Childhood Stress Becomes a Nervous System Pattern—And Why It Can Make You Sick

“What Is the Developmental Model of Stress?”

For years, women have been told that stress is simply about “doing too much.”
But what if the deepest form of stress is the one we learned to normalize—the invisible kind woven into our earliest relationships?

The Developmental Model of Stress doesn’t define stress by tasks or to-do lists. It defines stress by what the nervous system had to endure long before we had words. It traces illness not just to overwork—but to the strategies we developed to survive love, loss, shame, silence, and emotional absence.

And for many women?
That means pleasing.
Performing.
Being responsible.
Never resting.
And never, ever needing anything.

What Is the Developmental Model of Stress?

Developed by Fauver, Clark, and Schwartz (2024), this model suggests that chronic illness and emotional suffering often stem from the developmental environment—not just isolated life events. It links nervous system dysregulation to relational threat in early life, such as:

• Emotional neglect or inconsistency

• Having to stay “good” to stay safe

• Being overly responsible from a young age

• Suppressing emotions to avoid rejection

• Fawning or freezing in response to conflict

These aren’t simply personality traits. They are learned biological responses to threat and disconnection. Over time, these patterns become default modes in the autonomic nervous system—eventually showing up as chronic stress, anxiety, autoimmune illness, or functional neurological symptoms

What Happens in the Body?

From a somatic perspective, early relational stress wires the nervous system to live in survival states. This includes:

• Low-grade sympathetic arousal: hypervigilance, people-pleasing, perfectionism

• Chronic freeze states: emotional numbing, shutdown, fatigue

• Dorsal vagal dominance: low energy, pain, cognitive fog

• Disorganized neuroception: misreading safety cues in present-day situations

These patterns increase allostatic load—the cumulative wear and tear on the body’s systems. As the nervous system becomes more dysregulated, the immune, endocrine, and neurological systems also become more reactive and vulnerable.

This is how childhood emotional suppression becomes adult physiological expression.

A New Paradigm for Illness

Traditional models of illness often separate the mind and body. The Developmental Model of Stress invites us to reconnect them—not as abstract theory, but as lived reality.

In a groundbreaking 2024 study, researchers applied this model to women with multiple sclerosis (MS). They found that:

• Every participant described significant early-life emotional stress

• Most identified with roles such as “the strong one,” “the helper,” or “the quiet one”

• Symptoms were linked to long-term emotional inhibition and boundary suppression

• Introducing somatic and belief-based therapies showed clinical improvement

🔍 Study: A Framework for Understanding Stress and Disease: The Developmental Model of Stress as Applied to MS(Fauver, Clark & Schwartz, 2024)
Full link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnint.2024.1365672/full

Healing Means Reclaiming Safety, Slowly

The old model said: “Manage your stress.”
The new model says: “Understand your stress—and where it began.”

This model helps us trace symptoms back to the moments we had to leave ourselves in order to stay connected. It helps us realize:

• That hyper-independence isn’t strength—it’s survival

• That exhaustion may not be laziness—it may be freeze

• That illness may not be random—it may be your nervous system’s cry for repair

And repair starts, not with effort, but with reconnection.

What You Can Begin To Do

Get curious about your role: What role did you play in your family system—The Fixer? The Peacemaker? The Over-Achiever?

1. Track your body cues: What happens in your breath, posture, or gut when you feel responsible, unseen, or overwhelmed?

2. Begin to name your truth: Healing often starts with small truths. Saying “I’m not okay” is a nervous system breakthrough.

3. Find spaces that don’t require performance: Safety isn’t found in achievement—it’s found in presence.

   Why This Model Resonates Deeply With Women

   Because so many of us were wired to make others comfortable first.
   Because we’ve called ourselves anxious or tired when what we really felt was unsafe, invisible, or emotionally alone.
   Because we’ve spent decades managing symptoms—without ever understanding the roles we took on to survive

   A Gentle Next Step Into Healing

4. If you’re curious about your somatic signature—the unique survival patterns your nervous system learned to rely on—there’s a space for you.

   🌿 Explore my free course: The Roles That Protected Us
   Inside, you’ll uncover:

   • Your personal nervous system imprint

   • The emotional roles you unconsciously play

   • How survival patterns like pleasing, performing, and freezing show up in the body

   • Gentle, somatic steps to begin unwinding them

   Click here to join the free course → [Insert your course link]

   This is where healing starts—not by pushing through—but by remembering who you were before survival became your story.