Laurel van der Toorn

And that is going to lead to chronic health conditions.

Yeah, so let's say there's a kid who had, they've lost a parent either to death or incarceration or substance use as a kid.

they are much more likely to develop an autoimmune disease, like let's say Crohn's disease or a thyroid condition or chronic pain, just because the early prolonged stress is not good for us.

And now I say prolonged stress because actually short bursts of stress are quite good for us.

They help spur tissue repair and all these things that are good for us.

But this is in short bursts.

If you are just having chronic stress, not good for us.

I think we will, yes.

And why is a therapist talking about this when this is a medical issue, right?

Because we are coming to understand that the way you address this, in addition to getting medical care, is ultimately to heal your trauma and heal your attachment.

So...

What does that practically look like?

That means doing whatever you need to do to sever the tie between a reminder of something and the disturbance you feel.

Or to, through your own internal work or work with a therapist, kind of plug up those holes of not good enough, I'm not lovable, I'm defective, or I will always be alone.

There's a lot of ways you can do that.

And it's not so simple as like, oh, heal your attachment and you won't be diabetic anymore.

No, not necessarily.

But you will start to feel markedly better because what's mental is physical and vice versa.

It's harder to seek help later just because I like to think of it as if anyone listening does cross-country skiing, you know when you're forging a new path for your skis, it takes a lot more work than if they're already in the snow.

So if you are learning new ways of thinking later in life, that's going to be a lot harder.