her own children, so my childmother, at the time, had to raise her own siblings for the majority of the years before the age of 14. And my mother would BEAT the hell out of her sisters too.
Another aspect to my growing up in a constant state of fight or flight (I call it fight or flight syndrome) is my mother always had delusions of paranoia that cults, random people, and men who found her intoxicating were out to kill us.
Everyday...night - I lived in absolute fear that someone was stalking us. Be it a satanic cult or some crazy man. Growing up under the constant fear of death is VERY stressful. As a child my heart was always racing, even at night while I layed in bed.
I'd also like to point out that my mother hated women. She had no problem vocalizing her disdainment for her/my own gender. "you can't trust women" - women, in my household were trash, except the QueenKiller herself. I had no father. I had one lilttle brother who was
her little man... My cousin and I called him the Grand Poobah - and my mother was nicknamed "The Warden". Since I was raised to view women as untrustworthy and "one-dimensional" - I'm sure it has found it's way into my own dealings with women. I have NO close female friends and have difficulty giving them the time of day to even prove themselves
- and I know I have to work on that.
