How Gut Health Is Impacted by Childhood Trauma
By Mary Crocker Cook
Posted on June 17, 2025
Given how trauma can manifest in the body, it’s no wonder that attachment wounds impact our physical health. An attachment-focused therapist offers tips on reconnecting with yourself and healing your gut.
As an attachment-focused therapist specializing in addiction treatment, I have worked for years with people who have dealt with their early childhood trauma through their bodies because they were not able to through their words. Attachment threats that occur during childhood, like abuse and neglect from caregivers, have left many of us unable to accurately read ourselves and others. The physical body has its own story it can tell us, and our history is encoded in our cells. Given how trauma can manifest in the body, attachment wounds impact our physical health.
How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Health
The immune system continues to develop after birth, and it is influenced by its postnatal environment—including psychosocial stress experienced during childhood. Studies have shown that adverse childhood experiences can influence the body’s immune system and trigger an inflammatory response.
The immune system is the body’s master operating control system. What happens in childhood sets up lifelong programming for this master operating system governing all: body, brain, and mind. The unifying principle of this new “theory of everything” is that your emotional biography becomes your physical biology. And together they write much of the script for how you will live your life.
When we experience stressful emotions—anger, fear, worry, anxiety, rumination, grief, loss—the HPA axis releases stress hormones, including cortisol and inflammatory cytokines. Tissue damage can happen slowly over time in response to chronic stress. When your system is repeatedly overstimulated, it begins to downshift in response to stress.
This downshift creates an inability to access our internal reality over time, impairing our ability to communicate our needs and wants accurately. Our body and emotions are integrated, even when we have trained ourselves to “ignore” physical cues. The system is operating like a car stuck in acceleration without relief.
The immune system continues to develop after birth, and it is influenced by its postnatal environment—including psychosocial stress experienced during childhood. Studies have shown that adverse childhood experiences can influence the body’s immune system and trigger an inflammatory response.
The immune system is the body’s master operating control system. What happens in childhood sets up lifelong programming for this master operating system governing all: body, brain, and mind. The unifying principle of this new “theory of everything” is that your emotional biography becomes your physical biology. And together they write much of the script for how you will live your life.
When we experience stressful emotions—anger, fear, worry, anxiety, rumination, grief, loss—the HPA axis releases stress hormones, including cortisol and inflammatory cytokines. Tissue damage can happen slowly over time in response to chronic stress. When your system is repeatedly overstimulated, it begins to downshift in response to stress.
This downshift creates an inability to access our internal reality over time, impairing our ability to communicate our needs and wants accurately. Our body and emotions are integrated, even when we have trained ourselves to “ignore” physical cues. The system is operating like a car stuck in acceleration without relief.
Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Digestive System
Recent science shows that a sophisticated neural network transmits messages from trillions of digestive bacteria to the brain, exerting a powerful influence on our state of mind and creating a connection between the brain and the gut.
Emotional adversity, mental stress, and trauma lead to a greater proliferation of bad bacteria in the gut. Bad bugs in the gut lead to lower mood, anxiety, depression, and a proclivity for being less resilient in the face of adversity and stress.
Recent science shows that a sophisticated neural network transmits messages from trillions of digestive bacteria to the brain, exerting a powerful influence on our state of mind and creating a connection between the brain and the gut.
Emotional adversity, mental stress, and trauma lead to a greater proliferation of bad bacteria in the gut. Bad bugs in the gut lead to lower mood, anxiety, depression, and a proclivity for being less resilient in the face of adversity and stress.
How to Nourish the Gut-Brain Axis
Because microorganisms in our gut affect our brain, we need to do whatever we can to make our microbiome healthy and give the pathways in our brain all the serotonin and nutrients they need to send the correct messages along our brain’s synapses.
Why does this matter? When our early attachment was disrupted, we learned to overinterpret people’s reactions and rely on either feelings or intellect. In both cases, we have not learned to “read” our physical cues accurately, which impairs our ability to regulate ourselves and address our distress accurately.
If this is the case for you, here are some ways that you can rebuild the connection with your gut:
- When beginning the process of regulating your nervous system, start with gentle physical interventions. Try stretching and yoga as you develop your skills to read yourself and others more accurately.
- Add adrenal-supportive foods into your life, such as fish, nuts, and leafy greens.
- Eat smelly foods! The stinkier it is, the more it will boost your immune system and support gut health. So, load up on raw garlic and ginger.
- When it comes to managing and reducing stress quickly in the middle of a heated situation, be familiar with your specific stress response.
- Fight (overexcited stress response): If you tend to become angry, agitated, or keyed-up under stress, you will respond best to stress relief activities that quiet you down.
- Flight (under-excited stress response): If you tend to become depressed, withdrawn, or spaced-out under stress, you will respond best to stress relief activities that are stimulating and that energize your nervous system.
- Freeze (both overexcited and under-excited): If you tend to check out or leave your body under stress, your challenge is to identify stress relief activities that will allow you to feel safe to inhabit your body and feel centered.
Because microorganisms in our gut affect our brain, we need to do whatever we can to make our microbiome healthy and give the pathways in our brain all the serotonin and nutrients they need to send the correct messages along our brain’s synapses.
Why does this matter? When our early attachment was disrupted, we learned to overinterpret people’s reactions and rely on either feelings or intellect. In both cases, we have not learned to “read” our physical cues accurately, which impairs our ability to regulate ourselves and address our distress accurately.
If this is the case for you, here are some ways that you can rebuild the connection with your gut:
- When beginning the process of regulating your nervous system, start with gentle physical interventions. Try stretching and yoga as you develop your skills to read yourself and others more accurately.
- Add adrenal-supportive foods into your life, such as fish, nuts, and leafy greens.
- Eat smelly foods! The stinkier it is, the more it will boost your immune system and support gut health. So, load up on raw garlic and ginger.
- When it comes to managing and reducing stress quickly in the middle of a heated situation, be familiar with your specific stress response.
- Fight (overexcited stress response): If you tend to become angry, agitated, or keyed-up under stress, you will respond best to stress relief activities that quiet you down.
- Flight (under-excited stress response): If you tend to become depressed, withdrawn, or spaced-out under stress, you will respond best to stress relief activities that are stimulating and that energize your nervous system.
- Freeze (both overexcited and under-excited): If you tend to check out or leave your body under stress, your challenge is to identify stress relief activities that will allow you to feel safe to inhabit your body and feel centered.
