Held Together — Day 3: The Wound

Held Together · Day 3: The Wound
About 4 minutes. Listen, or read below.

Beloved,

In the late 1990s, researchers at Kaiser Permanente and the CDC asked more than 17,000 adults, most of them employed and insured and many of them college-educated, about hard things that happened in their childhood. Abuse. Neglect. A parent who drank, left, or was violent. A home that was never safe.

Then they looked at those same adults' health.

The more of those experiences a person had lived through, the higher their rates of heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and depression. Later research on the same group found higher rates of autoimmune disease as well. Decades later. In bodies that had long since "moved on."

It's called the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, and it changed how medicine thinks about trauma. It showed that trauma doesn't only live in memory. It lives in physiology.

Here's how, simply. A child in an unsafe home learns to stay on alert: scanning, bracing, anticipating. It's brilliant survival. But a nervous system trained early to expect danger often keeps running that program long after the danger is gone. And a body on permanent alert keeps its stress response switched on, which, as you saw yesterday, is a body where inflammation has trouble turning off.

This is the connection almost everyone misses: the hidden trauma and the chronic inflammation are often the same story, told in two languages.

And it isn't only childhood. Betrayal. Loss. A workplace that ground you down. Years of caregiving. A relationship, or even a church, that wounded you. A diagnosis that terrified you. The body doesn't grade trauma on whether it was "bad enough to count." It simply adapts.

I want to speak to the professionals reading this especially. Many of the highest-functioning people I know are high-functioning because of what they survived. The vigilance that made you excellent is the same vigilance that won't let your body rest. That is not a character flaw. It is an old survival strategy still on duty.

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3). Notice the words binds up. Wounds are something God tends, not something God ignores. You don't have to pretend yours aren't there in order to be faithful.

Today, one thing: No digging and no reliving. Just ask yourself one gentle question and write down whatever comes: "When did I learn that I had to hold everything together?"

If that question stirs up more than you can carry alone, please reach out to a licensed counselor or someone you trust. You do not have to do this part by yourself.

Tomorrow: the part that ties all of it together. It's the part I've been waiting to tell you.

Dina

The Divine Design™ is the full curriculum: twenty modules, one body system at a time, taught three ways — the anatomy, the trauma science, and the Scripture.
See the three ways in →

General wellness education from The Divine Design™ LLC. Not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. In an emergency call 911; in crisis call or text 988.