This Christmas…

As Christmas is upon us, everyone is probably hurrying to finish up their Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, and getting ready to have a big family gathering, maybe even a big family dinner to share light and love with each other. But Christmas isn’t just about being with our family and getting presents – at its deepest core, it’s about remembering Christ and His teachings more than anything else. The teaching Christ emphasized more than any other was to love one another as He loved us, as we love our brothers and sisters, as we love ourselves, to love everyone, even our enemies… and in doing so, we’re instructed to take care of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lonely, and “the least of these.”

Corinthians states between faith, hope, and love, that love is the greatest, which is a word used synonymously with the word charity, as seen in the various translations (Biblehub, 2016a).  Matthew Henry, a protestant minister and author during the late 1600’s and early 1700’s in Whales and England, wrote in his published expanded Commentary on this scripture that:

13:8-13 Charity is much to be preferred to the gifts on which the Corinthians prided themselves. From its longer continuance. It is a grace, lasting as eternity. The present state is a state of childhood, the future that of manhood. Such is the difference between earth and heaven. What narrow views, what confused notions of things, have children when compared with grown men! Thus shall we think of our most valued gifts of this world, when we come to heaven. All things are dark and confused now, compared with what they will be hereafter. They can only be seen as by the reflection in a mirror, or in the description of a riddle; but hereafter our knowledge will be free from all obscurity and error. It is the light of heaven only, that will remove all clouds and darkness that hide the face of God from us. To sum up the excellences of charity, it is preferred not only to gifts, but to other graces, to faith and hope. Faith fixes on the Divine revelation, and assents thereto, relying on the Divine Redeemer. Hope fastens on future happiness, and waits for that; but in heaven, faith will be swallowed up in actual sight, and hope in enjoyment. There is no room to believe and hope, when we see and enjoy. But there, love will be made perfect. There we shall perfectly love God. And there we shall perfectly love one another. Blessed state! how much surpassing the best below! God is love, 1Jo 4:8,16. Where God is to be seen as he is, and face to face, there charity is in its greatest height; there only will it be perfected.

1 Corinthians 13:13 Commentaries (Biblehub, 2016a)

In Matthew 25, the Bible talks about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, helping the poor, and emphasizes not being selfish, greedy, even the evil of charging interest to make money… and states that by these acts, whether one lives helping and caring for these people in society while alive, is how God will decide who’s going to heaven and hell precisely – by how we each cared for “the least of these” and whatever we do or fail to do to help and care for them, we do unto Him, for these are His beloved who “will inherit the earth” (Biblehub, 2016b).

So often presents, materialism in general, and other ego-driven things take the limelight in America, even at Christmas. We have forgotten what truly matters, because we’ve been distracted as a society by the sparkle and glitter in this world, that in the end, we will remember once again actually means so little. In fact, it has no value at all in the end, but we sell our integrity and souls while we’ve forgotten, turning our backs on our Divine Creator, from which we ALL came – ALL of earth and her inhabitants, not just some of us. We have forgotten that we all come from the same Source and belong to each other, that we’re all connected to one another, which science has now observed repeatedly is not only a metaphorical connection, but a literal connection to each other in quantum physics – it’s just not visible to the naked eye, sort of like energy or wind, yet it exists nonetheless (Science & Nonduality, 2016). It’s merely that our worldly eyes have fooled us into thinking we’re separate, and so we’ve not only forgotten our connection, but instead of always caring for each other, now believe in our manmade ideations and fears of lack, leading us to compete with each other instead of work together in all we do.

This is our root cause for the repeating cycles of dysfunction, crime, violence, poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination, and warfare throughout history, which many great men have echoed throughout the passing years. T.S. Elliot wrote a poem called Little Gidding that also echoes messages from the past about this very topic, about time being interwoven between past, present, and future, as between those who have gone before us, and who will come after us, but most importantly that we usually make mistakes in our youth that upon departing we learn the gravity of, and how meaningless the things we frequently value really are in the end (Columbia University, n.d.).One of the main messages I receive from his poem is that we can stop the cycle of warfare and suffering in general by looking to the past for patterns, then forward into the future with insight, and then coming back to the present moment so that we can identify these tragedies sooner… before they happen again. Ironically, this poem was written during WWII and the Holocaust, so perhaps there’s a reason it echoes so loudly right now at a time where people have been pitted against each other instead of uniting as one in love, charity, and compassion for each other – for every sentient being on earth.

To have compassion, love, and charity would be the best way to honor Christ at Christmas this year. Even for the people you may be afraid of or have anger towards… even those you think are your enemies. Perhaps fear is just a tricky liar. Perhaps we can finally start to move past the repeating cycles of the past by loving everyone, even our enemies. Perhaps even remember that Christ was a Middle Eastern man whose family had to leave for religious persecution, fearing for their safety. Perhaps this Christmas we can remember Christ for who He really was and for what He really taught… and perhaps if we do, we can finally achieve world peace.

~Kristin Karuna Walsh

Finding the Still Waters and Clarity Within

When you start to feel lost or unsure of something, you are probably moving too fast. Toxic business occurs when you are doing too much and not spending enough time in stillness connecting with yourself and can impact every corner of your life, given enough time. It’s also usually a sign that you are trying to compensate for something, unfulfilled needs, by filling a void somewhere else in your life. Have you become too busy? Taken on too much? Have trouble telling others no? Overextended? How often do you just sit in stillness? How often do you allow the silent gaps of consciousness to just be? Western culture especially has trouble remembering that we are human beings, not human doings. We require that stillness, moments of not doing anything and just “being” in order to be balanced and healthy. Mind, body, and spirit alike. If you are seeking an answer, struggling with a decision, feeling like you don’t know where you belong or what you should be doing, any type of confusion in which you have been struggling with, all you have to do is slow down and reconnect with yourself. Just sit in silent stillness and reconnect with your innate divine, inner wisdom that we are all born with and even ask for guidance from a higher power. If you sit still long enough, the chaos will eventually settle on its own and you won’t even have to do anything to help it happen.

There is a story about Buddha and Ananda that teaches this lesson. They were walking in the forest one day and Buddha was very thirsty, so he sent his disciple back to a stream that they had passed 3 or 4 miles back to fetch him some water to drink. But when Ananda arrived at the stream, he had found that the stream had become muddy from some bullock carts that had just passed through it. He returned to tell Buddha that the water was not fit for drinking, so he would go ahead to another river that was 3 or 4 miles further and bring Buddha some water to drink from there. But Buddha insisted that Ananda go back to the muddy stream and wait to get him the water. Completely confused and thinking it was absurd to waste both the time and energy walking back 3 to 4 miles to the first stream, as well as 3 or 4 miles back to Buddha once again when he knew the water was too muddy to drink, he nonetheless followed his master’s directions. As Ananda left again, Buddha added “And don’t come back if the water is still dirty. Just sit by the edge of the stream and wait there.” Now Ananda grew angry because he felt his master was being unreasonable when the water would clearly not be fit for drinking and he could go fetch clean water at the river, but the disciple still obeyed Buddha and went back to the first stream.

When Ananda returned to the stream the water was still muddy just as he expected, which only frustrated him more, but as Buddha had instructed him, he sat by the edge of the water and waited. As he did, he noticed after some time had passed that the water began to get clearer as the mud and debris that had been kicked up from the bullock carts started to settle to the bottom of the stream again. After enough time had passed, it was completely clear again and suitable to take back to Buddha to drink. When Ananda returned he was now filled with deep gratitude instead of resentment, anger, and frustration. He thanked Buddha emphatically and told his master “Now I understand why you insisted I go back to the first stream even though the water was muddy. You were trying to teach me a lesson.. First I was angry; I didn’t show it, but I was angry because I thought it was absurd to go back when I knew that the water was too muddy to drink. But now I understand what you were trying to teach me and it what I actually needed in that moment. You were showing me that the same is the case with my mind. Sitting on the bank of that small stream, I became aware that the same is the case with my mind because if I jump into the stream I will make it dirty again. If I jump into my mind, more noise is created, more problems start coming up, surfacing just like the mud and debris in the water at the stream. Instead of kicking up the mud in my mind, it is wiser to be sitting by the side of my mind, too, watching it with all its dirtiness and problems and old leaves and hurts and wounds, memories, desires…but as an observer who just watches at the side in awareness, not getting upset or entangled in the debris, which only makes the mind muddier by kicking up more distressing feelings- stirring up more anger, sadness, fear, or worries, which are the mud and debris of the mind. Unconcerned, as a passive observer who needs to do nothing, I will simply sit on the bank and wait for the moment when everything is clear.”

There are two lessons in this story. First, the eternal truth of impermanence in everything because just as the good times never seem to last long enough and always come to an end, so too must the bad times eventually come to an end. With this inevitable cycle of change, we must learn to practice acceptance with ease, flowing like water. Water is stronger than rock because it remains flexible enough to move freely and continues to flow effortlessly, wearing away the surfaces of rocks. Our acceptance can do the same with our problems, which are really just a perception to begin with in reality. How we narrate things to ourselves makes a big difference in how we feel about them and react to them. Second, the reason this settling, clearing, and resolution happen naturally without your effort is because the moment you sit on the bank of your mind in stillness and silence, you are no longer giving energy to that problem or source. Since whatever is given energy, grows, it is also true that that which is denied energy will wither.

This is what mindfulness and meditation are about- teaching us this very lesson. Mindfulness is about practicing each day to become a master in the art of stillness, silence, finding gaps between your thoughts, between your breaths, noticing and watching without judgement or attachment in a complete state of awareness. It allows us to float on top of glassy still waters within no matter what chaos swirls around us rather than getting thrashed in the waves that have the power to pound us down and drown us… if we let them. Therefore, mindfulness is escaping such perils, it’s freedom, and it’s complete transcendence beyond everything- time, noise, confusion, anger, pain, stress- everything. Transcendence.

Sometimes we search madly for answers looking everywhere but within when,in fact, we all have everything we will ever need already, all within us. We always have. Like Glinda told Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power […],” and so do you. One of the most brilliant minds is psychology, Carl Jung, said that “your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.” Unfortunately, we do not do this all the time and sometimes are subconsciously or even consciously avoiding it because we are trying to escape the emotions we will find that make us feel uncomfortable. But the only way out is through and experiencing the negative is just as important to our journey and gaining wisdom as experiencing pleasure. Humans naturally chase pleasure and escape pain altogether, but it’s an impossible task. And in the end, it is actually our refusal to accept this and sit with the negative experiences in acceptance that causes the majority of our own suffering. Instead of fighting what already is and cannot be altered, a struggle that changes nothing other than our own emotional experience in the process, we can choose to gently detach from our tendency toward trying to control everything to be the way we want it in an ongoing effort to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs in search of eternal pleasure and happiness 100% of the time as an unchanging constant, which is impossible and only drives us crazy and makes us miserable every time we encounter something we didn’t want. It is when we mindfully let go and just release that need for control that we actually find all the answers we’ve been seeking and discover the peace within. This is actually the true path to our own happiness and avoiding the majority of our pain ironically- the symbolic yellow brick road to what we are searching for and has been right here silently waiting within us all along.

It is essential to spend time in stillness. In fact, it’s been well-researched and we know that it’s good for our health, mind, emotions, spirit…and yet so many of us are not making time for the important aspect of good self-care. You can make the decision starting today to make time for meditation and prayer every day. Are you thinking that you just don’t have enough time? This is the most common excuse people list for not meditating or finding time for stillness. Many times, people think they are too busy to take the time for something like this, but in reality those are the people who need it the most and will benefit from it the most! Plus, when you do take this time to be still and meditate, to reconnect with yourself, rejuvenate, and recenter, you consequentially become calmer, have more clarity, become more focused, and have more energy, which because of these things allows you to become more effective and productive in all the other corners of your life. Thus, your time will not be reduced by meditating each day, but will actually seem to expand, grow, and open up more and more each day as you continue to practice.

When you are not in silent meditation, you can still remain mindful in all you do, turning your entire day, your entire life in essence, into one big meditation and state of clarity, calmness, flow, and awareness. If you do something, do it mindfully, being completely focused on whatever experience or task you are engaged in, focusing on the more minute aspects of the experience with all of your senses, and remain in the present moment in a heightened state of awareness. This can turn something as mundane as washing the dishes into a relaxing, mindful experience that benefits your body, mind, and spirit rather than feeling like another dreadful chore on your endless list of things you need to do. But each day, take the time to reconnect with your true self in quiet stillness and find your inner peace and wisdom by sitting at the side of your mind and simply waiting. Find the gap in stillness where you become more aware of the vibrations of energy and your inner guide.

The answers you need always lie within and so does your power. You don’t need to look outward or need anyone’s help- you just need to find your own strength and wisdom that each one of us was born with and then tap into it. Simply be quiet enough on a regular basis to listen for and hear that guiding voice of divine light and intuition. And may you (yes- you!) and your life overflow with love, light, healing energy, and abundant blessings.

What’s the Gift in All of This?

We all have challenges…life is about ebb and flow. And it’s human nature to seek constant pleasure and try to always avoid pain. But it’s our refusal to just accept the ebb and flow, our refusal to accept when bad things happen that causes much of our suffering. Instead of thinking that everything bad or painful that happens to us is just “bad,” we should be asking “What gift is there in this for me?” We can always learn from our hardships if we choose to look at them as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks. It’s all about perception…and we get to CHOOSE how to think about things…we PICK our own thoughts! So that’s the great news about all of this. We can choose to look at what we gain from adversity (wisdom, deeper levels of empathy, better personality or character traits, a new job or relationship that’s better than the one we had before, spiritual transformation, or changing the path we’ve been on to bring us to our DESTINY- what we were always MEANT TO DO and go where we were SUPPOSED TO BE!)…or we can “choose” to focus on the negative aspects and play the victim role, sitting on our pity pot feeling sorry for ourselves and letting it steal from our ability to be happy in the present and future. This isn’t what’s in our best interest, though. Sure- take a little time to grieve- you have to experience your feelings. After all, that’s part of being human. But then realize that it’s not how many times you falter, fail, get hurt, or otherwise that matters…it’s what you do when you GET BACK UP that counts! Life is 10% what hapens to us and 90% how we choose to look at it and react to it. In the movie “Maid in Manhatten,” the character Lionel says “What defines us is how well we rise after falling.” And that’s exactly my point. We must always remind ourselves that while it seems that the good times never last forever, neither can the bad because that’s how the ebb and flow of life works. It will always come to an end because the only constant in life is CHANGE. And as Oprah once said, “[…] when you hit rock bottom, that’s the best [opportunity] to spring forward.” Everything’s a gift, guys- don’t get thrown off if it just happens to come in ugly wrapping paper sometimes!!!

The Neurobiological Effects of Childhood Abuse that Increase Risk of Developing Major Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Childhood abuse, whether it’s emotional, physical, or sexual, impacts a child’s psychological health into adulthood by altering the way their brain develops and later functions throughout their life. A child’s brain is still developing and extremely malleable, which is why early abuse can result in permanent developmental changes from a neurobiological standpoint. These anomalies can lead to a myriad of psychiatric problems, including Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). (Teicher M. H., 2000)

MDD is comprised of a multitude of symptoms including prolonged sadness or deflated mood, anhedonia, significant changes in weight or appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia, irritability, difficulty in concentration and memory, and even the consideration of suicide. (American Psychiatric Association, 2000)

BPD is most notably characterized by persistent emotional instability, especially within relationships, impulsive behavior, abnormal affect, chronic and extreme fear of abandonment, and frequently includes suicide gestures. Depression is also commonly experienced by patients with BPD. (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Comer, 2011)

PTSD occurs only after a person suffers a severe trauma, which results in flashbacks, depression, anhedonia, flat affect or restriction of experienced emotion, anxiety, panic attacks, avoidance of possible triggers, nightmares, sleep disturbances, dissociation, irritability, difficulty with concentration and memory, and hyperarousal including a hypersensitive startle response. (American Psychiatric Association, 2000)

How does child abuse put a person at increased risk for developing MDD, BPD, or PTSD? One of the leading experts in the field on this subject, Dr. Martin H. Teicher, hypothesized that “the trauma of abuse induces a cascade of effects, including changes in hormones and neurotransmitters that mediate development of vulnerable brain regions.” (Teicher, 2000, p. 5 para. 3) His research, as well as many others, has found that several specific brain abnormalities repeatedly appear in patients with a history of abuse. These abnormalities include limbic irritability, inadequate development and differentiation of the left hemisphere, insufficient left-right hemisphere integration, and abnormal activity in the cerebellar vermin, all of which result in symptoms that correlate with MDD, BPD, and PTSD. (Spiers, et al., 1985; Ito Y., et al., 1993; Teicher, et al., 1993; Bremmer, et al., 1997; Stein, et al.; 1997; Ito Y., et al., 1998; Teicher M.H., 2000, van der Kolk, 2003) What the results of all this research have indicated is that their “belief that trauma causes brain damage” is not unfounded. (Teicher, 2000, p. 5, para. 4)

The limbic system, which is the part of the brain that controls much of our emotion, as well as our survival instincts, is damaged by childhood abuse, as evidenced from the findings of multiple studies. (Spiers, et al., 1985; Teicher, et al., 1993; Teicher, 2000) Compared to non-abused people, victims of childhood abuse have much higher rates of disturbances in their limbic system, referred to as limbic irritability, which has been found to be associated with seizures known as temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and significant EEG abnormalities. Signs of TLE are 38% greater in physically abused patients, 49% greater in sexually abused patients, and an alarming 113% greater in patients who were both physically and sexually abused. (Spiers, et al., 1985; Teicher, et al., 1993; Teicher, 2000) Further, if the abuse transpired before the age of 18, it had a much larger effect on the patient’s limbic system than abuse that occurred after the age of 18, which indicates that childhood is definitely a particularly sensitive time of development for the brain. Limbic irritability plays a key part in predisposing a person for PTSD later in life, as well as increasing their risk for developing dissociative and impaired memory symptoms.  Further, neurochemical changes in these sections of the brain also result in a greater stress response and hypervigilance. Limbic irritability is also linked to chronic unhappiness, aggression, and violent tendencies toward oneself and others, which can also be linked both to MDD and BPD. (Teicher M. H., 2000)

With regard to EEG results, one study found that 54% of patients who experienced childhood abuse, as opposed to only 27% of patients with no history of abuse, had abnormal brain wave activity and that of those 54% of the abused patients, 43% had been psychologically abused, 60% had been abused physically, sexually, or both, and 72% had survived extreme forms of physical or sexual abuse. (Ito Y., et al., 1993; Teicher, 2000) These anomalies were usually present in the left hemisphere in abused patients and, very notably, they occurred in the left hemisphere 100% of the time in patients who had been psychologically abused. In fact, the abused patients had 6 times more left-sided abnormalities than right-sided abnormalities, and those who had suffered psychological abuse experienced left-hemisphere abnormalities 8 times more often than right-sided ones, which was especially significant even before comparing these results to the non-abused patients who had barely any left-hemisphere abnormalities at all, even though they were still twice as common as EEG anomalies in the right-hemisphere. Testing with EEG coherence, researchers further revealed that abused patients had significantly underdeveloped left cortexes, no matter what their diagnosis was, and were especially noticeable in the temporal region of the cortex, resulting in more difficulty processing and modifying electrical signals in the brain. (Ito Y., et al., 1993; Ito Y., et al., 1998; Teicher, 2000) These findings “corroborated [their] hypothesis that abuse is associated with an increased prevalence of left-sided EEG abnormalities and of left-hemisphere defects in neuropsychological testing.” (Teicher, 2000, p. 8, para. 1) This is interesting because the left hemisphere that is known for being more logical, keeping emotions under control, and for structure and planning, all of which could begin to explain some of the symptoms seen in patients with MDD, BPD, or PTSD who seem to have deficits in these areas.

Within the temporal lobe is the hippocampus, which also seems to be underdeveloped in patients with a history of child abuse, but only on the left side again, and commensurate with the severity of the patient’s symptoms. (Bremmer, et al., 1997; Stein, et al., 1997; Teicher, 2000, van der Kolk, 2003) The stunted development of the hippocampus observed in victims of child abuse can be linked to exposure to high levels of cortisol, which is toxic to the hippocampus and results in atrophy. Since the hippocampus is involved in controlling emotions and memory, as well as regulating the body’s stress hormones, it makes sense that this specific brain abnormality is repeatedly found in those suffering from MDD, PTSD, or BPD. (Teicher M. H., 2000)  It also makes sense that all the abnormalities seem to be in the left hemisphere since that side develops at a much swifter rate during early childhood than does the right hemisphere, thus putting it at higher risk for brain damage caused by abuse sustained during those formative years. Researchers have proposed that reduced activity in left frontal lobes results in MDD, linking the left hemisphere to one of the psychological disorders that can result from child abuse and, as suggested before, left-hemisphere anomalies may be responsible for inadequate maintenance of the negative emotions and impulses for which the right hemisphere is known, again giving insight as to how child abuse may increase the risk for  all three mental illnesses, MDD, BPD, and PTSD. (Teicher M. H., 2000)

Research has also indicated that patients who have been abused in early life have difficulty with integrated bilateral responses and use their left hemisphere when recalling memories of a non-traumatic nature, and their right hemisphere when recalling negative memories. The right hemisphere is responsible for processing and expressing negative emotions, whereas the left is the side that keeps emotions in check. (Schiffer, et al., 1995; Teicher, 2000) If the right hemisphere is more developed than the left, it could in part possibly explain why rumination on negative thoughts or feelings occurs with abuse victims who have MDD, BPD, or PTSD. Additionally, the reason why these individuals may have difficulty using both hemispheres in a more integrated fashion as non-abused people do is explained by the findings that abused individuals have significantly smaller middle portions of their corpus collosum, which is the primary pathway connecting the two sides of the brain. (Teicher M. H., 2000) This explains why someone with MDD or PTSD may have difficulty with emotional regulation, and especially why those with BPD may go from putting someone on a pedestal to being overcritical of the same person, seeing things and people in black and white terms, rather than in a more integrated point of view that both bad and good can exist within one person or situation. When using the left side of their brain, people seem glowingly positive to the individual, and when using the right side of their brain, those same people are completely negative. (Teicher M. H., 2000)

Anomalies in the cerebellar vermis also appear in those who have been abused, which may be linked to depression, among other disorders. This part of the brain, which is also thought to play a key role in managing one’s emotions and attention, as well as in calming the electrical irritability associated with the limbic system, is also extremely sensitive to stress hormones which can alter its usual development and leave it impaired with regard to carrying out the previously mentioned functions. This again would explain certain symptoms of MDD, PTSD, and BPD in victims of child abuse with regard to emotional stability and attention.  (Teicher, 2000; van der Kolk, 2003)

Neglect has specifically been found to interfere with thyroid hormone production, which results in a domino effect of lower levels of serotonin within the hippocampus, the stunted development of glucocorticoid receptors, and finally an increased risk of hyper-reactive stress hormone response, leaving the individual in heightened fear and adrenaline responses when faced with external stressors and negative situations in life, again setting the stage for psychological disorders such as MDD, BPD, PTSD, all of which are also linked to lowered serotonin levels. This further leads to neuronal instability, and back to where we started with an increased likelihood of seizures, which are associated with limbic irritability.

However, the neurobiological effects of neglect don’t stop there. Child abuse can result in a permanent increased levels of vasopressin, a stress hormone associated with sexual arousal, and lowered levels of oxytocin, a critical hormone in maintaining monogamous relationships, which could in theory explain why BPD patients may be predisposed to have such turbulent relationships that are often short lived and intense in nature. (Teicher M. H., 2000) As Bessel A. van der Kolk notes, child abuse can affect the “neuroendocrine system, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and every conceivable neurotransmitter system.” (van der Kolk, 2003) Dysfunction within the HPA axis can actually be tied to all three disorders, MDD, BPD, and PTSD, as can various neurotransmitters. (van der Kolk, 2003; Anda, et al., 2006; Carvalho Fernandoa, et al., 2012, American Psychiatric Association, 2000)

All of these findings support that specific types of permanent brain damage can result from child abuse which can set an individual up to become more moody, irrational, hyper vigilant, easily startled, and to display dissociative symptoms, lower levels of judgment, impaired memory, poor control of affect and impulses, and more. (Teicher, 2000; van der Kolk, 2003) It is because of the neurobiological effects of child abuse that survivors are at greater risk for developing MDD, BPD, and PTSD.

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