CSChristoffel SneijdersThree brains: head, heart and gut for decisions you keep deferring

Can Trauma Cause Chronic Illness? Learn How Childhood Trauma Affects Your Health

29 Sept 2017 · 5 min

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5:08

In this talk, Christoffel Sneijders explores how trauma and chronic stress can translate into long‑term physical disease. He begins by outlining the classic fight‑or‑flight response and adds the often‑overlooked freeze stage that precedes it. Sneijders argues that modern life—constant work pressure, social media expectations, and various personal traumas such as abuse, bullying, grief, or relationship loss—keeps many people stuck in a prolonged stress state. Drawing on the ideas of Gabor Maté and Bruce Lipton, he explains that each cell can either perform maintenance (rejuvenation) or be occupied with a stress response; when stress dominates, cellular repair is neglected, leading over years to deficiencies that manifest as tumors, cancer, or chronic illnesses. He uses a car‑maintenance analogy to illustrate how neglecting “tire” or “engine” upkeep eventually causes failure. To break this cycle, Sneijders proposes a “personal leadership” or “remastering” program aimed at releasing frozen trauma, restoring cellular maintenance, and preventing disease. The talk ends with an invitation to join his program for further guidance.

Chapters

Chronic illness, trauma, or illness and trauma— how are they interconnected? Gabor Maté talks about it, and almost everybody in popular science is now at least making some connections and not connections. And more important, what can we do about it? Actually, probably you all know the flight-or-fight response. Probably you heard of it. That fight-or-flight response has one step even before, and that's the freeze. Before we jump into a flight or fight, we can also freeze. So something happens, and then we think, okay, we run away or we fight it. And if you can do that perfectly and go out, it just goes out. Like the Zebra who gets hunted by the lion is in a totally flight response. Fly away, run away. After he or she escapes, shakes it off, gets all the energy out, and is okay again. What happens in current society with us for 2 things: when we are, say, in a state of anxiety somewhere, or we have a trauma. Most, by the way. Anxiety can come from all the things we perceive as dangerous inside us. We're in a constant stress of work. Are we still popular on Facebook and social media? Are we still connected? Do we have all the things, all the pressure we have upon us from society, or at least perceived as on us? Or a trauma from abuse, To bullying, to grief from death, breakups, divorce. Eldeur, dat zien we steeds weer. Parents divorce. We have a breakup as adults. Somebody dies around us. We come somewhere. We hit a trauma. Bullied by schoolmates. Not being popular on Facebook, being raped, being abused mentally, physically. It creates so much trauma inside us. And what happens then, when this is us and we are, say, the healthy one, normal, what happens? We create almost a second skin where we still have happiness around us, but there's also a part of us that has all the trauma, or it runs a little layer of anxiety in us. One out of two, or maybe both. Now what happens from that moment— and then you have to connect what we know from science, that every second we rejuvenate 20 million body cells— that a body cell can only do 2 things from the same moment, according to Bruce Lipton. It can rejuvenate, it can do maintenance on the cell, or it can be in a fight-or-flight response. It's doing this or it's doing that. So just imagine now that one part of your car can never get maintenance. Say your tires never get maintained. So what will happen in the end? They will run out. They'll get flat and you have an issue with your car. The same as with your engine. Then we never maintain your engine, at one moment it will just blow up. Now the same is our body somewhere. If you never maintain it in that part, you get anxiety or the trauma out, you don't release those, on one moment it will create somewhere a deficiency in our body. And most times it goes out in cancer, tumors, chronic illnesses, and those kind of stuff somewhere in the long run. And when you don't maintain your tires, they're not without any profile within 5,000 kilometers. You have to do 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100,000 kilometers. So really, it takes a long time. And the same with your body— doesn't happen tomorrow. It happens in a long time because this is the slow killers somewhere. How to get rid of that? I would say, remaster yourself and get rid of this part. And do the personal leadership. Join me, learn how this works, how we work, and more important, how we can get rid of this. Love to see you in a couple of months. Ciao, have a beautiful day. And don't let this one make you crazy, but it makes— let this one make you happy. And this one. Okay.