What Happened To You

What Happened to You? is an analysis of how traumatic experiences affect our brains throughout our lives, showing how they change our coping mechanisms, and why we must consider both the individual and collective side of mental health if we are to resolve our emotional challenges not just for ourselves but for society at large.

Early on in Oprah’s life, she remembers feeling intensely lonely. She knew that she wasn’t wanted. Her mom was only a teenager when she had her, and she didn’t have the resources to care for her adequately. Most of her childhood was spent with various family members, many of whom neglected and beat Oprah regularly.

These early experiences shaped how she saw the world as well as herself because experiences like this literally change the brain.

A baby’s brain develops at a rate of 20,000 new neurons per second. Every single experience a child has is logged in a personal “codebook” in the brain. Later on, these experiences can manifest themselves but cannot be understood in a rational way.

An example of this is a child the author’s called Sam. Sam was physically abused by his father and was removed by Child Protective Services. Once Sam moved into a group home and received the support he needed, he was doing well and progressing.

However, once he got a new teacher, he started acting out at school. Everyone was puzzled as to why until Dr. Perry met Sam’s father. He wore a strong Old Spice cologne, the very same scent Sam’s teacher wore. Suddenly it clicked— the aroma of the cologne was triggering old, terrifying memories for Sam. Once the teacher changed the cologne, the behavior stopped.

If we want to understand trauma, we need to ask: What happened to you, specifically when you were very young?

Early in her career as a journalist, Oprah often worked 100-hour weeks and was always exhausted. She ignored the signals her body sent to tell her something was wrong. Why? The abuse in her past had trained her to be a people-pleaser. This meant ignoring her own boundaries and working to meet everyone else’s needs instead. She turned to food for comfort. What helps us not ignore the signals when we’re out of balance? Positive regulation strategies. Everyone’s brain has a self-regulation system of core regulatory networks, or CRNs for short. Their purpose is to keep us balanced. When a caregiver responds consistently to a baby’s needs, his CRNs become resilient, and a child becomes able to regulate himself as he becomes older. But if the caregivers are neglectful or abusive, the child’s CRNs become impaired, also known as dysregulated. This makes the child’s stress responses become sensitized, meaning…