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ACE Score and Resilience Score

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If you haven't tested your ACE score yet, you should do so.  If you don't know what an ACE score is, then keep on reading and take the test below.  

ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and every single human gets a score between 0 and 10 (though, I think there should be a few more).  And the more help you got with your adverse childhood experiences, the better off you become later in life.  And the least help you got, means you are at higher risk for mental health issues, physical health issues, and emotional health issues.  

Here is the test.  Before the age of 18, did any of these happen?

  1. Emotional or verbal abuse?
  2. Physical abuse?
  3. Sexual abuse?
  4. Emotionally neglected? 
  5. Physically neglected?
  6. Parents separated or divorced?
  7. Saw your mother or stepmother get physically abused (though I find this sexist, it would apply to fathers, too...and I would argue that verbal or emotional abuse should count, too)? 
  8. Someone in the house was an addict (alcohol or drugs)?
  9. Someone in the house suffered from mental illness in some form or another?
  10. Someone in the house went to prison? 
For every yes, you get a point.  But I do feel this list is greatly lacking.  What about things like: 

  • having a sibling or parent pass away
  • lived in constant fear of getting beaten
  • witnessing or being involved in a bad accident
  • raped (as a teenager...which isn't sexual abuse, it's assault)
  • been or was attempted to be kidnapped
  • witnessed a violent crime
  • abandoned by a parent or by sole caregiver
  • put in foster care
  • lived in a rough neighborhood
  • had someone break into your home while you were gone
  • had someone break into your home while you were there
  • been stalked
  • been severely bullied at school or in your town or severely cyberbullied online
  • had your house burn down
  • insert another ACE here (and feel free to add your suggestions in the comments)
I have an ACE score of 8.  I have never had someone in my house go to prison, nor were my parents divorced.  But boy, how I wished both of those things would have happened back then.  But if you count the extra ones I added. my ACE score is 13.  I lived in constant fear my father would beat me.  I once saw a man's face get ripped off after a car hit his motorcycle.  As a teen I had been raped several times.  I was abandoned at 6 months old, and put into two foster homes by the time I was two.  And I was severely bullied in school (and at home, but that's already covered).  

And none of those things were ever comforted out of me.  See, that's the thing, getting help for your ACES while you are still young, is the only way to prevent their after-effects later in life.  

Before the age of 18, how many of these were true, with the answers being definitely, probably, not sure, probably not, and definitely not.  

  1. You believe your mother loved you as a child. 
  2. You believe your father loved you as a child. 
  3. You believe some of your caregivers loved you and cared for you well. 
  4. As an infant, someone loved you and you were told that you loved them back. 
  5. As a child, relatives made you feel better when you were worried or sad. 
  6. As a kid, neighbors or your friend's parents liked you. 
  7. You had other people to help you, like coaches or ministers, or other leaders. 
  8. Someone in your family cared about how you did at school. 
  9. Your family, or other people around you, talked about making your lives better. 
  10. You had rules in your house and were expected to keep them. 
  11. You always had someone you could talk to when you felt bad. 
  12. You were treated as a capable person.  
  13. You were independent as a child and a "go-getter".  
  14. You believed that life was what you made it to be. 

For me the answers are:

1. definitely not
2. definitely not
3. not sure
4. probably (I had a teenaged aunt who used to take care of me and when I was abandoned, she tried to commit suicide)
5. hell no (definitely not)
6. nope (probably not...I was annoying and they told me so)
7. nah (I didn't have those types of people in my life)
8. hahaha definitely not (once, in 5th grade, I got straight A's and 1 B, and they could have cared less, so I quit caring, too)
9. haha no, they were completely fine with the way things were (definitely not)
10. no, we had rules, and I was allowed to break them, but the ones that were enforced were arbitrary and didn't make sense, so probably not
11. I had my dog.  My stuffed animals.  And my version of a god.  But no, I had ZERO people to talk to. 
12. I was treated as an invalid. 
13. I was independent, but was punished for it. 
14. I believed that life was handed to you as shit, and shit it would stay until life made it different. 

So, I had ZERO resilience, which made me more susceptible to physical and mental illness.  Like, a bajillion times more.  Because kids who have a high score?  Have better outcomes in life, without the mental or physical health issues the rest of us have.  And all it takes is one person helping us through our issues, but most of us didn't even have that. 


According to stopabusecampaign.org, a score of 2 means you're 4x more likely to be an alcoholic.  3 means more likely to suffer from chronic depression.   High ACE scores are associated with diabetes, heart disease, chronic fatigue, auto-immune disorders, chronic pain, and like me, POTS.  And so much more.  

When Bessel van der Kolk's book "The Body Keeps Score" came out, I skimmed through it and though the idea of "trauma trapped in your body" was bullshit.  So, I never gave it another thought.  But then Dr. Nadine Harris' book "The Deepest Well" came out (though, that book is totally mis-titled, as it says "healing the long-term effects of childhood adversity", it is NOT about that at all, it's about fixing childhood adversity back in childhood not adulthood), I decided to check it out (literally, from the library).  And I what I found amazed me.  She states that living in a state of chronic adversity (like how you get CPTSD), dealing with all those stress hormones for years on end actually does damage to your DNA.  Which is how you end up with a slew of bullshit diseases and disorders as an adult.    

Finally, a scientific idea that made sense, rather than some abstract explanation of "trauma getting trapped in your body".  Even though, that is a part of it, too.  Because rather than giving your stress a place to be released after trauma, it just gets carried with us (which is what stress hormones do).  So, they build up, fuck with your DNA, make us sick.  So that's why talk therapy is a good idea, but so is movement and massage and doing physical work that helps your brain connect to that part of your body again.  Yoga, meditation, dancing, somatic experiencing, and inner-child work (especially with IFS) are all different modalities of healing and releasing trapped trauma.  Here is another link I found on this idea, but go out there and find what you can about it, because if it can't hurt you, then why not?  

But in her book she describes this process as so: telomeres are these little pieces of special DNA that sit at the end of our chromosomes (which are long strands of DNA) that protect them from getting frayed or damaged.  As we age, they shorten, which is why get more illnesses as we age.  But if we have C-PTSD, on top of aging, we've been bombarded with stress hormones for so long that they also shorten our telomeres even more.  And once those are gone, the actual DNA gets damaged, and we get disorders and diseases and whatever else.  I know I've talked about this before, but most likely, if you're reading this, you didn't read the past post about this, so I'll just post about it again.  Because this information is important in our lives.  

Though, I will say, after reading her book, I walked away with the sense of "Well, now that I am older, there is nothing I can do about this process."  Because, despite the title of her book, she really does not go into how to heal anything at all.  It's just information.  Important information, but information only, nonetheless.  So, I did some digging.  

Turns out, there are some things that you can do.  In Dr. Harris' book, she does state these things, but only in a single paragraph and she never goes into detail about any of them (nor will she answer my questions on her Facebook page about them, which just annoys me, because what is the freaking point of having social media, if you aren't going to be social or have a social media manager??--just get a website and leave it at that).  So, I decided to do all the research I could to figure out how to stop my bullshit from progressing any further.  And, to feel good while doing it.  So I've come up with this 5 step plan as my "treatment" for the physical effects of my childhood C-PTSD: 

  1. Eat right.  I used to eat a mostly carb-based diet.  And those carbs were simple carbs, at that.  So I've been switching over to a mostly whole-foods diet (or as they call it, "clean-eating").  I still eat carbs, but mainly whole grain.  Also, to preserve my cells from damage, I am going to make sure I am getting enough vitamins C and E, omega-3's, fiber, and folate.  I use the app "Cronometer" to make sure of how much I am getting of what.  
  2. EXERCISE.  I have POTS, which makes it hard to exercise, but I've found that the more I exercise, the better I feel, so as long as I take precautions (against overheating, or dizziness, etc.), I can still do things.  Exercise is not ideal for weight loss (which I am also trying to do with my diet change), as you'll never lose weight with exercise alone.  But the health benefits of any sort of exercise is nothing short of spectacular.  I will say that for me, exercise may not help my telomere length, as I cannot exercise as regularly as it would take to make a difference, but that doesn't matter.  Exercise will help with C-PTSD issues, such as depression and anxiety.  So my regimen is this: recumbent bike while watching TV or playing video games, going for walks, working in my garden, working on our homestead, dancing to my "Body Groove" DVD's and Chakradancing, and other forms of dance,  
  3. Getting enough sleep.  I am the type to get really anxious when going to sleep, especially if I stay up too late or push myself too far past when my body wants to sleep.  And that can spell some nasty side effects when I lay down, which makes me unable to sleep at all.  So I always try to make a nice sleep environment, and tell my hubby to shut it off (meaning his mouth LOL) when it's time for me to lay down.  So that way, I can just naturally fall asleep, and stay asleep for as long as I can.  Unlike him, I have an internal clock that wakes up at the same time every single day, so if I miss out on any sleep, I don't get it back.  So I put on my sleep sounds (like rainstorms on Youtube), put on the fan, and just relax until I drift off.  
  4. Meditation and relaxation.  Staying in a calm state helps keep those stress hormones off your DNA and keeps you healthier.  Sure, small amounts can ramp up your immune system and help stave off contagions, but continuous stress is horrible for us.  So find a safe space in your life, as I do out in my hammock chair near my garden, and find your bliss.  Grab some guided meditations from YouTube or books and get to relaxing.  I practice mindfulness quite regularly.  If you are like I used to be and have no idea how mindfulness works, then watch the movie "Walk With Me" by Thich Nhat Hanh.  It's mindfulness in action.  Also, this is about not pushing yourself to work too hard when you know you shouldn't.  Taking regular breaks and allowing things to just be the way they are without you trying to force them to be different.  Stressing yourself out over messes or chores or your job is not worth what it does to your body.  So relax.  Get massages.  Meditate.  Allow.  And find your groove in life.  
  5. Practice radical self-care.  Treat your mental and physical health as top priorities in your life.  I know having C-PTSD we may have been neglected in these aspects in our lives so we learned to neglect them ourselves, but they are so very important.  So start making them for them.  Get GOOD therapy (most therapists suck, keep trying until you find a good one).  Learn about IFS.  Journal.  Make regular doctor and dentist appointments.  Take your meds regularly.  Know that your body is the only one you get so treat it like a temple.  You deserve better than what you got, so become that nurturing adult to yourself who you deserved as a child.  When everything is telling you "No, it's no big deal", then remind yourself that if this was someone else, would you tell them to do better?  Yes?  Then do better for YOU.  You deserve it.  

Stopping further damage to your body starts today.  Make the choice to move forward with me into a life that prioritizes us above neglecting us.  We are not our parents.  And we do not have to further damage our bodies and minds just because they did.  

I have POTS, acid reflux, and fibromyalgia, on top of anxiety and depression.  And I don't any worse than those.  So I am choosing to do better for myself.  And it's never too late to start, no matter how old you are or how long you've been neglecting yourself in whatever way.  Having a high ACE score should not define us.  And learning to do better than what was done to us makes a huge difference in how the rest of our lives will play out.  

Life is like a choose your own adventure novel.  And I am learning to make better choices in mine.  You can, too.  


Let me know below how you are choosing better and what you do to heal the damage done to you.  
  




About Post Author

Living life with with a narcissistic parent is one of the hardest things a child can do. Because narcissism doesn't stop with mom and dad, it usually bleeds through the entire extended family dymanic. And the abuse travels with us into adulthood, usually either until the narcissist dies or we go no contact. And usually, our abuse is never talked about, for fear of retaliation or judgment. So I am breaking my silence and showing the world what my mother's abuse looks like so maybe others will feel strong enough to do the same.

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Welcome to Girl Lost.


I am a daughter of a narcissistic mother, one of way too many in this world. If you're here, then you have one too. I hope by reading my words someone out there will realize they aren't alone.

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