From Wounds to Labels to “Mental Illness”

When I was a little shaver, my mom handed me two small brads—tiny nails—and asked me to put them in the junk jar in the basement.

On my way down, I passed the piano. As I often did, I ran my fingers across the ivories. Only this time, I had the brads in hand.

Yes, the brads left deep scars across most of the keys. Dumb kid. What can I say? I’m sorry I did that. I was four.

That piano was, at the time, probably my father’s most prized possession. He played it daily. Music was his way to unwind, to entertain himself, to cope. Now he would look at those scratches every day for the rest of his life. A daily reminder. I believe that incident changed the course of my life, having consequences that would ripple forward in ways I couldn’t yet understand.

That night, in my onesie, standing in front of the piano, I heard my mom and dad arguing upstairs. It grew louder. Dad was bellowing. Mom was sobbing.

Then came the roar:
“DAN, COME HERE!”
“No, Danny, stay away!” sobbed my mother.
“DAN, COME HERE!”
“No, Danny, stay away!”

Then the pounding footsteps came down the stairs.

The next thing I knew, I was face to face with a full-blown, red-faced, old-school Marine Corps–style dressing down. I still remember parts of it vividly:

“When I say jump, you don’t ask how high! You jump as high as you can—as if your life depends on it—BECAUSE IT DOES!”

I could feel my body releasing sweat in bursts. And yes, I wet my onesie a little. Dad wasn’t happy about that, either.

CVA research—childhood verbal abuse—suggests that an incident like this can alter the developing brain. I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew fear. For someone to believe that repeated—or even perhaps one-time—exposure to something like CVA wouldn’t impact a child’s brain suggests an ego issue, doesn’t it?

“I’d do better . . .”

Because if that person—so sure they would’ve handled it better—had been born into my body, with all of my biological realities and predispositions (both biological and environmental), with the exact same life experiences including every moment up until that one… do they really believe their brain would have been shaped any differently?

Why? Why would they think that, unless it’s ego? Unless they’ve been taught to see others’ suffering not as a mirror of reality, but as a moral failure? Unless they’ve bought into the myth that we’re all such free agents, untouched by the forces that shaped us?

The impact of something like childhood verbal abuse isn’t limited to a single event—it’s the beginning of a cascade. (And it’s merely one type of abuse that may be encountered by a developing human being.)

The person is given a tough row to hoe, one that becomes even tougher as time goes along, reacting and responding to a world expecting uniformity and conforming performance despite cruel and unusual (nonconforming) development. It’s not a series of bad choices—it’s a logical sequence of responses to experiences that others never had to survive. Things happen in order, not as randomly as a gossip surmises.

So when someone says, Well, I wouldn’t have done that, what they’re really saying is, I’ve never had to: “Sure, the research suggests that CVA imparts lifelong consequences (due to involuntary stress response chemistry sculpting a person’s developing brain), but surely my brain wouldn’t have been impacted. I would have been stronger than that. I would have been better than that. And the fact that this person isn’t better or “normal” is due to a personal shortcoming, or a disease, or a ‘disorder’. Surely, given the ‘same’ circumstances, I would have been disaffected. Or, if impacted, I would have sought help and become ‘normal’.”

Empowering as it might feel, that’s not moral superiority. One can never really walk a step in another’s moccasins, let alone a mile.

Dad’s gone, and I only blame him for what he did in my weaker moments. When I’m stronger, I know that were I in his place—literally and entirely—I can’t claim that I would have behaved differently or better than he did.

He was shaped by the same family tradition. His father was a hitter. His mother had a lightsaber tongue that could remove your heart and cut your knees from under you with one effortless lash. He didn’t invent the fury or the fear—he inherited it. His stint in the Marine Corps may well have helped hone his skill as a cut-down artist and master disciplinarian. But his basic outlook on life was passed down like an heirloom no one wanted, but no one knew how to stop handing off.

The Neurobiology of Verbal Abuse

Verbal abuse in childhood is more than just hurtful words. It’s a form of trauma with measurable effects on the brain. Early verbal abuse can reshape brain connectivity, especially in regions associated with emotional reward. One result: a dulled reward system.

These changes aren’t hypothetical—they’re supported by science. Studies show that adolescents exposed to verbal abuse showed disrupted connectivity in brain regions tied to emotional regulation and reward processing. This suggests that chronic emotional hostility can wire the brain for hypervigilance and blunt emotional engagement, impairing one’s capacity to feel joy or connection.

The reward system is how the brain registers joy, motivation, and connection. When it’s blunted, even positive experiences—a kind word, a smile, a moment of success—barely register. This condition, perhaps sometimes misdiagnosed as depression, can stem from chronic emotional assaults during childhood. Children adapt by emotionally disconnecting as a survival mechanism.

And in adulthood? That muted system doesn’t just reset. It manifests in behavior others often misinterpret: flat affect, emotional detachment, hypervigilance, numbness, or random wildness. But behind that is often a history of learned vigilance and quiet pain.

The Social Cost of Blunted Reward Sensitivity

Life is a social experience. But not everyone responds the same way to social cues. Laughter, for example, isn’t always just a spontaneous reaction to something funny—it’s a social signal. In group settings, people often laugh not because something is hilarious, but because everyone else is laughing. It’s a way of showing that you “get it,” that you belong. It says: I’m with you. I’m one of you. That’s why sitcoms have laugh tracks. The laughter isn’t just for the joke—it’s a cue, a form of pressure to join in, to participate in a shared experience.

And if you don’t laugh? If you sit silently while others erupt into giggles? You might not just seem humorless—you might seem off.

This dynamic extends far beyond comedy. Social groups use similar cues when responding to people who behave in ways that fall outside accepted norms. When someone displays unusual behavior, the group often responds not with curiosity or compassion, but with rejection or exclusion. A furrowed brow. A sidelong glance. A shared joke at their expense. These, too, are signals: We don’t accept this.

And just like with laughter, there’s pressure to conform. If you fail to laugh at the right moment, you risk standing out. If you fail to reject the oddball, you risk being mistaken for one. Failing to participate in the rejection can be just as damning as the unusual behavior itself. You become suspect. People start to wonder about you—not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because you didn’t join the performance of disapproval. In this way, social exclusion spreads—less from true belief than from a need to prove one’s group loyalty.

These dynamics are subtle, pervasive, and deeply human. But they’re also dangerous—especially when the person being rejected is already carrying invisible wounds the group can’t see.

In a culture that relies heavily on shared emotional cues, people with muted emotional responses often end up on the margins. They may not laugh at the right moments, show enthusiasm, or mirror others’ emotions. These subtle mismatches can provoke discomfort, gossip, or outright exclusion.

Their silence might be seen as arrogance. Their lack of expression mistaken for boredom. Their calm demeanor interpreted as coldness. But in truth, many are simply wired by trauma to stay quiet, guarded, and hyperaware of risk. Some may seek intense stimulation—substances, thrill-seeking, impulsivity—not out of rebellion, but to feel something close to normal. These management strategies, born from pain, are then pathologized as deviant or disordered.

“What’s Wrong With You?”: The Wrong Question

The question isn’t just cruel—it’s misguided. It assumes the problem lies within the person rather than in the context of their experience.

Too often, society rushes to convenient labels and judgements: “He’s just slow,” “She’s not trying hard enough,” “He must be on something,” “She’s broken,” “He has depression, ADHD, or some disease or disorder.”

But the more accurate explanation might be: “He’s adapted to an ignorant, judgmental world that never made space for his kind of brain.”

Social misunderstanding doesn’t stop at gossip. It often becomes clinical misdiagnosis. The child who emotionally disconnects in self-defense becomes the adult labeled with major depression or borderline personality disorder, etc. Behaviors shaped by trauma are reclassified as symptoms.

Someone with a blunted reward system might need three or four drinks to feel what others do after just one; they might engage in various risky behaviors others might consider too risky; they might seem wild to those who don’t understand what it is to need more than others to achieve the same satisfaction.

Once a diagnosis enters the record, it can stick like a scarlet letter—defining how others see the person and how the person sees themselves. Instead of support, they receive confirmation of their deepest fear: “You’re not just different—you’re defective.”

Once a person develops a blunted reward response—often as a result of early adversity, chronic stress, or trauma—the usual social mechanisms for learning and adaptation may begin to falter. Positive reinforcement, which normally encourages desirable behavior by activating the brain’s reward circuitry, may no longer generate the expected emotional feedback. A smile, a kind word, a social invitation—these can fall flat, unable to register as meaningful or motivating. As a result, the individual may appear ungrateful, unmotivated, or even oppositional, when in fact they are neurologically out of sync with the social world that shaped others.

Those around them, even if well-intended, may then escalate to harsher methods of teaching and correction. When rewards don’t seem to work, people may resort to harsher “tough love” methods—shaming, isolation, exclusion, punishment, or withholding information, resources, or affection—none of which address the underlying disconnection. But this too is frequently misread: rather than teaching, it may deepen withdrawal, reinforce shame, or provoke defiance. What’s perceived as necessary discipline might actually be compounding the damage, especially if the person is already in survival mode, interpreting social cues through a lens of control rather than trust. In this way, well-meaning efforts can become part of a tragic cycle—one where misunderstanding, not malice, pushes a person further from healing.

The Iatrogenic Risks of Misdiagnosis

Iatrogenesis—harm caused by treatment—becomes a real danger when diagnoses and interventions fail to address root causes.

Imagine someone with a dulled reward system from years of emotional trauma. If they’re prescribed medications that further blunt emotion, the result can be catastrophic.

Or what if well-meaning efforts to control their behavior ended up suppressing the very impulses they rely on to feel something—effectively cutting them off from the little relief they can still access?

In such cases, clinical care becomes an extension of early harm—only now it comes with credentials.

What ACEs Can Teach Us

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente revealed something profound: early verbal and emotional abuse predicts a host of negative outcomes in adulthood. High ACE scores correlate with increased risk for depression, substance use, chronic illness, and early death.

The original ACE study (link), which surveyed over 17,000 adults, showed that people with high ACE scores—especially those exposed to emotional abuse, household dysfunction, or neglect—were significantly more likely to suffer from depression, substance use, and physical illnesses later in life. And the more ACEs a person had, the more their risk increased. These correlations offer not just a medical insight but a moral one: what happens to us as children doesn’t just affect how we feel—it shapes how we survive.

In the years since the original ACE study, researchers and clinicians have called for an expansion of the framework to include more nuanced forms of trauma—particularly verbal abuse. While the original ACEs listed “emotional abuse,” they didn’t differentiate specific types such as constant belittling, name-calling, or verbal threats. These subtler yet deeply damaging experiences often go unacknowledged. Updated or expanded ACE checklists aim to address these gaps by explicitly naming a broader range of harmful experiences. This more inclusive approach helps capture the long-term psychological toll of verbal abuse and recognizes its role in shaping a person’s sense of safety, identity, and worth.

Though some research calls for a greater recognition of the impact of verbal abuse, childhood verbal abuse remains among the most easily overlooked forms of trauma. Physical bruises get attention. Emotional wounds often don’t—until they emerge in behaviors society finds uncomfortable. And then, the very culture that ignored the abuse labels the victim as “mentally ill” and someone to be tolerated with dishonest harmony or avoided altogether until they “get help”.

From Pathologizing to Understanding

We need a cultural shift—from judgment to context, from clinical labeling to compassionate acceptance.

When someone doesn’t laugh at the joke, doesn’t smile back, or needs more intensity just to feel something—maybe the problem isn’t them. Maybe it’s the culture that demands emotional display, conformity, and consistency, while punishing difference. A society that dismisses child abuse as someone else’s problem eventually reaps the seeds that were sown.

Verbal abuse may dull the reward system, but it doesn’t extinguish the person. Beneath the surface is someone still reaching, still wanting connection, still trying to be understood.

What they need is not a label or a lecture, but a witness or a listener. A space where they can safely feel alive again—without being treated like a broken object or a puzzle to be solved.

Because if we’re honest, anyone born with their biology and placed in their environment would likely have turned out just like them. That’s not weakness. That’s logic. That’s life.

A person can be treated with dignity, respect, and love—even without fully understanding their past or how it shaped them. We don’t need to understand someone’s entire past to exercise a little emotional humility—a willingness to see behavior not as brokenness, but as adaptation.