Career Tip 008: Know Your ACEs Score & Gain Control.
Nothing in this post is a recommendation.
“You are not a victim of your past, but the sooner you acknowledge it, the sooner you can be in control of your future.”
Have you heard about ACEs? If not, you need to know about them. ACEs are important. This is an acronym that stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. The science is in. We now know that highly adverse childhoods result with a slew of physical manifestations in adult life. It is time to acknowledge just how badly are our childhood experiences affecting us. They affect every part of our adult life, most certainly our willpower and our ability to have stable relationships and quality careers.
There are 10 categories of Adverse Childhood Experiences. These are not the only categories but they are the most prevalent. We also need to remember that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for will power, is developing until we are 25 years old. So Adverse Childhood Experiences might actually extend past we are 18 and likely do. We have made up the number 18 to rid ourselves as responsible parties for our children, but the truth is, we are damaging children by letting them think they are all grown up at 18 when it could not be further from the truth - 6 years too soon. Abused people tend to perpetuate abuse into our middle life. This is because if we leave home at 16,17,18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, without knowing that what happened to us is not right and knowing what homeostasis feels like, we then often perpetuate the abuse we had at home or in our immediate environments. We are drawn toward that which feel familiar, not good. Good actually feels awkward and we reject it in all forms. All of this happens while our brains are still forming. It’s a recipe for disaster both personally and professionally.
The three categories of these 10 types of experiences are Abuse, Neglect, and Household Dysfunction. Categories of Abuse include Physical, Emotional, and Sexual. Categories of Neglect includes Physical and Emotional. Category of Household Dysfunction includes Mental Illness, Incarcerated Relative, Mother treated Violently, Substance Abuse, and Divorce. I’m not sure why a father being abused isn’t included, as that surely can be something that affects us negatively as well and should be included. I have found out that these are only the most common perpetuations of the psyche and not the only ones. But there are many more, so if you have on that is not included, you should add it to your score. These experiences don’t necessarily have to happen in your own home either, they could happen in your peer groups, places of worship, at school, at camp, in foster care, at non-immediate family homes, in college, etc.
I think the repetitiveness of it being in a household might make the physical expression in adulthood “worse”, but even one traumatic experience can have lasting effects on how we treat ourselves moving forward. These experiences become trapped energy stored inside of us, and since we don’t know what to do with that energy, it comes out in physical manifestations and behavior. Some people call this our shadow. There is gold in all of our shadow, but first we must realize and acknowledge what happened to us so we can work past it.
ACEs do not only apply to lower income homes. For example, often in higher income homes, neglect is rewarded and seen often as a badge of honor, and substance abuse is normalized and seen as “part of the job/community/etc.” ACEs happen everywhere, in every part of our society, which is why it is imperative this information circulates quickly so we can affect some change, not only in our careers and productivity, but in our overall wellness.
The following chart is how these kinds of behaviors can express themselves in us as adults.
I think the worst data I found out about ACEs was that people with a 6 or higher ACE score, live on average 20 years less than people with a 2 or less. The reality is very few people have zero- next to none. But it’s still a huge advantage that any part of the population lives longer than others based on circumstances that were crucial and yet out of their control. *2. A person with 4 ACEs is 5 time as likely to suffer from depression, 2.42 times as likely to have a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 2.93 times as likely to smoke and 3.23 times as likely to binge drink, 12.2 times as likely to attempt suicide, 10.3 times as likely to use injection drugs, 7.4 times as likely to be an actual alcoholic, 2.4 times as likely to have a stroke, 1.9 times as likely to have cancer and 1.6 times as likely to have diabetes. *2-2. BUT, the most important information is that this is not a death sentence. THIS IS A WAKE UP CALL.
This information should be considered a public health crisis. It is exactly that. With these numbers, we should be shouting this out from our rooftops and demanding change to nuclear family and reform to our protective child services. I know the day I realized how high my ACE score was, was the day I started to change my life around. I hope this information will help you.
ACEs matters, A LOT, because the things that happened to you as a child, all of which you had little or no control over, will actually shorten your life and increase all sorts of behavioral and physical conditions that will impair your existence in this life if you do not pay attention and make conscious changes to extend your life expectancy and personal health.
How insane is this?! It makes a lot of sense to me though. For me, my ACEs score needed to be addressed. It took me until 30 to face reality around my childhood. I needed to process, write it all out, forget about it, come back to it, process it some more, transmute it, and transform it into extreme self care, knowledge and compassion to help others. Once I accepted it, it stopped having control of me. It took a lot of work for me to get to where I am at now, but today I can see myself as an old woman. Something I am sad to say that I struggled with in my adolescence, 20s and early 30s. It is easy to understand now why that was so difficult for me.
In the next blog, we will talk about how you can address, correct, transmute, and transform your ACEs score into wellness, life purpose, and/or liberation from shackles that it is time you take off.
Do not be a victim of your childhood or past. It doesn’t and shouldn’t own you. Only you can own you. But we need to get back to who you really are, and the innocence you deserved to have and keep in life.
Resources
https://www.acesconnection.com
https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/prefrontal-cortex/
