Difficult or traumatic experiences can have long-term health effects. It’s important to think about how stress could affect your health and a future pregnancy. If a past experience is affecting your mental or physical health, there is help and support.
Highly stressful or traumatic experiences during childhood can have a negative effect on how the brain develops. This can lead to problems in physical, mental or emotional aspects of your life. Some experiences are more traumatic than others.
Examples of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) include:
Learn more about the effects of ACEs and how they affect people as adults.
Learn more about toxic stress in childhood.
Learn more about abuse.
As an adult, highly stressful or traumatic experiences can affect your health.
Examples of experiences include:
Learn more about abuse or mental health and stress.
People react in different ways to stressful or traumatic experiences. There can be a number of mental, emotional and physical feelings that result from these events. The following are some common reactions.
You might feel nervous, have a hard time sleeping well or replay the details of the situation in your mind. These thoughts or experiences are a common reaction. They usually lessen over time. Some people can go back to their daily lives fairly quickly. However, for some people the reactions last longer and can cause problems in day-to-day life.
These could include:
Anxiety – constant worry, problems sleeping, can’t stay calm, shortness of breath, or tingling in the hands or feet.
Depression – loss of interest in your day-to-day life, changes in eating habits, problems sleeping, being irritable (cranky), feeling hopeless or hating yourself.
Relationship problems – trouble maintaining a long-term relationship.
Substance use – using alcohol or drugs to cope with symptoms or feelings that result from highly stressful or traumatic experiences.
Trauma or stress-related reactions – are caused by a traumatic event that leaves a person with mental and physical symptoms. These reactions last much longer and can seriously disrupt a person’s life. These can include problems sleeping, problems concentrating, flashbacks, being easily startled, feeling unsafe, or having trouble feeling emotions (feeling ‘shut down’). In some cases, these reactions lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is a severe reaction to traumatic experiences. There is help for people with PTSD. To read more about it, click here.
Adverse personal experiences can increase the chance of addiction or mental illness later in life. The more adverse childhood experiences a person has, the higher the risk of physical and mental health problems later in life.
Past injuries may affect your brain or body.
You may have chronic health problems—both physical and mental. A past experience in your life may also affect your feelings about pregnancy and becoming a parent.
If you’re very stressed during pregnancy, the stress can affect your baby as well.
To learn more about the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including new scientific studies into the long-term effects, click here.
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