Natural_Medicine_Magazine_Issue_145_July_2017

ADVERSE
Childhood
Experiences
– what are they and
how do they affect us?
Distressing childhood events don’t remain in our past; they can
impact heavily on us during adulthood, causing both physical
and mental ill health.
VERONICA HAUPT
www.recode.co.za
veronica@recode.co.za
Veronica is the founder of
ReCode © , a form of energy
psychology that helps
people heal from everything
from disease to depression.
She has recently established
the Depression Healing Centre,
which treats depression
and anxiety without drugs.
She loves raw vegan cooking,
running, the sea and
bushveld and lives with her
partner and 4 animals next
to a river in Johannesburg,
South Africa.
‘When I was twelve, I was coming
home from swimming at my neighbour’s
dock when I saw an ambulance’s fl ashing
lights in our driveway. I still remember the
asphalt burning my feet as I stood, paralysed,
and watched the paramedics take away my
father. It was as if I knew those fl ashing lights
were a harbinger that my childhood was over.
‘At the hospital, a surgeon performed “minor”
elective bowel surgery on my young dad. The
surgeon made an error, and instead of my father
coming home to the “welcome home”
banners we’d painted, he died.’ ~ Donna
Jackson Nakazawa, author of Childhood disrupted
– how your biography becomes your
biology, and how you can heal.
Donna goes on to recount how she began
developing strange physical symptoms shortly
after this, and ultimately an autoimmune
disease in her 20s that caused full-body paralysis.
It was only in her 50s that an aware
doctor asked her one of the most important
questions of her life: ‘Were there any childhood
traumas or stressors that might have
contributed to the extreme level of infl ammation
you’re experiencing as an adult?’
CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY/ILL HEALTH
LINK DISCOVERY
In the mid 1980s, Dr Vincent J. Felitti, head
of a preventative care initiative at the Kaiser
Permanente Medical Program in San Diego,
US, started to notice a startling pattern in
patients in their obesity programme: Adult
patients who were obese almost all alluded
to traumatic incidents in their childhood. On
further investigation, these patients revealed
that for them, eating soothed the anxiety, fear
and depression that they had secreted away
inside for decades.
050 |NATURALMEDICINE.CO.ZA