What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?
Not quite. Far more often, the opposite is true. Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of Childhood Disrupted

Two-thirds of American adults are carrying wounds from childhood quietly into adulthood, with little or no idea of the extent to which these wounds affect their daily health and wellbeing. Something that happened to you when you were five or 15 can land you in the hospital 30 years later, whether that something was headline news, or happened quietly, without anyone else knowing it, in the living room of your childhood home. Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Science journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa‘s new Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal explains the roots of adulthood issues.

In brief, research regarding ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) has been conducted since the 90’s by the CDC. But, as Jane Ellen Stevens (ACEsTooHigh) points out, this is not only “the first self-help book about ACEs, it’s the first book that explains what’s been called the unified science of human development in clear language for people who aren’t scientists or medical professionals.”

How Childhood Disrupted Can Help

As told to Stevens by the author:

• You can find out your own ACE scores and if it feels safe, provide this info to your doctors, mental health providers, and families.
• Learn that the effects of trauma aren’t easily separated into mental vs. physical health issues.
• Adopt ways to improve your self-care, “including meditation, exercise, enough sleep, good nutrition, living in a safe environment, and having safe relationships.”
• Find out how to “heal the brain and body on a biophysical level – approaches which include MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction), EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnotherapy, writing to heal, neurofeedback, and many others.”
• Know about women’s unique differences. “Women who suffered ACEs face twice the likelihood of developing autoimmune disease and depression in adulthood than do men. Often these are the very diseases that physicians find so hard to diagnose and treat, and this science may help to counter the medical community’s tendency to underserve women who suffer from difficult to define health problems such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic back pain, and autoimmune disorders.”

Your Own ACE Score

Once you’ve taken the brief ACE test, what does it mean? An excerpted explanation from 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. (Of course, other types of trauma exist that could contribute to an ACE score, so it is conceivable that people could have ACE scores higher than 10; however, the ACE Study measured only 10 types.)

As your ACE score increases, so does the risk of disease, social and emotional problems. With an ACE score of 4 or more, things start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent.

Shannon Brownlee, MS: “Every few years a book comes along that changes the way we view ourselves, our society, and our place in the world. This is such a book. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, Childhood Disrupted contains surprising insights into the power of childhood experience on every page.”