The Myth of Normal 67

response. Once more, none of her history, from childhood to the present day, was considered as admissible evidence by the highly trained experts who treated her scleroderma. “My body was really like a battleground, and I was losing,” Mee Ok told me. Her language resonated with me: I’ve long pictured autoimmune disease as resembling a powerful army invading its own motherland, a violent mutiny against the body. In effect, with no conscious outlet and lacking resolution, Mee Ok’s inflamed emotions rebelled, manifesting in the inflammation of her tissues. Microbiologists these days speak of “neurogenic inflammation,” stressinduced inflammation triggered by discharges of the nervous system—a system we now understand to be powerfully influenced by emotions.[12] And there is elegant research connecting early adversity, such as the traumas Mee Ok endured in childhood, to inflammation in adult life. A recent American study found that emotional and physical abuse in childhood more than doubles the risk of systemic lupus erythematosus, with inflammation being one of the likely pathways.[13] Yet more connections between stress and compromised autoimmunity have been found in other studies.[14] In 2007, British scientists found that adults who had been maltreated in childhood had higher blood levels of certain inflammation-signaling substances[*] produced in the liver, independent of personal behaviors and lifestyle considerations. “Childhood maltreatment is a previously undescribed, independent, and preventable risk factor for inflammation in adulthood,” wrote the researchers. [15] “Inflammation may be an important developmental mediator linking adverse experiences in early life to poor adult health,” they added cautiously. Many studies since attest that there is no “may be” about it. Some clinicians have noted a relationship between rheumatoid arthritis and certain types or features of personality. We will have much more to say about personality in chapter 7, but, to avoid misunderstanding, a quick clarification is in order here. What we call the personality traits, in addition to reflecting genuine inborn temperaments and qualities, also express the ways that people, as children, had to accommodate their emotional environment. They reflect much that is neither inherent nor immutable about a person, no matter how closely identified he or she is with them. Nor are they character