Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal

If our needs aren’t met during infancy when we’re utterly vulnerable and helpless, if our parents make us feel unsafe in the world from early on, it will shape our ability to trust and depend upon other people for the rest of our lives.

After we have considered the ways children get or don't get loving care, we will consider adults whose lives lacked or lack healthy care and what they can do to heal themselves. Perhaps the child in you needs extra care and support.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What do you think and feel when you read this statement: “Every child has a story, and that story will have an impact on those who love him?” How much of your child’s story do you know? 2. What do you know about the early attachment experiences of your child? In what ways have you noticed that those experiences have affected

You need to heal the effects of a difficult childhood or dysfunctional family (and also of traumas experienced at a later age).

Clinical studies of such children reveal that a preponderance of them have parents who have related to them in either a helpless and fearful way or a hostile and self-referential one. The children of helpless and fearful parents, in particular, have a very difficult time later in life. Their parents tend to be sweet and fragile, not hostile or aggr