Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Impact and Healing
You may have heard the phrase: “Kids are like sponges.” It means that children are very affected by the relationships and environment they experience. This can be a blessing for children in loving and safe families, but children who experience dangerous or absent parents are negatively affected.
In reality, families are not strictly either loving and safe or not. Rather than a binary reality, families can be placed on a spectrum with loving and present on one side and dangerous and absent on the other. As such, most children are affected both positively and negatively by their experience of growing up in their family of origin.
However, some experiences are strongly associated with negative outcomes in the study of family-of-origin effects. They are called adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. But what are ACEs, and what are their effects?
What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
The ten total ACEs can be organized into three categories: abuse, neglect, and household challenges, with multiple ACEs falling into each category:
Abuse: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.
Neglect: Physical neglect and emotional neglect.
Household Challenges: Mental illness in the home, intimate partner violence in the home, parents or guardians being divorced or separated, having an incarcerated relative, and substance abuse or misuse in the home.
Who Is Most At Risk for ACEs?
While any child could experience one or more ACEs, some children are more at risk of experiencing them. In terms of ethnicity, Black children experience the highest rates of ACEs, followed by Indigenous children and then Hispanic children. There is also a strong correlation between household income and the likelihood of ACE exposure, with lower household incomes serving as a risk factor for ACEs and higher household incomes serving as a protective factor. Lastly, it is worth noting that children who have special needs are also at greater risk of experiencing ACEs.
The Long-Term Impact of ACEs on Health and Well-Being
Experiencing ACEs is strongly linked to a variety of adverse outcomes. ACEs are associated with an increased likelihood of insecure attachment styles, increased participation in unhealthy behaviors, and fewer educational and employment opportunities. In the short-term, ACEs detrimentally affect a child’s physical, cognitive, and emotional development. In the long term, ACEs contribute to an increased likelihood of mental illness, chronic physical illness, and early death.
While the consequences of ACEs are very serious, the number of ACEs a person experiences affects the likelihood and severity of these effects. Specifically, the more ACEs a person experiences, the greater the likelihood they will experience these detrimental effects.
Healing from ACEs: Steps Toward Recovery and Hope
While being aware of ACEs and their effects is important, it can also be overwhelming, especially if you have suffered from one or more ACEs. If you feel overwhelmed by your experience of ACEs, please remember that those experiences do not define you. Yes, they are part of your story, and do affect you as a result. However, having experienced ACEs does not disqualify you from achieving flourishing.
What, then, should you do to respond to ACEs? If you yourself have experienced one or more ACEs, I encourage you to study yourself through this lens. What effects of ACEs do you see showing up in yourself, in your life, or in your relationships? Doing this takes courage and can be difficult, but discovering how you have been affected by your ACEs is a helpful first step in identifying where you may need healing. Be sure to offer yourself self-compassion and empathy in this process, while also being mindful of your own resilience.
As you go about the process of examining how ACEs you have experienced may be affecting you, know that it is not a process you must go through alone. At Hope Healing, the counselors are trained in Trauma Therapy and work with you to build a relationship focused on your healing and flourishing. If you feel this relationship may be helpful on your journey to unpack ACEs in your story, please contact a counselor at Hope Healing today!