Not too long ago I had an assignment in school where I had to go take the ACE score assessment for myself.
Before this class I had NEVER heard the ACE score but quickly became fascinated with it.
Ok so what is an ACE Score?
It stands for
A- Adverse
C- Childhood
E- Experiences
It was developed after a study of 17,000 people who were questioned about their childhood trauma and health history. The study found a huge connection between childhood traumatic experiences and the chances of having chronic illness and social and emotional problems in later life.
The thing about childhood trauma is that the more traumatic experiences you have in your childhood the more it impacts your adult life in different physical, emotional, and social ways.
“The higher your ACE score the higher your chance of suffering from a range of psychological and medical problems like chronic depression, cancer, or coronary heart disease.” -Aces Too High
“Think of it as a cholesterol score for childhood toxic stress. You get one point for each type of trauma. The higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of health and social problems.” -Aces Too High
Why do you need to know your ACE score?
Learning your ACE score can help you in a multitude of ways. First off, it can help you connect the dots of your own childhood trauma which is beneficial to your healing. Second, by you knowing the after effects of childhood trauma it can help you break the cycle for your own kids. Third, learning your ACE score brings light to how traumatic experiences can harm many aspects of ones life for years, if not their whole life. Too many times trauma is pushed deeper and deeper inside us where it is given free rain to wreak havoc on your body. When we acknowledge our ACE score, bring our trauma to light, and begin to heal we reduce the fear, stress, and control our trauma has over our life.
The ACE Assessment
The assessment is only 10 questions and based off how you answer the questions depends on your score. Your score is then correlated to how the number of adverse childhood experiences you have or don’t have effects your adult life physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially.
The assessment cover 10 different types of trauma. From what I can gather these traumas are the most common but isn’t an exhaustive list. So, my recommendation is if you find your experience doesn’t match the question exactly, but it was still trauma for you, count it.
For example. Question #7 asks if you ever saw your mother or stepmother physically abused but doesn’t ask if you ever saw your father physically abused. Yes, it’s not as common, but it’s just as much traumatic to see your father physically abused as it would be to see your mother.
There are some traumatic things you could have experienced in your childhood that aren’t covered in any of the questions, so keep that in mind when you finish the assessment. Just because you didn’t get credit in the assessment for those traumatic experiences doesn’t mean they don’t impact your adult life.
You can find the ACE Assessment questions here.
To learn more about ACE’s check out the two website below.
Let’s chat in the comments…
What’s your ACE score?
How has finding out your ACE score helped you?
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