Why It’s So Hard to Overcome Childhood Abuse.. and What to Do About It

Before I go into the gory details about why abuse suffered in childhood is almost always near-permanent in its ability to damage the human psyche, I’d like to offer some hope for the millions of people who have endured this multi-generational, mass societal F%$#K up.

Bruce Lipton has conducted some groundbreaking studies proving that even after people are subjected to the worst social conditioning, they still have the ability to change those habits – all the way down to a cellular level. In his version of cell biology, dubbed epigenetics, we can break free from a biochemical understanding of disease and depression, and instead, using the community of about five trillion cells inside us, change our environments, to alter our cellular chemistry.

He describes how scientific studies have even found a ‘happy’ gene that seems to be more prevalent in people who experience life on the brighter side. Clearly, with this reasoning, people who didn’t get the ‘happy’ gene could blame their parents or ancestors for not being able to jump out of bed with unmitigated glee every morning. They could blame their heredity in an endless cycle of victimhood.

This same defunct thinking also largely rules the world of science and medicine, which has named thousands of genes as the causes of cancer, heart disease, depression and a long list of other health concerns. This line of thinking works well for an industry which would like to provide one new drug for every gene discovered in the human genome project – around 150,000 of them.

As Lipton also eloquently points out, we perceive the environment and adjust our biology accordingly. Misperceptions about how the world is working around you (mostly developed in the past, and especially so if you were subject to neglect, verbal, physical, emotional or sexual abuse) are what is controlling your biology today. By changing our perceptions we can then change our biology – including whether or not our ‘happy gene’ starts to function.

How We Got Here

Arguably, the devolution of family which causes great harm to each individual, is due to the degradation of society. By inducing race, gender, religion, and nationalistic-based chasms between family members, while increasing the stressors of raising children by instilling a financial system that preys on 99 percent of us, giving only the 1% access to leisure along with adequate food, water, housing, and other necessities, a group of cabalistic institutions has completely deteriorated the family unit.

In an attempt to create a New World Order, families have been broken by innumerable cabal-created issues. Porn, for example, has doubled the likelihood of a marriage failing.  More men than ever have abandoned their rolls as fathers, and one parent families face poverty in ways that larger families could never imagine. Though there can be loving, successful parenting in all manner of families, ‘traditional families’ are now more rare than ever. Children born outside of marriage was practically unthinkable just a few short decades ago.

This doesn’t mean that marriage is some holy, sanctified institution in and of itself, but it usually does indicate that a child will at least have more than one financially struggling male or female raising them. According to U.S. Census Bureau, of about 12 million single parent families in 2015, more than 80% were headed by single mothers.

This segues to another cabalistic tactic to destroy the fabric of society. So many women are raising children alone because they have been completely denigrated and men have been mind controlled to support the patriarchal mechanisms that keep us all subservient to the elite. Advertising repeatedly lowers, suggests false truths, maligns and slanders women, inciting violence instead of engendering love and compassion – the very traits that women are divinely ‘programmed’ to provide.

It’s no wonder that with, joblessness, financial stresses, and the Malthusian agenda to depopulate the world by controlling how families procreate, even, that many of us were subjected to a number of childhood abuses.

Child sex abuse in Hollywood is now an open secret, and Stanley Kubrick’s Film, Eyes Wide Shut depicts just some of the methods through which politicians, world leaders, and corporate heads are black-mailed into doing dirty work we likely won’t want to dwell on, including ritualistic child sacrifice.

Hopefully the child abuse you suffered when young, even if it was from a well meaning but distracted parent who shrugged you off when you exclaimed,” look at the painting I did,” or “Daddy, I miss you,” is nothing like the rampant pedophilia we are learning about today.

Whatever the case may be, there is evidence that the circuitry we’ve created in our brains is still on ‘loop,’ and may be tainting our experience of a better life.

Biological Embedding

In a study conducted on 756 subjects that endured stress to understand what it did to the brain, researchers discovered that through “biological embedding,” the process by which brain patterns shape in response to their environment, toxic childhood stress can alter neural responses to future stress, creating adverse health and emotional outcomes years later. Childhood trauma due to abuse causes wear and tear on multiple mind-body systems, boosting our arousal to threat, making it more difficult to shut off the reaction later on.

“Our findings highlight the extent to which these early childhood experiences are associated with evidence of increased biological risks across nearly all of the body’s major regulatory systems” said Teresa Seeman, professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine and of epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA, and the paper’s senior author. “If we only look at individual biological parameters such as blood pressure or cholesterol, we would miss the fact that the early childhood experiences are related to a much broader set of biological risk indicators — suggesting the range of health risks that may result from such adverse childhood exposures.”

Though studies like this one paint a bleak outlook for those of us who suffered adversity in our early lives, the very same programming which causes our bodies to respond negatively, can be undone, replacing new neural pathways, and healthier ways of dealing with adult stressors.

Since these damaging childhood programs were often embedded in our subconscious minds, running on autopilot, even today, we can turn our lives around by reinstalling new subconscious beliefs – just as Lipton suggested in his study of epigenetics.

7 Powerful Methods to Recover Your Happy Inner Child

Visualize

Visualization, for example, is so effective at changing future outcomes that numerous athletes, business people, and performers use it to break world records, and achieve successes that most of us only dream of. Because the mind perceives reality no differently in your imagination than it does in ‘reality,’ you can greatly influence past negative programming and change it for more workable programming by visualizing being loved, held, supported, and respected.

You can literally, ‘practice’ yourself into a better place by imagining a loving childhood. This is evidenced by a study wherein psychologists at the University of Chicago examined the actions of three groups of basketball players. One group practiced foul shots each day for thirty days. The second group was instructed to “imagine” shooting foul shots each day for thirty days. The third group did nothing. When tested, Group One (who practicing shots) improved 24 percent. Group Three (doing nothing) had no improvement. Group Two, the group that only imagined shooting foul shots, improved 23 percent yet did not physically touch a basketball. That’s a pretty startling revelation when you understand how much control you actually have over your brain and thus, your experience.

Relax

You can also access the subconscious mind to install new thoughts by becoming relaxed. This is the premise of most hypnotherapy. It turns out our minds are most receptive to new programming when we are relaxed and happy. Yoga nidra, or psychic sleep, is a practice very similar to hypnosis, was further developed from its ancient roots in the 1960s as a form of pratyahara (the conscious withdrawal of energy from the five senses) to minimize tension, relax the mind and retrain it. As Yoga Mag details:

“From early childhood, we tend to repress many wishes, desires and conflicts. Whenever a situation threatens the ego, the defense mechanisms are called upon and the conflicting situation is repressed or suppressed to the unconscious. All the traumatic experiences, unfulfilled desires and threatening situations are suppressed by the ego to the subconscious and unconscious realms of the mind. In the deeper realms of the mind this conflicting and frustrating matter does not die but remains alive and later manifests in the form of various pathological symptoms.”

Yoga Nidra helps to clear up the unconscious patterns that are holding us back – remnants of long ago that impinge upon our happiness today.

Meditate

Meditating is said to increase our happiness by helping us to detach from our emotions. This doesn’t mean that we become emotionless automatons. It does; however, mean that we can find a ‘gap’ in time in order to perceive if an emotion is one we want on replay, or if we need to start replacing it with feelings that serve us better in the present moment.

In the “Set Point Study,” scientists found that each of us has a natural “set point” in our brains for both good and bad emotions. Those of us who more frequently experience happiness have more activity in the frontal lobes of the brain. The pre-frontal cortex (PFC) is also in charge of many “higher order” functions such as social interaction, creativity, learning, goal-setting and emotional control.

By practicing yoga and meditation, we can increase the activity there, and also create a new ‘set point’ for our well-being.

Be Grateful

Cultivating gratitude – however you can, literally changes your brain. Shawn Achor, a Harvard researcher says,

“Something as simple as writing down three things you’re grateful for every day for 21 days in a row significantly increases your level of optimism, and it holds for the next six months. The research is amazing.”

Surround Yourself with Loving People

Many people will argue that positive social connection is the greatest predictor of long-term happiness. Maybe you didn’t have control over the family or friends you were surrounded with as a child, but you can certainly choose positive, loving relationships today to help guide your heart and soul toward healing.

Find Silence

Silence may unearth the uncomfortable memories that you’ve hidden away, but it can also help to heal you. Dr. Stephen Sinatra suggests turning to our animal friends for an example. They are really good at practicing the art of silence. In these moments you don’t have to be the ‘perfect’ child to make your parents happy, or the ‘most successful’ person to excel for a boss, or some other external influence. Just be with your dog or your fish. It can do miracles.

Smile

A study from a respected journal suggests that when we smile people treat us better. A smile is also contagious. If you smile, your brain undergoes a remarkable change. It’s so powerful that recent research concluded “that smiling can be as stimulating as receiving up to 16,000 Pounds Sterling in cash.” That’s because smiling stimulates our brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate can’t match.

Your happy inner child can be reclaimed.

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