Adverse childhood experiences, implicit memory, empathy, trauma

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are not just bad stuff that happened; they have been quantified, defined in a list of ten, and subject to research on their effect on adult health. Here’s the quiz.

The ACEs list is about violence- fear of hurt, being hit, sexual assault- and being unprotected- feeling nobody loved you, not having enough to eat, biological parents abandoning you- perhaps by bad things happening to household members- being mentally ill, going to prison, being alcoholic, mother being hit.

I note that question about mother or stepmother being hit, but not father or stepfather. I don’t know enough about the test to critique it.

How is it used? It is a definition of childhood abuse and neglect which can help children now, by letting teachers and others see children who need support; it can show how important that support is, through the observation that people with a high ACE score are prone to physical and mental illness. Even, we can have some sympathy with someone in prison, because of their high ACE score. They have done bad things in part because they had it bad.

And, as the NPR article explained, some people with a high ACE score have resilience, possibly because of a loving, supportive relationship as a child- with a teacher or grandparent. The CDC has things to say on ACE, and there have been studies.

So ACE score is an indicator, but not a predictor. To make a theory of why some people have difficulty with resilience, I find the concept of implicit memory, which I came across through Bonnie Badenoch, more useful. The amygdala lays down unconscious memory based on your feelings, and then interprets the world according to those memories. So ACEs would affect that; but in some people good experiences would mitigate it, and they might turn out resilient anyway.

I may have come across ACEs before, but online saw a presentation by Carey Sipp, who scores nine out of ten. She “stopped the toxic cycle for her family”- her children are now in their thirties.

I score zero on the ACE list. Here’s me in 2016, unable to justify to myself or others why I feel so unable to go out to work. I had the idea that it did not matter how badly I suffered in childhood; what mattered was how I am now. So, if I “stubbed my toe once”, that was enough: I did not need to have suffered something no human could bear. I still judge myself, even after the experiences of healing the baby, about how much I suffered, really, but much less.

I was terrified my sickness benefits would stop, and now they have stopped I am glad of it. I was terrified the system would say I did not qualify. I have no idea how to make a life for myself beyond isolation. Those healing experiences make it easier to accept how badly I have been hurt, and the concept of implicit memory gives a theoretical backing I can accept intellectually. I want people saying they are hurt to be believed, however they express it, and the hurt of those prisoners to be recognised even if they cannot articulate it.

After writing this, I worked with Heather. She mentioned the Still Face experiment. I curled up, in horror and pain. She commented how my body’s movement showed my feelings flowing. Yes: and with a trans person, resonating, I was wriggling in delight. We discuss my mother. Considering her, I am watchful.

Oh, I took some notes. At one point I demonstrated what my mother did to me, with an old metaphor: I crumpled up a piece of paper, then gently and painstakingly smoothed it. She crushed me. I am smoothing myself out. “Take your time,” Heather said. My fear is inherited from my mother. It was hers. But she would not have been conscious of fear: for her, I am sure her way of being was rooted in self-respect and doing Right. In both, she appears normal, even admirable, to the world. Well, she maintained a marriage for 33 years, until death; she brought up two children; she had a job, and left a house with its mortgage paid off. It’s a reasonable life, if unremarkable. It has conventional marks of success.

She wanted to appear normal, and not be seen. I believe she was terrified of being seen and known, of her feelings being knowable. I say again about looking out of my own eyes. Yes, says Heather, I had told her. She wanted to hear again. It makes me feel powerful, makes me delight in my body.

My concept of normal is my mother’s. It is from the 1950s, and she could just about make it work in the 1980s. In the 2020s, it is impossible. My algorithm has broken down in terrible confusion. I hide away. That fear is hers, though she never felt it consciously.

I have an image of cuddling my mother, who shrinks to a baby. I love and succour this baby, cradling her in my arms. She need never fear again. I will love you. You are loved, free to be who you are.

It is not the 1950s, but the 2020s! Come, see how the world has changed, its full beauty and terror, its majesty and incomprehensibility, feel your freedom. I will love and support you.

Prompted by Heather, I move my body, feeling a physical sense of opening out. I feel love, freedom, power. I feel in my body, in my heart, gut, throat chakra. I need not classify, now, those feelings, or even understand them. They are there, to accept, and to explore and know over the coming months.