Freak of Nurture

"Neuropathologists have seen overlapping effects of physical and emotional trauma upon the brain. With such an overlap it can be seen that both of these traumas have a detrimental effect upon the Amygdala, the Hippocampus and the Prefrontal cortex of the brain. Meaning that Emotional Trauma... does indeed result in brain injury/damage."

Further "research indicates that the resulting mental health problems are similar regardless of whether the maltreatment is physical, psychological, sexual, emotional, or some combination." Additionally, "psychological child abuse can be particularly devastating for those victimized by their parents."

Researchers who used the National Child Traumatic Stress Network Core Data Set to examine outcomes found that "children who had been psychologically abused suffered from anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, symptoms of post-traumatic stress and suicidality at the same rate and, in some cases, at a greater rate than children who were physically or sexually abused."

Studies show that "emotional abuse (EA) was associated with suicidal ideation and attempts, mainly for serious suicide attempts."

We know that emotional abuse causes (C)PTSD and acts as a compounding factor on other forms of abuse. We know that the symptoms of (C)PTSD have a significant overlap with those of physical TBI (traumatic brain injury).

Emotional abuse is so much more than yelling. It's control, verbal degradation, violating boundaries, gaslighting that destroys a person's ability to trust their own experiences and reality, and putting someone through such convoluted manipulation and mind games that it damages their brain.

But even if it were "just" mommy yelling at you?

"Being frequently yelled at changes the mind, brain and body in a multitude of ways including increasing the activity of the amygdala (the emotional brain), increasing stress hormones in the blood stream, increasing muscular tension and more," and "when fear, for example, is repeatedly triggered by a harsh environment, like one where there is a lot of yelling, automatic physical and emotional reactions occur that cause traumatic stress to a child."

Yelling at children causes low self-esteem, increases anxiety and depression, creates lasting fear responses, contributes to behavioral issues, hinders brain development, and even harms physical health.

Advances in weaponry meant that, for the first time, men were coming home from war with literally half their faces blown off, on a regular basis. This was not only traumatic— there were cases of men cancelling engagements or being afraid to see their families, because of their disfigurements— but also caused problems with every day tasks like speaking and eating, in which your face plays a pretty key role.

Gillies arranged for a whole ward, and later a hospital, to be dedicated to the treatment of these men, and took steps to ensure that all soldiers who received these kinds of injuries on the battlefield would be sent to him directly. He developed methods for applying skin grafts so that larger portions of the face could be repaired.

He continued his work treating wounded soldiers throughout WW1 and WW2, and when both wars were ended— just in case he hadn't done enough to establish himself as a full on hero— he was then approached by a medical student named Michael Dillon, a trans man, and was able to use the same techniques he'd developed to reconstruct the penises of wounded soldiers to give him a phalloplasty. The first one ever performed on a trans man. He even diagnosed the guy with a condition to explain the frequent operations, so as to avoid outing him.

Dillon later wrote a book about trans-ness, which inspired Roberta Cowell, who became the first British transwoman to get a vaginoplasty, also performed by Gillies.