If you have had a crap childhood this material can feel confronting (At least it was for me the first time I read it).
This post covers a lot of different types of early traumatic experiences. It also includes some of the potential health impacts of early childhood trauma. Taken in all at once can be too much for your nervous system and you may end up feeling overwhelmed.
Check in with yourself how you are feeling and go gently, lovely human. You don’t need to know everything all at once. Little by little. Give yourself the time and space you need to heal. If you feel okay to read on, please know that there are always things you can do to support yourself to recover from childhood trauma.
Be sure to reach out for help from a mental health support line or a loving friend or family member if you feel bad. Remember, you do not have to deal with your pain all alone. xxx
What are adverse childhood experiences?
The concept of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) came from a 1998 study by Felitti et. al called Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.
One of the reasons the ACE study is so important is that it was the first study to establish a statistical correlation between common childhood experiences and lifetime health outcomes. It showed irrefutably that the toxic (extended or prolonged) stress of ACEs can negatively affect brain development, immunity and stress-response systems.
List of Adverse Childhood Experiences
According to the ACEs study, ACEs fall into ten broad categories of events or circumstances, with a particular focus on trauma those that was interpersonal, intentional or chronic.
1. Physical abuse
If a caregiver pushed, slapped, punched, kicked or physically hurt you in any way.
2. Sexual abuse
If anybody within or outside of your home ever touched you sexually or non-consensually in a way that made you feel uncomfortable.
3. Psychological abuse
When someone in your life regularly yelled at you, belittled you or made you feel worthless. This includes name calling, making unkind comments or insinuations, rejecting, isolating, deliberately ignoring, being overly involved or controlling or using threats, intimidation or hostile and threatening actions like smashing objects, slamming doors etc.
4. Physical neglect
When you felt like you had no one to protect or take care of you or if you didn’t have enough to eat or had to wear dirty clothes. Physical neglect also includes having caregivers who were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctors if you needed.
5. Psychological neglect
If you grew up not feeling important or special to anybody and you didn’t feel like anyone in your family loved you or cared what happened to you. Psychological neglect also includes growing up in a family where no one seemed close to each other or supported or looked out for each other.
6. Witnessing domestic abuse
If you ever saw adults in your home threaten each other with violence, act violently toward each other or behave in coercively controlling ways.
7. Having a caregiver or close family member who misused drugs or alcohol
If you grew up around someone who struggled with alcohol or drugs or misused prescription medication in a way that impacted their capacity to take care of you.
8. Having a caregiver or close family member with a mental illness
If you grew up with someone who had a mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorder or addictive behaviours that impacted their capacity to parent.
9. Having a caregiver or close family member who served time in prison
If your caregiver/ close family was arrested or went to prison.
10. Losing a parent/ divorce
If you ever lost a parent due to death, abandonment, divorce or emotional disappearance
This list is not absolute
This list isn’t meant to indicate that these are the only traumas that “count”. Homelessness, being removed from your parents, growing up in poverty, the death of significant people in your life, being forced to flee a country, racism, ableism, community violence, bullying; there are so many things that don’t appear on this list. That doesn’t mean those traumas aren’t significant and their impacts long-lasting.
How common are ACES?
- Around 60% to 70% of adults had at least one ACE
- Approximately 1 in 6 people have experienced four or more types of ACEs
- Females and certain racial/ethnic minority groups are at greater risk for experiencing four or more ACEs
- Children who experience ACEs are more likely to have parents who experienced ACEs.
In general, the more ACEs a child is exposed to, the greater the likelihood of detrimental health and life impacts as result of their early experiences.
Social impacts of ACEs
ACEs can interfere with a child’s capacity to pay attention, make decisions and learn, which can have a negative impact on educational and employment outcomes long-term. Social outcomes are also affected, with increased probability of risky behaviours and social problems like using drugs, teenage pregnancy, violent behaviour and incarceration.
Mental health impacts of ACEs
Exposure to ACEs also increases risk of developing depression, complex PTSD, and other mood and anxiety disorders as well as psychotic and personality disorders. There is also a greater risk for alcohol and substance use disorders and attempted suicide.
Physical health impacts of ACEs
The greater the number of ACEs a child is exposed to, the higher their risk of developing chronic illnesses and cardiovascular conditions in adulthood, such as stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer and auto-immune diseases. On average, the life expectancy for someone with an ACE score of four or more is 20 years shorter than someone who scored zero.
Please know these outcomes are not your destiny
I know. This is a lot to take in, and this information can feel frightening. But these negative impacts are absolutely not a fait accompli. Toxic stress and nervous system overwhelm are massive contributing factors to all of these conditions and there are lots of things you can do to make real, measurable and positive changes to help these.
Are you okay?
I wanted to check in with you for a minute to see how you are doing. Reading about ACEs can be overwhelming. Firstly, because you probably briefly re-visited some of the crappiest possible experiences you had growing up as you read along with the list. Sorry about that.
Secondly, because finding out about the potential health impacts can feel pretty bleak.
Thirdly, at least for me, because it seems really mean and unfair that after having lived through all this awful crap, you then have someone dump the news that your past isn’t done with you yet and you have all these bullshit disorders and addictions and diseases to look forward to.
And fourthly, if you are like me and have experienced four or more ACEs (I had eight), you have to confront the idea that you are possibly going to live twenty years less than other people, for no other reason than you had a below par childhood. Boo to ACEs!
Return to the present moment
If you are feeling overwhelmed after reading about any of this, firstly I recommend immediately doing some simple grounding practices. Firstly, come back to your senses. What can you see, hear, smell, taste, touch? Feel your edges. Feel your feet in your shoes and your bottom on the chair. Give yourself a gentle hug to help you experience the sensations taking place inside your body.
Seriously, they might seem simple, but these practices have got me through some really intense moments. They help you stay in the present moment instead of getting carried away by worry about what might happen.
You can’t change the past. You can’t know the future. The only time moment you have any power over is the one you are living right now.
Some other things to try
Walk barefoot on the grass.
Call a friend.
Hug your dog or a pillow.
Do some exercise to channel your stress.
Lie under a weighted blanket.
Do a progressive muscle relaxation exercise.
Take a gentle walk in nature.
Imagine the child you were and speak gently to them, reminding them they are now safe.
Don’t forget there are always free crisis counselling phonelines.
Not all therapies are created equal when it comes to recovering from childhood trauma
Many people who experienced significant childhood trauma develop complex PTSD, a condition that is often resistant to traditional talk therapy methods like cognitive behavioural therapy. C-PTSD is complicated to treat because the condition was established while the brain was still developing. It encompasses issues related to identity, relationships and attachment. The symptoms of c-PTSD are often most deeply felt in the body, not just the mind.
The goal of therapy after childhood trauma is to help you process and release stored trauma and reconnect you with a sense of safety, agency and body ownership. It can help you re-claim lost parts of self that have been fragmented by trauma, restoring your capacity to access a calm, centred “self”, rather than letting trauma-driven parts of self run the show.
Why supporting your nervous system helps childhood trauma
Many impacts of early childhood trauma are related to the nervous system adaptations that can develop as a response to growing up in a chronically stressful, chaotic or unpredictable environment. As you never feel safe, your nervous system lives in almost permanent survival mode, always at the ready for the next crisis to occur. But just because you have lived in survival mode for much of your life, doesn’t mean you can’t change that pattern.
What happens to your body in survival mode?
When your nervous system is in survival mode, your digestive processes, growth and repair systems are neglected as your energy is re-directed to constant threat detection. Ready to face danger at any moment, your heart beats faster, your lungs breathe in shallow pants and your body is charged with the energy it needs to escape.
Your body is persistently flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which weakens the immune system, causes chronic inflammation, disrupts blood sugar, elevates blood pressure and heart rate and impacts brain structures involved with memory and mood.
Over time, this takes a toll, making you more likely to develop cardiovascular and lung disease, cancer, metabolic disorders and auto-immune conditions, all conditions that are more prevalent in people who have experienced four or more ACEs.
Moving out of survival mode
If you want how to recognise the four nervous system survival states in real-time and use simple, evidence-based tools to return to calm after activation, shift out of entrenched survival mode patterns, release survival energy and allow cycles of nervous system activation to complete, use anchoring resources to re-build feelings of safety in your body, you might be interested in my book Beyond Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn.
Other therapies that help with recovery from childhood trauma
Studies have shown that the following therapies can be helpful for c-PTSD and recover from childhood trauma.
- EMDR
- Meditation
- Mindfulness practices
- Internal Family Systems
- Art therapy
- Emotion-focused therapy
- Yoga
- Breathwork
Always remember, life is long. Feelings pass. You are not alone. Please reach out for help if you need it.
