Episode 19: The Seastar of Public Health Awareness for ACEs; Alison Cebulla

Public Health Facilitator [ACEs]

Alison Cebulla is a woman on a mission. A mission for public health by way of scientific research devoted to trauma and sharing it with communities to empower their people. Alison works with and for The ACEs Connection. Alison coaches and encourages the community to understand that childhood truamas affect our adulthood in very real ways. ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and covers a range of experiences that you can have from Neglect, Abuse, and Household Dysfunction that can result in behavioral, physical and mental health issues. Some of these manifestations look like obestity, smoking, alcoholism, drug use, suicide attempts, STDs, heart disease, cancer stroke, and the list goes on. (Mel Rose suggests that perfectionism also be added to this dysfunctional list as well!). 

Mel & Alison discuss ACEs and how they have affected them personally and how the actual acknowledging of these experiences has been beneficial for their compassion and their own healing process. They discuss a few concepts in addition including the 4 horsemen (Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, & Stonewalling) Which did not include Gaslighting but probably should. All of these things are important behaviors to understand when you have high ACEs scores or live/connect with someone who does. Another concept was The Marble Jar by Brene Brown

Alison offers coaching on her site here. Her advise for finding a therapist on www.pyschologytoday.com.

Alison made some great book recommendations. Try Overdrive to read for free. All you need is a library card! Write down and download all the book recommendations in this podcast for continued listening and exploration of this topic. Also head over to melrosemoney for the financial blog on this topic as well.