Is an Inclination to Worry Genetic, or Can It Have Roots in Childhood Experience?

I worry, certainly more than my husband worries. It's not a constant state. When things are going well I'm peaceful. If there is trouble, I tend to roll with the punches. When I'm stuck in traffic, for example, I don't fret. Even incidents that would bother most people, are generally inconsequential to me.

For instance, there was the time a colleague at work backed into my car--while I was in it! We both got out of our cars. She was very upset and apologetic. To me it was just a dent in a not-very-new car. I reassured her, didn't seek compensation and calmly drove away.

Traffic Near Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Park, USA

_{Public domain, Jim Peaco,US Park Service}

And yet, if one of my children is sick, even with a 'routine' ailment I fret. There are no routine illnesses when it comes to my family. If a family member is traveling, I think of everything that could go wrong. I see danger, when that is a remote possibility.

If a snowstorm is impending and it seems we might lose power, I'm distressed. I charge the phones, ready auxiliary battery devices and take out candles--though I have many high-powered lanterns and a supply of batteries on hand. I do not relax my vigilance until the storm has passed.

I am aware that my reaction to certain stressors is often inordinate. I have wondered why some people, like me, are inclined to worry, to think about what might happen. And then there are others, like my husband, who don't see threats unless they are immediate and concrete.

Physiological Response to Stress

_{Gdudycha on Wikimedia Commons. Used under CC Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license}

I decided to do some reading (don't I always?) and see if I could enlist science to explain why some of us are worriers and some are not. I looked at childhood experiences for an explanation. Where I did not look was in those circumstances that are truly catastrophic. Children who grow up in conflict zones, for example, 400 million of them, or those who live through famines--7,934,357. Or, those who experience extraordinary events such as being the victim of a kidnapping.

The stressors considered in this blog are those that largely go unnoticed, stressors that are folded into the routine of life (although, of course, when experienced they don't feel routine).

Worry

_{Statue by Steven Whyte (?). Picture credit mliu92 from San Mateo. Used under Creative commons 2.0 generic license.}

Most of what I learned about the effect of stressors on children lines up pretty much with what I expected. But there were some mildly surprising findings. For example, heredity seems to play a rather minor role in the development of long-term effects on personality, especially the development of an anxiety-prone personality.

I made a chart to help track factors in childhood that might contribute to a stress-prone personality in adulthood.

Factors Possibly Related to Development of Stress-Prone Personality

_{Credit:@agmoore}

Here is a brief discussion of each listed factor:

Heredity
When addressing the heritability of an anxiety-prone personality, I had to settle for articles that addressed generalized anxiety disorder, which is pervasive and interferes with the ability to carry on daily functions of life. Even in that case, heritability is described as being related to PRS, polygenic risk scores...that is a combination of genes that are believed to present a predisposition to the development of anxiety.

In contrast to the association between PRS (polygeneric risk scores) are the effects of environment, which seem to be strongly correlated to the development of anxiety. One study, for example, found that discrimination presents a greater risk to the development of anxiety and related disorders than does "genetic liability alone".

Parental Transference
Often, what seems to be an inherited (genetically based) personality trait is actually the result of parental transference. There is strong evidence that anxious parents pass on this trait to their children through environmental exposure. The exposure may even extend to stress experienced by the mother during pregnancy. Studies show that in situations where the mother and child are not biologically related (i.e. in vitro fertilization) anxiety in the mother still influences the development of anxiety in the child. There are other discernible personality and physiological effects evident in the offspring of a mother who is stressed during pregnancy.

Brain Regions Affected by Stress

_{Credit: From the article Neuropathology of Stress.Lucassen, P.J., Pruessner, J., Sousa, N. et al. Neuropathology of stress. Acta Neuropathol 127, 109–135 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-013-1223-5. Open Access: Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.}

Interestingly, it is suggested that both the stressed mother and sperm from a distressed father may have an impact on development of the fetus. The stress-associated harm may also be related to quality of care given to an infant postnatally.

One study on parental transference focused on the children of Holocaust survivors, but also extended to groups of people with "less extreme forms" of stress. This study concludes that there is "significant... evidence supporting the hypothesis of parent to offspring stress". However, there is a need for much more research in this area.

Chronic Illness of Sibling
An article out of Turkey that appeared in the Turkish Archives of Pediatrics, describes the global impact that a child's illness has on the family. According to this study, the degree of impact is influenced by the severity of the disease and the family's ability to cope with it. Healthy siblings of a chronically ill child experience "different emotions including withdrawal, aggression, depression, anxiety, guilt, confusion, and isolation."

The greatest number of studies in this area have been done on the families of children treated for cancer and also on those children who suffer from severe development issues.The effects of living with a chronically ill sibling may extend into adulthood.

A Sick Child Sitting on Her Father's Knee Whilst her Mother Prepares Some Soup

_{Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-22): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vtwemcmu CC-BY-4.0}

Acute Illness of Sibling
An acute life-threatening illness in one child has both physiological and psychological effects on parents and siblings. A hospitalization exacerbates the level of stress. Siblings of the acutely ill patient demonstrate a host of effects, including depression and anxiety. Among the consequences on the siblings is a disruption of their relationship with parents.

An article in the Journal of Child Healthcare addresses the impact of childhood life-threatening illness on siblings. It concludes that anxiety and depression are among the psychosocial changes experienced by siblings. The degree of disruption seemed to be related to the sense of control a child felt he/she had on circumstances.

Single Parent
Articles that deal with this issue tend to reflect evolving social conditions. Older articles emphasize the negative impact of single parent homes. More recent articles tease out the emotional impact of having a single parent apart from the consequences of having a divided home, for example: reduced income.

A Young Widow Has Had the Door of Her Cottage Sealed Against Her

_{Estelle de Barescue. Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-23): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/mx4szbkj CC-BY-4.0}

A 2023 article from India stresses the potential negative impact of a single parent home, and then discusses the potentially positive effects. The negative impact would be a sense of loss, depression and anxiety. The positive effects would be a sense of responsibility and sense of community with the remaining parent.

Likewise, an article from Purdue University in the US, parses the effects of single parenthood from its practical consequence: less money, poorer schools, less prestigious neighborhoods, an absent parent who has to work long hours, and a parent who is not able to participate fully in the child's activities because of work commitments. When these consequences are neutralized by either supportive family or other means, the long-term negative impact of single parenthood fades.

There is, however, a short-term effect of parental separation on children. As an article in Very Well Family suggests, within a year or two after separation, though, children bounce back if there is support for the single parent.

Birth Order
The effect of birth order on a child's psychosocial development--particularly on the development of anxiety--is often discussed in terms of Alfred Adler's theories on child development.

Three Siblings From the 1890s

_{Unknown author. Public domain}.

Of the seven stress factors in my chart, this one is the most confounding. There is little agreement about the consistent effect of birth order on the development of anxiety, or any other personality trait. Some studies find that the first born has the highest self esteem. Some find that the last born has the highest self-esteem. The same study reports research that suggests last born have high levels of anxiety. A paper out of Western University suggests first-born have highest levels of anxiety.

These findings, as inconsistent as they be, are confounded further by something called psychological birth order. If children are spaced far enough apart, it seems biological birth order is thrown out the window and something called 'perceived birth order' prevails.

It may be that birth order matters, but its significance varies so much from family to family that I find no value in this metric.

Poverty
It's hardly a surprise that poverty by itself, without other stressors, is a cause of immediate and long-term anxiety. "Higher levels of anxiety and depression are well-established among kids growing up in families with lower income," researchers report in the Harvard Gazette. They add that there are "also well-replicated differences in brain development as a function of a family’s socioeconomic status".

_{Dorothea Lange. Work of a government employee, public domain.}

Another article, from the American Journal of Public Health, found that exposure to poverty resulted in elevated incidence of depression and anxiety. This effect was evident in 14 and 21 year follow ups of individuals in the study. The authors of the article conclude: "The more frequently the child was exposed to poverty, the greater was the risk of that individual being anxious and depressed at both the 14- and 21-year follow-ups."

Of the seven stress factors in my chart, poverty had the strongest correlation with the development of long-term anxiety.

Childhood Bullying
Articles I read reinforce the idea that bullying in childhood has long-term psychological consequences. An article from the Social Psychology of Medicine found that in college students, childhood "bullying victimization significantly predicted greater levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (PTS) after controlling for other childhood victimization experiences".

Demonstration of Bullying, U. S. Air Force

_{Senior Airman Tabatha Zarrella. Public domain}

Another article in Traumatology (there is a journal for everything, isn't there?) found that college students with memories of being bullied attibute to the bullying, "high levels of shame, anxiety, and relational difficulties as adults".

Bullying, along with financial hardship, ends up being one of the strongest elements correlating to the development of long-term anxiety.

Conclusion

This was a sort of tongue-in-cheek exercise in looking for reasons behind my inclination to worry. However, there was a serious side to this exercise. As I read the articles, implications of the findings were unavoidable. So much of what leads to adult anxiety--which is a source of suffering and also loss of productive human energy--can be traced to childhood experiences. And so many of those hard experiences can be mitigated by timely intervention.

In almost every instance, community and family support were shown to soften the effects of life stressors. Poverty, single parenthood, bullying--all could be affected by support. Others, chronic and acute illness of siblings, could also be mitigated by timely intervention. Even the parental transference and birth order--these are not fixed in stone. Addressing stress in expectant mothers (improving living circumstances, for example) would be an investment in the future for all of us. As for birth order--parents who are informed about their role in these relationships might soften a biological given.

This blog ran a little long. Don't know if I lost my readers. It's the sort of blog, though, where readers can skip around and read what interests them.

I wish peace, health and calm to everyone.

Thank you for reading my blog
Hive on!

Selected Sources
End Image credit: @yaziris, Pigeon, LIL Gallery of Images
@muelli, Flower, LIL Gallery of Images

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By the way, I can trace several of the childhood stressors listed in the stress chart to my own childhood. However, I had a great mother, loving extended family, and some remarkable teachers. Maybe I do worry a bit, but because of the support I received , I lead a full and happy life today.