Season 1 (Episode 18): What is A.C.E.S?

Welcome to Pain, Passion, and Purpose. I am your host, Shakeeta Torres, where I share mental health education, biblical teachings, and tips to help you to heal on purpose so you can walk boldly in your God-given purpose. This podcast is sponsored by Empowered Purpose Academy, a certified online Christian academy where where we provide services such as certification for Christian life coaches, mentorship for master's level aspiring and existing Christian therapists, mentorship for Christians, and continued education courses for the body of Christ. You can visit www.empoweredpurposeacademy.com to learn more and to download your free guide. If you like today's episode, please subscribe and leave us a raving review so that others can tap into the knowledge and wisdom that will be shared on this podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

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Hey you guys, welcome back to my podcast. And so on today's episode, I'm going to educate you guys about adverse childhood experiences. That's what the A, the C, and the E stands for. And the reason why I really want to talk about this topic, um, even the more is because oftentimes I see clients who are men and women of color. I mean, I mind you, it can happen across any race, any culture, any background, any, you know, financial status, any of that, right? But it's very, um, common within the minority communities. Okay, so what is ACEs? So ACEs is those traumatic experiences that happen in childhood when you're being raised by your caregivers. They can affect you as a child, and if not resolved or processed, it can also affect you into your adulthood. Now, as I said before in my previous podcast, trauma is a very, very detailed, complex subject. There is so many different types of trauma, and the trauma I treat the most is childhood trauma whether it's sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. So ACEs is broken down into 3 different domains, and the first study was done in the mid-1990s because they realized that a lot of adults and children were having trauma symptoms, but they didn't have like a set, you know, major trauma that happened to them, and they're trying to figure out how their childhood experiences and upbringing has affected how they are as adults. Now I'm saying this in, in this particular way because I want you to understand it. If I explain it to you in a clinical way, it might just be too much, it might go over your head. So I really just want to break it down into just simple terms so you can understand exactly what ACEs is. And there are 3 different types of domains. So you have abuse, of course, where you have physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. The second domain is neglect, where you're being physically neglected, where you're not being fed properly, um, you know, hygiene, you know, dental, you know, eye care, all those things. Okay, then emotional— I'm having that emotional neglect where your caregiver or loved one might have taken care of you, you know, physically, but emotionally they were not. Necessarily there for you. Okay, then you have the household dysfunction. So you might be raised by someone in your family who had mental illness, whether it's trauma, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, substance abuse, anything like that. You might have been raised in a household where one of your caregivers or family members were incarcerated. All right, you might have been treated violently by a mother or a father or even a sibling. You You might be in a home where there was divorce, or you might be in a home where there was alcohol use and drug use, okay? So these are the— to me, I feel like the household dysfunction is where people don't really, you know, feel like that can be traumatic for you because it can be so normal for your family to experience these things. We're not fully aware of how it affects us. I have counseled men before in the past who have dealt with, um, sexual abuse, but they didn't see it as sexual abuse. Hey, hey, hey!

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Also, ACE can cause you to have health problems even as a child and into adulthood. Children might have headaches, they might have stomachaches, they might have a hard time verbalizing how they feel. They will have symptoms as well. As an adult, you can end up having heart disease, maybe stroke, cancer, COPD, diabetes. Alzheimer's and suicide. These are some of the long-term effects of ACEs. So the ACEs test itself is like 10 questions, and it can definitely be broken down into like literally 10 different podcasts to, to explain each one. But I encourage you to go, um, do your own research, look it up. They have so much information on YouTube about ACEs. And the word of God says that we all perish for lack of knowledge. And this is why, you know, seeking professional help is so important so that you can be educated about these things. And every time I educate clients about this, no matter if they have mild anxiety or mild ACE symptoms, they can definitely relate to this and say, wow, this is why I act the way I act. This is why I might not have healthy boundaries. This is why I might not have healthy coping patterns, you know, or coping mechanisms to help them cope with life stressors, right? Oftentimes, you know, we're told to just get over it or we'll be okay, but really you're not okay, and it's okay to go seek professional help. So once again, take the test, take the test, do your own research. The best way to heal from ACEs is is by educating yourself, one, and then two, going to see a professional, right? Take an assessment with them and then break down to see how ACEs has affected your life and how it has caused you to be possibly in distress. Okay, so that's it for today, for today's episode, and I look forward to sharing more content with you all. And I am going to do some more podcasts about the different types of trauma. Okay. Alrighty. Thank you.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Our prayer is that this podcast episode has blessed you. Don't forget to go and subscribe and leave us a raving review. If you would like to sow into this ministry or to this podcast, Pain, Passion, and Purpose, you can do so at Anchor.fm/painpassionandpurpose. Pain, passion, and purpose, or Cash App, dollar sign, Shakeeta Torres. Thank you so much, and I will talk to you next time.