Can mindfulness meditation literally heal childhood trauma?
I really admire the scientists who are out there trying to help survivors of child abuse. It’s an entire field of psychological research, ranging from number-cruncher statistics types who spend their days measuring the long-term impacts of abuse, to clinical researchers developing new treatment methods. There’s quantitative, qualitative, and experimental research on all aspects of child abuse, and while it can be hard to dig through the material about something so senseless and sad, when you read this stuff, you also see an aggregate of how many people are committed to making the world a better place. You can feel the love and support that is out there when you comprehend how many scientists have dedicated their careers to enabling abused kids to survive and thrive.
Of all the experimental research I’ve read in school, I’m most thrilled when researchers develop treatment methods that are low-cost and portable. Especially when they empower survivors to heal themselves. Treatments that cost very little, that you can do wherever, and that you don’t need to be attached to a professional to practice. Isn’t that truly liberating?
Recently, a team of Harvard researchers developed precisely this kind of liberating option for young adults who suffered abuse in their childhood. Their findings show strong evidence that we can intentionally heal our brain structure.
I’m going to nerd out on the neurobiology on this one, because I think it’s a fascinating topic. Learning the map of the brain feels like learning a map of a parallel universe — one we knew was there all along, but we couldn’t see in detail. Nowadays we have an increasingly detailed window into the physical structures of our brains, and we’re beginning to demystify the abstract processes of the mind. Reading this new map makes me feel hopeful. It’s inspiring to me that there is an area of our body that grounds our emotions and feelings in physical space, in the material of our flesh. I mean I know if I have a physical injury, I can seek out medical help and physiotherapy to heal my muscles and bones and ligaments just so. But what if I learn there may be an impact to my brain due to abuse? It seems so frightening. Is there any way to actually heal that part of our body?
Diane Joss was a Harvard doctoral student in 2019 when she began experimenting with methods for people to recover from childhood abuse. With funding from the US National Institute of Health, she led a team discovering how “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” might help young adults who survived years of abuse. Her program offered a sequence of interventions specially tailored for the needs of survivors, most of whom were in their mid-20s. The six-week program included meditation and yoga, stress coping strategies, and lessons in interpersonal communication. Nothing too fancy or expensive, but foundational work in mindfulness.
Joss developed her program at Harvard Medical School, in professor Martin Teicher’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research laboratory. Building on research performed by Teicher, who has spent decades documenting the effects of childhood maltreatment on the brain, Joss used the same methods to gauge her program’s impact on the survivors at the neuroanatomical level. She focused her experimental evaluations on the hippocampus, an area of the brain essential to our ability to remember the things we’ve learned and regulate stressful emotional cues. It’s the hippocampus that helps us know whether or not a situation is dangerous, which can be a challenge for survivors. It’s like we have a faulty danger meter — we often see a threat where there is none, or miss threats that would scare off most people. Consequently, we live with a lot of uncertainty about our ability to defend ourselves.
The hippocampus is an area of our brain that is central to that ability. About 3.5cm long, it’s shaped a bit like a seahorse, a curved tube located deep within the center of our brain. Neuroscientists are excited by the hippocampus’ “neuroplasticity”, describing it as one area of the brain that continues to generate new neurons throughout adulthood. And gee, I’m excited too, because this means I can still learn how to trust and create safe relationships no matter how old I am. Unfortunately, the hippocampus’ neuroplasticity also makes it especially vulnerable to chronic stress. For some people who experienced child abuse, the size of their hippocampus is significantly smaller compared to those who haven’t been abused. Teicher’s years of research demonstrated that the stress of childhood abuse could also make a lasting impact on our neural development. In studying the brains of survivors at different ages, he found that that childhood maltreatment was associated with reduced grey matter volumes throughout the hippocampi. Childhood abuse had already been proven to be associated with a cascade of later life symptoms such as anxiety, depression, substance use, and disorganized personal relationships. Teicher showed that childhood abuse also results in a smaller hippocampus.
Joss and her team had a simple hypothesis: hippocampal volume could increase after a mindfulness practice. She created two groups of survivors of childhood abuse, one that underwent a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, and another control group put on a waiting list for the intervention. Using MRI, the same technology that allows us to take a “photograph” of the inside of our lungs for cancer screening, Joss and her team observed the size of her subjects’ hippocampal grey matter volumes before and after six weeks of her mindfulness-based stress reduction program.
MRI revealed that after her program, a cluster of hippocampal grey matter volumes in the mindfulness group had increased in size by 76%. That’s like you started lifting weights, and after six weeks, your biceps had nearly doubled in size. But it’s not your biceps, its the part of your brain that modulates stress and helps you learn.
They also observed a comparable decrease in size of 78% in the control group. While the mindfulness group reported reduced stress and anxiety, the control group reported continuing high stress and anxiety. The researchers guessed that the control group’s decreased hippocampal size might be associated with their ongoing, unaddressed symptoms of stress. It seems that the hippocampus continues to gradually shrink unless we employ a proactive program of stress reduction. Similar to the familiar adage about exercise: “if you don’t use it, you lose it” — if you’re stressed all the time and do nothing about it, your hippocampus is going to shrink.
For those looking for ways to recover from childhood abuse, there are other methods proven to increase hippocampal volume: antidepressants, novel experiences, and regular exercise are all effective. But mindfulness meditation is clearly an excellent hippocampal enhancer. While Joss’ research didn’t define precisely which treatment paradigm within her intervention was most effective (was it the yoga, or the interpersonal communications skills?) we can say for certain that her mindfulness program had a major effect on neurobiological symptoms due to childhood abuse. She produced impressive results for a brief, six-week intervention — a 76% growth in hippocampal volume. Who knows what the long-term effects of her program might be? I suspect that those young adult survivors who continue to practice the program she taught might observe even more wide-ranging impacts in years to come. Joss left her subjects with a powerful toolkit for pumping up their hippocampus so they can restore their brain’s potential for growth.
It’s not easy research, looking directly at the consequences of child abuse. I sometimes wonder what motivates people to spend their days surrounded by the impact of so much pain and trauma. But then, we have the statistics: in Canada, 6 in 10 people report they experienced some form of child abuse before the age of 15. That’s a lot of people. Maybe some of them grow up to become scientists?
