What are ACEs?

ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences.  The ACE study was a collaboration between Dr. Robert Anda of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Vincent Felitti of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, CA in the late 1990’s.  Using a questionnaire of ten questions addressing adverse childhood experiences, the study compared those responses to the medical records of 17,421 patients.  They found as the number of ACEs went up, the risk for physical, mental, and behavioral problems also increased.

What are the ten ACEs?

Abuse—emotional, physical, and sexual, Neglect—emotional and physical, Household Dysfunction—substance abuse, parental separation or divorce, mental illness, battered mothers, and criminal behavior.  Additional questions that were not included in the original research but can also be categorized as adverse childhood experiences include bullying, racism and other forms of hate abuse, physical accident or illness, traumatic birth, witnessing violence, death of a caregiver or family member, homelessness, and adverse financial situations.

What happens when a person has experienced one or more ACEs?  Results from the study found that ACEs are common across all socio-economic and culture/ethnicity lines, and that 67% of all adults had experienced at least one ACE, and 80% of those had experienced more than one.  As ACE scores go up, one is more likely to experience health and social problems like substance abuse, heart and lung disease, depression, violence, liver disease, mental health problems, obesity, workplace problems, etc.  ACEs and other traumas are defined as toxic stress, when we have an extreme, frequent, or extended activation of our body’s stress response.  When our normal, adaptive stress response is hijacked by toxic stress, we live in sympathetic nervous system arousal---fight, flight, or freeze.  It does not give our body adequate time in the parasympathetic response of rest and repair.  Therefore, the normal functions of our bodies to respond to stress become the very reason we experience physical and mental dysfunctions with toxic stress, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure becoming hypertension and increased energy mobilization becoming type II diabetes.  In our attempt to calm down our fight, flight, or freeze, we often turn to alcohol, food, or other substances that can temporarily give us relief but in the long run perpetuate our physical, mental, emotional, and social dysfunctions.


What can we do about it?  Just because a person has experienced adverse childhood experiences does not mean they will suffer from the above consequences.  There are three protective systems that help people withstand, adapt, and remain resilient in the face of adversity: an individual’s capabilities including personality, sensitivity, and skills; attachment and belonging to people who care and can help; and community, faith and cultural places and processes.  Each of us has the capacity to develop and implement self-care practices that move us into parasympathetic rest and repair, such as yoga, deep breathing, walks in Nature, etc.  We as a faith community can help one another on our journeys of dealing with and healing our adverse childhood experiences by loving and supporting one another in our quest to heal unresolved trauma, by telling and hearing our stories, and by being an example of safety, education, and acceptance to the community.

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