Genetic Devastation??

I had a thought today and I thought it was worth sharing. I read an article several weeks ago about poverty and economic environments and their lasting effects on a person. The article covered a research study with results that indicate the effects of your economic environment growing up change your DNA, and thus stay with you well into adulthood. Simply put, something like poverty can change the way your brain works such that the DNA of your cells is changed permanently. You never grow out of it and your thinking and behaviors are forever impacted by the change. This can be seen in a myriad of ways such as your eating habits, your learning tendencies, and your financial habits and behaviors.

In pondering this concept and its implications for human development, I began to wonder about other areas of life. What if all experiences in childhood, not just economic environment, affect our DNA and our development as a whole? Do the emotional and behavioral environments we grow up in change our DNA forever? Specifically, does an early life of devastation, grief, and abuse affect us to such an extent that the very makeup of our physical cells are changed? If so, how do we cope with this? How do we attempt to address this change and account for it in our continued development?


As a person who endured much devastation early in life, I have often wondered to what extent that devastation will continue to play a role in my life. How long will the effects last? How much of my life is affected by my earlier experiences? I can tell you from experience that I am continually surprised to realize just how much my earlier life experiences have shaped me as a person. Sometimes I wonder if the person I have become is truly who I am or the creation of an environment I had no control over. I am sure there are many people out there who could ask themselves the same question and this article on changes in DNA led me to wonder if perhaps there might be actual physical answers to these questions. If something such as our economic environment as a child can impact us to such a point that the very DNA of our cells in altered, is it such a large leap of faith to assume that our emotional and behavioral environments would impact us just as greatly? I don't think so. In fact, I think there is probably a greater probability that an emotional and behavioral environment early in life impacts you for the rest of your life.

If this is the case, and our earlier experiences do indeed change our DNA, what does that mean for those of us who had a traumatic early environment? What does it mean for us as we try to heal and grow in a new healthy environment? I've often asked myself how long it would take me to no longer be affected by my past. Yet, if the findings of the above mentioned article are true and can be applied to more than just early economic environment, it seems there is a chance that I will never truly be able to "get over" my past. It seems that certain parts of me have been forever altered and will forever affect the way I make decisions, the way I feel, the way I learn to do new things, and the perspectives I have on just about anything. While that completely makes sense to me, it is also very frightening. While trying to recover, you tell yourself that much of what you are going through is all in your head and if you just learn to think differently about things, you will recover much faster and much better. You like to think that the struggles you are having are all mental and thus can be conquered by changing your thinking. However, if your DNA is affected and has been altered permanently, that suggests that the struggle you are having are not just mental and do not necessarily have some finite end point. This has a lot of terrifying potential outcomes for someone who has endured much devastation early in life. Perhaps this means you will never truly be free of those awful experiences. Perhaps you will never truly rid your mind of the altered way of thinking that took place as a result of those experiences. Perhaps they are somehow then transferable to your offspring. Troubling thoughts for a person like me.