November 22, 1990... Olivia put a call through to 911 for help:
Dispatcher: What’s your standing emergency?
Olivia: [crying] My mommy and daddy are having a fight. [screaming in the background] . . . Stop it! . . . Don’t hurt the baby! . . . Could you just send the police please?
D: OK, we’re gonna be there. . . . Let me talk to your . . . where’s your mom?
O: What?
D: What’s going on?
O: They’re having some fighting because this has been going on forever and ever. . . .
D: How’s he hurting her?
O: He made some red marks on Mommy’s neck.
D: Where did he make the red marks on her neck?
O: Momma, don’t . . . the police are coming. Mommy . . .
Two years, and at least a half dozen more 911 calls later, Olivia stepped off her school bus and let herself in to the house with the key that they kept beneath the pot on the front steps. She found her mother lying unconscious on the kitchen floor with a large bruise on her forehead. Her stepfather was nowhere to be found.
Olivia was quick enough to get help from the neighbors and call an ambulance, saving her mother’s life, but she never really recovered from the shock.
For weeks, Olivia refused to attend school or even part from her mother’s side. She followed her everywhere, even into the bathroom, and slept in the same bed. Olivia was seeing the world through a lens of fear and retreated from any hint of danger.
Scientists and pediatricians have long observed that overexposure to constant stress creates a state of hypervigilance in children, but recent studies have helped explain exactly why. As detailed by Harvard University’s Jack Shonkoff, the conditioning effects of fear and stress actually alter a child’s brain architecture. Chronic stress exposure puts the part of the brain that detects danger, the amygdala, on permanent alert. As a result, all incoming stimuli, whether a siren, the phone ringing, or a stranger’s arrival, are easily mistaken for a threat.
Fear then becomes your default response to everything.
Source: Martin, Brian F.; Invincible : the 10 lies you learn growing up with domestic violence, and the truths to set you free.
Image source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/545709679821818675/