what is your ACES (adverse childhood experiences) score? (sage sessions #3)

The Adverse Childhood Experiences studies were landmark research projects done by initially Kaiser Permanente and these were in the 90s, I believe I said in the 70s in my earlier video two videos ago, so please correct that, that basically they were looking to understand obesity initially, but what they determined was that through the course of studying over 17,000 individuals who by the way were mostly white and mostly economically advantaged, they were not what we might consider to be diverse at all in terms of population and socioeconomic status and diversity though, but so that's important because we know that that might clearly minimize and underestimate the impact of trauma, but they found that adverse childhood experiences fell into major groups of abuse, emotional, physical, and sexual neglect, emotional and physical, and household challenges they called it, things like mental illness, substance abuse, divorce, members who were incarcerated within the family system, and they found that about 64% of the adults in the U.S. reported experiencing at least one ACEs, and we're going to get to the questions in this video, and nearly one in six adults reported experiencing four or more types of ACEs, and that the more ACEs you experienced, the more likely you were, the greater the risk was to have things like mental and physical illness, so what the bottom line is that that what happened to you in childhood didn't just affect your mental health in childhood, it affected your adult mental health and your physical health, and it increased risks for things like chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, mental health, depression, self-wounding, substance abuse, maternal mental health, traumatic brain injury, accidents, pregnancy for teens, reduced achievement academically and at work, basically that every single thing you could imagine in your adult life could be impacted that were struggles by what happened to you in childhood, and it is just a really important and profound study, and so I want to read to you the questions, but remember these highly underestimate and leave out a lot of different kinds of trauma, but just to give you a sort of a taste, I'm going to read the questions, and remember that at the end of the 10 questions, you have a score 0 to 10, and that the higher your score, the more at risk you may be, but I will tell you that you don't, especially because this underestimates trauma, you could have a score of 1 and still have significant impacts from your childhood and trauma. All right, so here we go. These are the questions from the ACEs, which cover 10 types of childhood trauma experienced before the age of 18. These are the main categories. All right, number one, did a parent or other adult in the household often swear at you or very often swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you, or act in a way that made you feel afraid that you might be hurt or harmed? This says physically hurt or harmed, but let's not forget that emotional harm is just as devastating. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you, or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? Number three, did a parent or person at least five years older, which this is a debatable number, it could be closer in age, ever touch you in a way that was referring to an intimate way, attempt or actually have sexual relations with you? Number three, did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special, or your family didn't look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? Number five, did you often or very often feel that you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, or had no one to protect you, or were your parents too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if needed? Number six, were your parents ever separated or divorced? Number seven, was your mother or stepmother often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? Or sometimes, often, or very often, kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? Or ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a weapon in some way? That includes knives or guns. Did anyone who lived with you, were they a problem drinker or alcoholic, or did they use street drugs? Number nine, was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did they attempt to leave this place? I'm gonna use those words. And lastly, did a household member go to prison? Now, like I said, this leaves out so many things around emotional harm, bullying, traumas, medical traumas, you know, complex PTSD type traumas, both big T and little t traumas, witnessing violence in your neighborhood, all kinds of things that could affect your exposure to trauma. So I'll talk more about those in the next video, but that's a good start for you to, you know, if you're not familiar with this, which I know so many of you are, but a good place to begin to understand how childhood can affect your adult life, and important things to talk about, for example, if you want to in therapy, because you might not have a therapist who's assessing for these things, but it might be very impactful to your understanding and unpacking your life. So thank you for being here. Please stay safe and well, and take very good care of yourself. Don't forget to lovingly reparent yourself with good, you know, boundaries and lots of self-compassion, and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.