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Sharing – The ACEs Questionnaire Is Missing These Types of Trauma
When I think about Monika’s point, and my own look at the numbers, I repeat what I said back then, when looking at one individual, the ACE survey is never the whole story. There are lots of childhood experiences that go unaccounted for, there are individual levels of resilience that are not accounted for, and there are early interventions that are not considered. One traumatic experience equals one traumatic experience in the final number, regardless of whether that experience was immediately followed up with support and maybe even therapy, or if it was ignored and maybe even repeated. There are numerous factors beyond simply answering more than 4 questions yes and assuming you’re an addict, or not answering enough questions yes and assuming you aren’t. It is much more complicated than that.
The ACE information is important though because it points us back to that childhood trauma and says “what happened to you?” when treating an individual for depression, or addiction, so that we can include that in our healing. What we want to be careful with is turning it into a blunt instrument when there is still so much not being accounted for within it.
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Sharing – Why Healing from Trauma Can Get Harder As We Age
As I’ve said before, we were too busy simply surviving the abuse to learn the things we were supposed to learn as children, so we often start out behind in various ways.
Of course, in order to learn those things we need to do the work as an adult, to first unlearn the things we learned, and then learn the things we didn’t learn to start with. This is, perhaps, one of the real tragedies of so many survivors not even telling anyone, let alone starting this work, for decades.
That’s so many more years of doing the things we need to unlearn, and undoing that is just going to be more difficult the longer this has been true for us. So, what can we do?
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Shared Links (weekly) August 29, 2021
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11 Tips to Get Ready for National Suicide Prevention Week/World Suicide Prevention Day
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Opinion | This Conversation Will Change How You Think About Trauma
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More Americans Would Like Mental Health Support But Can’t Afford It
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Shift Self-Talk: Don’t Listen to What Anxiety Says About You
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Men, self-care is not emasculating. Protect your mental health to protect your family
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The Trauma Of Rape Affects Recall. Could Training Police On This Help?
– This could help with children who’ve been sexually abused as well.
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Sharing – Allowing Survivors of Suicide Loss to Be Honest
As Brandy shares, processing grief can sometimes mean being angry, or feeling things about the death of a loved one that don’t always jive with how we’d want suicide reported, but these are not spokespeople, advocates, or reporters, they are people dealing with their own pain.
Maybe, if we want people to speak their truth, we need to give them the room to express it the way they feel it, not silence them in the interest of not hearing terms we don’t love.
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Sharing – Why Adolescence Matters in Preventing Substance Abuse
The reality is, even if a kid has had severe trauma in their life, there are things we can do, immediately, that can lower the chances of this trauma impacting them later in life. Things like getting them support, positive role models and experiences, and actively getting them involved in healing can make a huge difference.
