Carey Sipp

DM Daniel MarloweMember

Hi Jane, gratitude for this report and the encouragement you give to all. However there is one statement that continues to give me pause. I know this is not a political site by any means albeit you brought it into the picture for me when you included in your statement: “…ACEs science is apolitical..”. While it may be true that ACEs science is being shared and regarded and even touted apolitically across the board, from my perspective, that is where it clearly stops in the “apolitical” sense. That is, the group(s), more specifically, the current group who holds the talking stick might speak ACEs in one direction however if it does not fit into or follow their agenda in the other direction, then that is where “apolitical” stops and it is clearly political. The effects of ACEs is a broad and deep reaching situation that requires systems and approaches that help to heal, resolve and improve wellbeing and productivity. I have to say, when it is put out there that this is an “apolitical” movement, the science of it all is not used in any what whatsoever “apolitically” over the past year and in to today. When group(s) serve to enact laws, policies and rhetoric that further marginalize people by passing tax reform laws; further increase insecurity by threatening citizenships or freedoms and assault weapons for all; further challenge systems that serve ACEs conditions by discrediting them and defunding them then there has to be some accountability here. Maybe it ought to be guilt and not blame, shame or punishment? Maybe pure guilt will get that group(s) to wake up and stop merely talking about ACEs science out of one side and start acting (and enacting) laws, policies, and funding that helps address the state of affairs on every side!

2/28/1811:39 AM

James EncinasMember

So exciting to hear the numbers of people who have read the essay you’ve written Jane. If all the people on acesconnection re post it, share on social media, share with a family member, share it at their schools, work place…..let’s see 10 x 35,000 😊

2/26/1812:24 PM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Wow! Terrific, Becky!! Thank you!

2/26/188:36 AM

Becky HaasMember

Jane Stevens posted:

Thank you, Audrey & James. Between ACEs Connection & ACEs Too High, this essay has been viewed more than 35,000 times since last Wednesday, and seems to be getting a little momentum….which is great! The more people who become curious about ACEs, the better!

Thanks to everyone here who’s participating so deeply in this work and spreading the word.

Wonderful! I had someone in another city share the article on Facebook and tag me and a Vice-Mayor in another town who has attended our ACEs training. I recently was interviewed by phone by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobachar’s DC Counsel about ACEs, our System of Care and trauma-informed policing. I’ve shared it with them

2/26/188:33 AM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thank you, Audrey & James. Between ACEs Connection & ACEs Too High, this essay has been viewed more than 35,000 times since last Wednesday, and seems to be getting a little momentum….which is great! The more people who become curious about ACEs, the better!

Thanks to everyone here who’s participating so deeply in this work and spreading the word.

2/25/184:31 PM

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Audrey StillermanMember

Go Jane!!! Thank you for so effectively articulating essential details of this current tragedy (particularly all the things that were done for/with Nicholas Cruz and still were not enough), acknowledging the importance of what happens in the intra-familial, community, structural and historical arenas both separately and together, and offering great examples of real solutions. The whole article is fantastic, and I especially appreciate these sections: The kids in Parkland, FL, have the advantages that we want all our children to have…Creating those conditions of opportunity for everyone is the responsibility of the adults….all of us adults., …approach to changing behavior — whether it’s criminal, unhealthy or unwanted behavior — from a blame, shame and punishment approach, to one that is based in understanding, nurturing and healing…. ,Other ACEs surveys include racism… and Much of the toxicity in our systems reside in the roots of our history of slavery, racial discrimination and genocide and we are just beginning to comprehend its reach and effects. As you say, we have to keep going back to a place of deeply knowing and translating the science into practice to achieve what we all want. Looking forward to sharing widely!

2/25/1811:53 AM

James EncinasMember

Thank you for sharing your talent, voice, truth Jane! – “All of our systems have to change their approach to changing behavior — whether it’s criminal, unhealthy or unwanted behavior — from a blame, shame and punishment approach, to one that is based in understanding, nurturing and healing….in other words, the science of adverse childhood experiences — ACEs.” – Amen

2/23/189:12 AM

LH Laura Haynes CollectorMember

Thank you for this. I am a CASA to a kid the same age as Nikolas Cruz. I noticed so many places where this child was failed along the way, and where his adoptive family was failed by being under-informed about his early trauma and likely outcomes of that.

Nikolas experienced serious “developmental” Trauma. ACEs that happen to a pre-verbal child are exponentially more devastating, as they damage a mind that has not had a chance to grow or form in healthy ways yet. He was abandonned by his mother as an aware older baby. That’s the worst thing a baby can experience. As we become more sophisticated about trauma, I think ACEs need to be considered in terms of timing, too, and in terms of degree.

Nikolas likely had Reactive Attachment Disorder, though nobody seems to have diagnosed this; however it makes sense of his many symptoms and it connects to his early life trauma. I would guess he got CBT CBT CBT (one size fits all mental health services, like in my town) and no right brain focused services like Neurofeedback, EMDR, or somatic therapies. No attachment-focused therapies that would have addressed his real woundedness.

It’s heartbreaking. By un-tethering early childhood trauma from this boy’s later life problems, its easy to get confused on how to actually help.

2/22/189:13 AM

Jenny SorensenMember

Thank you for your post! I am a mental health professional in Houston, Texas and want to figure out a way to help spread the word on a larger scale! I educate all my clients about ACE’s and screen them during my assessment, but it’s not enough! I welcome any ideas or suggestions on how to become more active in raising awareness and educating on ACE’s. Thanks again.

2/21/186:24 PM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

That’s terrific, Becky!

2/21/1812:18 PM

Becky HaasMember

Jane Stevens posted:

Lisa, Mary, Becky, Anne and Carey: Thank you for kind words and sharing this!

I’m working with a national non-profit and the Chairman of their Board lives in Florida. She had a teenage cousin who attends Parkland and was spared injury the day of the shooting by the bravery of the football coach who directed him to run. I shared your article with her and others on the Board (who I’m helping to educate about ACEs science) and received a response…”your article was very helpful!”

2/21/1811:47 AM

Elizabeth FitzgeraldMember

Jane your poignant words are fueling hope. Thank you for your persistent efforts in spreading good news.

2/21/1811:42 AM

Grace HarrisMember

Jane, I so agree. I think it would be informative for someone to research the number of ACES that the shooters have experienced. I have always thought that we can’t create a society that will be safe for our children and grandchildren until we make sure that all children are raised in a nurturing, safe way. Not every child who has experienced trauma and neglect will end up hurting others, but those that do, will often just hurt someone who is in their way and that makes all of us vulnerable to these consequences.

2/21/1811:41 AM

Mary GiulianiMember

Jane, THANK YOU for speaking so eloquently to the core issue in this school shooting: HURT PEOPLE, HURT PEOPLE and the core solution, SYSTEMS CHANGE THAT focuses on understanding why we humans do what we do, and how our systems can change to actually help people heal themselves, instead of further traumatizing them.

2/21/1810:34 AM

Michelle SimonsMember

Excellent post! Sharing everywhere I can!

2/21/189:59 AM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Lisa, Mary, Becky, Anne and Carey: Thank you for kind words and sharing this!

2/21/189:32 AM

Lisa FrederiksenMember

This is excellent, Jane – all of it, but I especially liked this quote:

“But that’s just one tiny, tiny, tiny part of the solution. This isn’t only a gun regulation issue. It’s a systems change issue. All of our systems have to change their approach to changing behavior — whether it’s criminal, unhealthy or unwanted behavior — from a blame, shame and punishment approach, to one that is based in understanding, nurturing and healing….in other words, ACEs science.”

I’ll be sharing widely – thank you!

2/21/189:08 AM

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Mary L. HoldenMember

This article should be ‘picked up’ by news media outlets worldwide. Excellent reporting here, and very useful information. Thank you.

2/21/189:01 AM

AJ Anne JonesMember

Share on Facebook, Twitter, et al.!

2/21/188:31 AM

Carey SippFormer Volunteer Co-Director, PACEs Connection Revitalization

Jane –

Thank you for this eloquent case for ACEs Science to be tied to what is happening in this incredibly challenging moment. Thanks for sharing solutions and successes so people can see what happens when we stop blaming and shaming others, and instead look at solutions, and see how we can be part of the solution.

I am sharing this far and wide in hopes that somehow it lands in the hands of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, so they can help tell the world about the vital importance of ACEs Science. The solutions are here.

I hope young leaders from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School can read this piece today. I believe it would give them important information and some comfort. There is comfort in knowing there are solutions. I will be Tweeting it and tagging them, and invite others to do so too. Meeting people where they are is part of the solution.

2/21/186:47 AM

Becky HaasMember

Good words…understanding ACEs science = hope! Looking forward to seeing your 50 states and DC report.

2/21/185:40 AM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thank you, Helena!

2/21/1812:17 AM

HS Helena SNOWMember

Brilliant, Jane! And so needs to be said. We have to start making the right connections to move us away from the blame and punishment scenario – at the macro level just as at the micro level. Sharing!

2/20/1811:49 PM

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Childhood trauma leads to lifelong chronic illness — so why isn’t the medical community helping patients?

August 10, 2026Uncategorizeddonna-jackson-nakazawa, healing, health, mental-health, ptsd, traumacareysipp

Donna Jackson Nakazawa 1/18/172:19 PM

When I was twelve, I was coming home from swimming at my neighbor’s dock when I saw an ambulance’s flashing lights in our driveway. I still remember the asphalt burning my feet as I stood, paralyzed, and watched the paramedics take away my father. It was as if I knew those flashing lights were a harbinger that my childhood was over.

At the hospital, a surgeon performed “minor” elective bowel surgery on my young dad. The surgeon made an error, and instead of my father coming home to the “welcome home” banners we’d painted, he died.

The medical care system failed my father miserably. Then the medical care system began to fail me.

At 14 years old, I started fainting. The doctors implied I was trying to garner attention. In college I began having full seizures. I kept them to myself, fearful of seeming a modern Camille. I’d awaken on the floor drenched in sweat, with strangers standing quizzically over me. Then, I had a seizure in front of my aunt, a nurse, and forty-eight hours later awoke in the hospital with a pacemaker in my chest.

In my early 40s I developed Guillain Barre Syndrome, a neurological autoimmune disorder that causes paralysis from the neck down. I found myself in Johns Hopkins Hospital, on the exact anniversary of my father’s death, in the same hospital wing where he had died, unable to move. I was a few days shy of turning 42, the very age at which my dad had passed away.

I recovered, only to relapse, falling paralyzed again. Many of my children’s early memories revolve around my bed, where we played board games and read books.

It wasn’t until I was fifty-one-years old that a physician sat me down and asked me the most important question of my life – one that would lead me to better health than I’d had for decades: “Were there any childhood traumas or stressors that might have contributed to the extreme level of inflammation you’re experiencing as an adult?”

My physician explained that ongoing adversity in childhood leads to a chronic state of “fight, flight or freeze.” Researchers at Yale had recently shown that when inflammatory stress hormones flood a child’s body and brain, they alter the genes that oversee our stress reactivity, re-setting the stress response to “high” for life. This increases the risk of inflammation, which manifests later in cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases like mine.

As a science reporter I was shocked to discover that research linking childhood stress to adult illness began in 1996 with the Kaiser Permanente-CDC Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study). Since then, over 1,500 peer-reviewed studies have replicated these findings.

The research was stunning. Two-thirds of Americans report experiencing adverse childhood experiences. These include obvious sexual and physical abuse, but also stressors that many consider to be normal — growing up with divorced parents, living with a depressed or alcoholic mom or dad, having a parent who belittled or humiliated you – or simply not feeling as if your family had your back. People who’d experienced four such categories of childhood adversity were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer and depression as adults.

One statistic struck home with me: women who’d faced three types of childhood adversity had a sixty percent greater risk of being hospitalized with an autoimmune disease as an adult. Similar links existed between childhood stressors and adult heart disease, diabetes, migraines and irritable bowel disease. Suffering six categories of early life stress shortened one’s lifespan by twenty years.

However, one study of 125,000 patients showed that when physicians acknowledged and discussed patients’ childhood trauma openly, patients enjoyed a thirty-five percent reduction in doctor visits. Validating patient suffering invites patients to address it at last.

Yet, despite twenty years of research linking childhood stress to adult disease, the majority of the medical community acts as if these findings don’t exist.

This summer, students will begin training in medical schools across the country. They will be expected to emerge with deep-rooted knowledge about how to help patients heal. But shockingly, only a few medical schools teach students about how childhood suffering influences adult disease. The majority of medical schools leave this science out. Perhaps they fear teaching it will open the door to bringing psychiatry into the exam room.

But shouldn’t physicians consider the whole patient – body and mind – so that they can suggest behavioral health tools that will alleviate both the root causes and the symptoms of disease? When physicians help patients come to the profound revelation that childhood adversity plays a role in the chronic illnesses they face now, they help them to heal physically and emotionally at last.

All disease is multifactorial. Past trauma is one of those factors. I can’t help but think of how my own story might have been different if the medical community had been trauma-aware. What if, after my father’s sudden death, the emotional cost of such a traumatic loss had been validated, and our medical system had offered therapeutic interventions?

It’s been two decades since the research linking childhood adversity to adult illness began. But think of how much money we might have saved in our health care system since then if we considered the role that past trauma plays in one’s current medical condition, instead of waiting a lifetime for it to show up in devastating and difficult to treat diseases that ruin lives for a second time.

According to the CDC, the annual health care cost of adult patients who have a history of early trauma is $124 billion a year. Validating patients’ past trauma isn’t only beneficial for their well being, it translates into fewer tests, procedures, and health care dollars spent.

Statistics tell us that two-thirds of Americans reading these words, including physicians, will recognize that experiences in their childhood still trail after them today, like small ghosts. Fortunately, medical science now recognizes many proven interventions for recovering from trauma, even decades after events have occurred.

We are long overdue for a national awareness campaign — similar to public health initiatives on how seat belts save lives, smoking causes cancer, and hand washing prevents flu — to educate physicians and families on how childhood trauma begets adult illness. Only then can we help those who feel paralyzed by their pasts to achieve the healthy lives they deserve.

_________________

This article first appeared in the Huffington Post. Donna Jackson Nakazawa is the author of Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How you Can Heal. You can follow her on Twitter at @DonnaJackNak, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/donnajacksonnakazawaauthor.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Author, THE ANGEL AND THE ASSASSIN, CHILDHOOD DISRUPTED, Creator, YOUR HEALING NARRATIVE: WRITE-TO-HEAL WITH NEURAL RE-NARRATING™

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Tags: healing, medical, disease, childhood, patient, chronic disease, Suffering, adult, chronic, health care, ACEs, adverse childhood experiences

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Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

There are probably several hundred pediatricians (out of 90,000 in the US) that are integrating ACEs science, so we’re seeing some movement. What the pediatric practices that have integrated trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs science have realized is that by expanding their lens on health, they ask other questions. Asking about parents’ ACEs is critical to a parent’s understanding of where they are in their lives and how they can create a better environment for their children. They’re open to learning about what a healthy relationship looks like, because, for many, they’ve never experiencing one.

And asking those questions leads to these other questions: Do you have enough food? Do you have transportation to get to vital services (including food)? Do you have a place to live? Is it safe? Do you have enough heat (or cooling)? Do you have a job? Does it pay enough so that you have enough time with your children? Do you have safe and nurturing childcare? Do you need help finding a job? Do you need help taking your medications? Do you need help getting your medical supplies? Do you have enough supplies for your baby? ETC, ETC, ETC. And the clinics that ask these questions work with other organizations within the community to provide those services. Once they start down this path, all the pediatricians say they would never return to the “old-fashioned” approach. And the most compelling way this is done is through a conversation instead of going through a checklist.

However, as you point out, Donna, there are only a few drops in the proverbial bucket in integrating this approach in adult medicine. But as Dr. Jeff Brenner’s work with people who used emergency rooms frequently shows, expanding the approach can make people healthier.

1/19/1710:23 AM

Donna Jackson NakazawaMember

Thanks for the kind words Adrienne, and what a great idea for a mandate. Much needed.

1/19/179:48 AM

Adrienne Decker DelgadoMember

This is, I think, the best article I’ve read in ACEs Connection Network. It so clearly spells out the critical role that the medical profession has in asking the correct questions.

Another resource that we have to ask such questions when children are still young are school social workers. I have had so many children share experiences of sexual abuse with me. The earlier the traumas are shared, less mental anguish and physical illnesses. I would love to see a Federal mandate to fund one school social worker for each school in the United States.

1/19/179:17 AM

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DS Daniel Sumrok MD DFASAM FAAFPMember

Working on it.

1/18/177:57 PM

What ACEs and PCEs do you have?

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedaces, healing, health, jane-stevens, mental-health, pces, ptsd, traumacareysipp

NOTE – August 9, 2026 – many of these links will likely be broken when the PACEs Connection site switches to a splash page. I am posting the remaining four stories listed in the prior post about the top five posts on PACEs up until 2022. Others follow here. Peace!

Jane Stevens 1/1/171:00 AM

What ACEs do you have?

There are 10 types of childhood trauma measured in the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. (There are many others…see below.) Five are personal — physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. Five are related to other family members: a parent who’s an alcoholic, a mother who’s a victim of domestic violence, a family member in jail, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, and experiencing divorce of parents. Each type of trauma counts as one. So a person who’s been physically abused, with one alcoholic parent, and a mother who was beaten up has an ACE score of three.

There are, of course, many other types of childhood trauma — racism, bullying, watching a sibling being abused, losing a caregiver (grandmother, mother, grandfather, etc.), homelessness, surviving and recovering from a severe accident, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, witnessing a grandmother abusing a father, involvement with the foster care system, involvement with the juvenile justice system, etc. The ACE Study included only those 10 childhood traumas because those were mentioned as most common by a group of about 300 Kaiser members; those traumas were also well studied individually in the research literature.

The most important thing to remember is that the ACE score is meant as a guideline: If you experienced other types of toxic stress over months or years, then those would likely increase your risk of health consequences, depending on the positive childhood experiences you had (see below).

Prior to your 18th birthday:

Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Was your mother or stepmother:
Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
Did a household member go to prison?
No___If Yes, enter 1 __

Now add up your “Yes” answers: _ This is your ACE Score

__________________________

Now that you know your ACEs, what does it mean?

First….a tiny bit of background to help you figure this out…..(if you want the back story about the fascinating origins of the ACE Study, read The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study — the largest, most important public health study you never heard of — began in an obesity clinic.)

The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) uncovered a stunning link between childhood trauma and the chronic diseases people develop as adults, as well as social and emotional problems. This includes heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and many autoimmune diseases, as well as depression, violence, being a victim of violence, and suicide.

The first research results were published in 1998, followed by more than 70 other publications through 2015. They showed that:

childhood trauma was very common, even in employed white middle-class, college-educated people with great health insurance;
there was a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as depression, suicide, being violent and a victim of violence;
more types of trauma increased the risk of health, social and emotional problems.
people usually experience more than one type of trauma – rarely is it only sex abuse or only verbal abuse.

A whopping two thirds of the 17,000 people in the ACE Study had an ACE score of at least one — 87 percent of those had more than one. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have done their own ACE surveys; their results are similar to the CDC’s ACE Study.

The study’s researchers came up with an ACE score to explain a person’s risk for chronic disease. 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; attempted suicide, 1,220 percent.

(By the way, lest you think that the ACE Study was yet another involving inner-city poor people of color, take note: The study’s participants were 17,000 mostly white, middle and upper-middle class college-educated San Diegans with good jobs and great health care – they all belonged to the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization. Prior to the ACE Study, most research about effects of abuse, neglect, etc., involved poor people of color who live in the inner city. And so the notion was that it was inner-city people of color who experienced abuse, neglect, etc., not white middle-class or white upper-class people….that somehow white people of means were immune from the kinds of problems affecting people who were poor. That’s not only ridiculous, but it was just another way to perpetrate racism and classism. The ACE Study quashed that notion. So, it’s not that I’m saying that the ACE Study is credible because it was done on white people, I’m saying that the ACE Study opened the door to an understanding that ACEs are at the root of nearly all problems of physical, mental, economic and social health in humans, no matter where in the world those humans live. The ACE Study and the other research that makes up ACEs science provided an opening to a better understanding of the constructs that make up our notion of why people suffer ill health — physical, mental, economic, social — and that includes systemic racism. )

Donald Trump is the product of abuse and neglect. His story is common, even for the powerful and wealthy.

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedaces, adverse-childhood-experiences, donald-trump, family, healing, jane-stevens, mental-health, paces-connection, trauma, writingcareysipp

Note – With PACEs Connection switching over to a splash page on August 10, 2026, I wanted to save some of the most important posts written by Jane Stevens, a couple of other staff people, and myself. I didn’t save even a 10th of what I would like to have, but I am assured that a “data dump” of all posts and the entire social networking site exists and that we will be able to access what’s needed when the need arises. AND… just in case, I am posting this and a couple of others Jane wrote — which in no way does justice to the volumes of materials she created to help people begin to grok the connection between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and our most intractable social ills, or how Jane said PACEs science could help us prevent perpetuating those ills with the flip side of adverse childhood experiences — positive childhood experiences — and policies supporting PCEs and more. Please know I apologize in advance for not uploading more pieces here. Jane’s beloved “ACEsTooHigh.com” site went down earlier in 2026 and I was stunned that that decade plus of work just disappeared. My hope is that the archives of the PACEs Connection social networking site will live on and we can someday create a history of this movement, as I, too, believe the answers to all of our most intractable problems are in this science. How to prevent multi-generational ACEs, how to foster “Neuro-Nurturing” to create the early relational health that is foundational to a lifetime of better health and better choices; how to leverage finding and norming the positive to create ever-widening circles of healthy communities, families, people. Thank you, Carey Sipp

Jane Stevens 7/28/207:36 PM

A baby is born into a family where he’s ignored by his father. When he does receive his father’s attention, his father constantly yells at, criticizes or punishes him. For the first two years of his life, this child’s mother is perfunctorily attentive, but not loving, and then abandons him for a year. From the time he was born until he is an adult, he witnesses his father abuse his older brother by terrorizing him verbally. This leads to his older brother becoming an alcoholic and dying at the age of 42. He sees his parents engaged in an emotionally neglectful, if not emotionally abusive, marriage.

This is the story of the early years of President Donald J. Trump, according to the captivating book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” The book was written by the president’s niece, Mary L. Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother. It bursts open the doors to understanding why Donald Trump behaves the way he does. It is also is a cautionary tale for how we decide who becomes a leader, whether that leader is a president, CEO, judge or school superintendent.

In Mary Trump’s words: “Child abuse is, in some sense, the experience of ‘too much’ or ‘not enough.’ Donald directly experienced the ‘not enough’ in the loss of connection to his mother at a crucial developmental stage, which was deeply traumatic. Without warning, his needs weren’t being met, and his fears and longings went unsoothed. Having been abandoned by his mother for at least a year, and having his father fail not only to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.”

Anyone who knows about the science of adverse childhood experiences has suspected all along thatcritical aspects of the president’s formative years contributed to his behavior today.

Mary describes Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s father, as a “high-functioning sociopath.”

“In order to cope,” writes Mary, “Donald began to develop powerful but primitive defenses, marked by an increasing hostility to others and a seeming indifference to his mother’s absence and father’s neglect….In place of [his emotional needs] grew a kind of grievance and behaviors—including bullying, disrespect, and aggressiveness—that served their purpose in the moment but became more problematic over time. With appropriate care and attention, they might have been overcome.”

But Donald Trump had practically no positive childhood experiences that could buffer the abuse he endured. “Unfortunately, for Donald and everybody else on this planet,” writes Mary Trump, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, “those behaviors hardened into personality traits…”

Donald Trump didn’t have a chance. The only thing that kept him from ending up as a small-time crook with a prison record is money, and lots of it.

Most people think of child abuse as sexual abuse or the physical abuse of being beaten. But the science of adverse childhood experiences found that other types of childhood abuse—experiencing emotional abuse, emotional neglect, living with a parent who’s addicted to alcohol or other drugs or is mentally ill, having a relative who’s incarcerated or witnessing a mother being abused, witnessing a sibling being abused, bullying, racism and other traumatic experiences—can do just as much damage. That’s because the brain itself can’t distinguish between types of trauma. It’s all just trauma that a child’s brain has to adapt to in order to survive. For example, when a father’s only interactions with a child are to suddenly rage without warning, the stress hormones in the child’s brain trigger a kid to flee for his life, fight or freeze in fear. And if that kid has to protect himself from that father every day, eventually that kid’s brain is altered.

Science is very clear that babies need two important types of positive experiences to lay a solid foundation for a healthy life, notes Mary Trump. One is physical and emotional closeness: “Being held and comforted, having our feelings acknowledged and our upsets soothed are all critical for the healthy development of young children.”

The second is mirroring, “the process through which an attuned parent reflects, processes, and then gives back to the baby the baby’s own feelings,” she writes. “Without mirroring, children are denied crucial information both about how their minds work and about how to understand the world. Just as a secure attachment to a primary caregiver can lead to higher levels of emotional intelligence, mirroring is the root of empathy.”

Although the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study still isn’t widely known, even though it’s been around for 20 years, it and the other parts of ACEs science are providing a profound shift in our understanding about why we humans behave the way we do. ACEs science also shows that to change behavior that is unhealthy, criminal or unwanted requires a very counterintuitive approach. Instead of using practices based on blaming, shaming and punishing, as we have for centuries, incorporating policies and practices on understanding, nurturing and healing have seen remarkable results in every sector in tens of thousands of organizations (but there are millions of organizations). Schools that integrate practices based on ACEs science, sometimes called trauma-informed schools, are able to eliminate suspensions and expulsions. Hospital emergency rooms see a 30% drop in visits. Suicide attempts by youth drop 98%. Recidivism rates by graduates of batterer intervention courses drop from 60% to 1%. A year after families participate in Safe Babies Courts, 99% of children suffer no further abuse.

The ACE Study found that the higher someone’s ACE score—the more types of childhood adversity a person experienced—the higher their risk of adverse social, economic, health and civic consequences. The study found that most people (64%) have at least one ACE; 12% of the population has an ACE score of 4 or higher. Having an ACE score of 4 nearly doubles the risk of heart disease and cancer. It increases the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic by 700 percent and the risk of attempted suicide by 1200 percent. It increases obesity, violence, and mental illness. Forty-three U.S. states, many countries and countless organizations have done their own ACE surveys, and the results are remarkably similar. (To calculate your ACE and resilience scores, go to: Got Your ACE/Resilience Score?)

Subsequent research links ACEs to Alzheimer’s, dementia, maternal ACEs and infant development, obesity in youth, gynecology patients with chronic pelvic pain….you name the disease or condition, and it’s likely to be exacerbated by ACEs.

By applying this rough, but insightful, way to assess the risk of childhood adversity, and based on the information in Mary Trump’s book, Donald Trump’s ACE score is a 6.

Trump’s father emotionally neglected his son when he was a baby and a toddler.
When Donald Trump was older, his father was emotionally abusive.
Trump’s mother emotionally neglected her son when he was a toddler, at a formative time for his brain development. In other words, he didn’t receive the positive experiences necessary for healthy development.
Trump watched his older brother be abused by his father for years.
Trump’s mother had mental health problems that seem to have gone undiagnosed and untreated for several years.
Trump’s parents were in a relationship that was emotionally neglectful.

Mary Trump chronicles the lives of three generations of Trumps in her book, and shows how trauma is passed from generation to generation. The Trump family considered their lives to be normal. They probably never gave a thought to how their behavior was shaped by what they experienced as children. When people—a few hundred thousand by now—with similar backgrounds have learned about ACEs science, a constant refrain is: “I didn’t know that what I experienced was abuse. I thought it was normal. This explains my life. Why did it take so long for me to hear about this?”

The participants in the ACE Study were 17,000 mostly white, middle- and upper-middle class, college-educated people with jobs and great health care. Looking at Donald Trump’s ACEs is a potent reminder that ACEs apply to people of all economic classes, something to which the ACEs movement and research hasn’t paid much attention lately because people of color and low economics bear the burden of ACEs.

We know that the phrase “hurt people hurt people” emerged from the understanding that most people who’ve committed violent crimes have high ACE scores.

However, hurt people hurt people on many levels, including enacting policies and laws that are just as harmful as interpersonal violence, and often more harmful because they affect hundreds or thousands or millions of people.

People with high ACE scores go in one of two general directions: They see the world as a place of suffering that needs healing, encourage people to work together to solve problems, and believe that the world works better without conflict than with it. Generally speaking, their positive childhood experiences have mitigated the adversity they experienced.

Or they see the world as a dark and dangerous place where carnage is rampant, problems are everywhere and are best solved by identifying and defeating enemies, building walls, and cutting off communication from people identified as “other.” And if enemies do not present themselves, they who see the world as a dangerous place will create enemies and make them larger than they really are, so that their “defeat” empowers them to find more enemies to conquer. Generally speaking, people in this group haven’t had enough protective factors in their lives, and thus favor punitive approaches to changing behavior, such as harsh prison sentences or zero-tolerance schools, even with ample evidence that they don’t work.

People who have high ACE scores and experienced few protective factors in their childhood can heal and change—ACEs aren’t destiny—but it often requires years of effort and constant reinforcement to at least ameliorate what’s been hard-wired into a baby’s brain. Mary Trump believes that her uncle Donald is very likely never to heal. She writes:

“Donald continues to exist in the dark space between the fear of indifference and the fear of failure that led to his brother’s [Fred’s] destruction. It took forty-two years for the destruction to be completed, but the foundations were laid early and played out before Donald’s eyes as he was experiencing his own trauma. The combination of those two things—what he witnessed and what he experienced—both isolated him and terrified him. The role that fear played in his childhood and the role it plays now can’t be overstated. And the fact that fear continues to be an overriding emotion for him speaks to the hell that must have existed inside the House [the Trump family home] six decades ago.

“Every time you hear Donald talking about how something is the greatest, the best, the biggest, the most tremendous (the implication being that he made them so), you have to remember that the man speaking is still, in essential ways, the same little boy who is desperately worried that he, like his older brother, is inadequate and that he, too, will be destroyed for his inadequacy.”

I don’t hate Donald Trump. I’m very sad for the things he experienced—no child should go through what happened to him. However, I hate many of the things he’s done. Authorizing ripping children out of the arms of their parents and separating them for months, years or forever, for example, sets me to writhing in helpless fury, and I wonder: Did the experience of having his mother ripped from his life so suddenly and for so long cause him such pain that it snuffed out the light of his empathy? Mary Trump thinks so.

For those of you who don’t like him, I’m not saying you have to feel sorry for him. I’m saying: You must understand him. You must understand him so that we don’t create more Donald Trumps in this world.

Jane Stevens
Publisher, ACEsTooHigh.com
Founder, PACEs Connection

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SLSarah Leverett

I am a special educator for emotional/ behavior disorders. I do a lot of research on poverty and the ACE’s. I spend my time making connections and sometimes the only one believing in my students. I passionately continue my education and influence my colleagues on the importance of recognizing trauma. I am so disappointed this article was published in a forum I value and respect. President Trump has a resilience story. The poor choice to publish a politically charged article is a decision that is costing you members.

8/21/206:27 PM

Alison CebullaMember

@Catherine April Watters posted:

I read the book also. I was very happy to read someone who witnessed much of the abuse and dysfunction illustrating how $ can be used to paint what ever picture the possessor wishes. No matter How much $ a “family” has it can be used to make GMO people out of their children. I’ve known, felt and been saying this for decades. Most “families” just want their children to make $. It’s a very rare Family who actually raises their child to be Authentic. To be who they’re naturally meant to be THEN make $ being That. Is how I’ve been trying to live for decades with Not much luck. I never expected this country to be a SICK as it’s proven to be.

I felt it by the early 80s as I was getting older and had to “get a job”, after living with psych torture for nearly 2 decades, that my health was going One way and $ the other. I needed to focus on my health, recovery. Since I fought my abuser back for over 5 years at least,, I wasn’t like Donald, Freddy or the others,, but, I was criminalized for it and Everyone around Guilted me and made excuses For the Abuser ever since. But, I still had that part of me that was able to fight back, speak truth to “power” to hold onto that a lot of people don’t seem to have, they were indoctrinated like D.T.

I figured that if $ was real I should be able to follow the Health and the $ would follow. NOPE! I turned to Fitness because I KNEW that for anything to be Legit it needed to be aligned With Natural Law, physics, like an athlete scores a goal. It’s Clearly been the other way around even for people WITH a lot of money as it is for those “families” who don’t.

I will NEVER understand WHY so many people follow $ when it’s Clearly Illegitimate and the exact OPPOSITE of supporting health. Maybe if people realized that Health is More than just physical,, Emotional/Spiritual/Relationships,, we Might just get somewhere

I will never understand either and I guess I tend to think of things I don’t understand and spiritual questions. Why do people choose to follow a path of making the most money possible, instead of, say, becoming the most loving person they can be? That’s what you’re asking, right? I think that our work at ACEs Connection shows that childhood can be a sort of brainwashing, and that because Trump learned from his father, “your only value is as a real estate investor,” that’s what he spent his life pursuing, even though, as his numerous bankruptcies show, it’s not something that he had any sort of special talent in.

After reading Snowball, a biography about Warren Buffett, it seemed to me that pursuing money doesn’t always have evil intentions. As a kid, finding interesting ways to make money was a hobby of Buffett’s. The companies he would choose to invest in always had to make sense on paper for the long run–he was never interested in show or quick money. I don’t think billionaires need to exist in our society but he has shown to be someone who values investing in people and using his money to make the world a better place.

But back to the spiritual question…there seem to be ego callings that are false and its our work to sort them out as we grow.

8/7/209:57 AM

Catherine April WattersMember

I read the book also. I was very happy to read someone who witnessed much of the abuse and dysfunction illustrating how $ can be used to paint what ever picture the possessor wishes. No matter How much $ a “family” has it can be used to make GMO people out of their children. I’ve known, felt and been saying this for decades. Most “families” just want their children to make $. It’s a very rare Family who actually raises their child to be Authentic. To be who they’re naturally meant to be THEN make $ being That. Is how I’ve been trying to live for decades with Not much luck. I never expected this country to be a SICK as it’s proven to be.

I felt it by the early 80s as I was getting older and had to “get a job”, after living with psych torture for nearly 2 decades, that my health was going One way and $ the other. I needed to focus on my health, recovery. Since I fought my abuser back for over 5 years at least,, I wasn’t like Donald, Freddy or the others,, but, I was criminalized for it and Everyone around Guilted me and made excuses For the Abuser ever since. But, I still had that part of me that was able to fight back, speak truth to “power” to hold onto that a lot of people don’t seem to have, they were indoctrinated like D.T.

I figured that if $ was real I should be able to follow the Health and the $ would follow. NOPE! I turned to Fitness because I KNEW that for anything to be Legit it needed to be aligned With Natural Law, physics, like an athlete scores a goal. It’s Clearly been the other way around even for people WITH a lot of money as it is for those “families” who don’t.

I will NEVER understand WHY so many people follow $ when it’s Clearly Illegitimate and the exact OPPOSITE of supporting health. Maybe if people realized that Health is More than just physical,, Emotional/Spiritual/Relationships,, we Might just get somewhere

8/7/209:14 AM

Laurie UdeskyMember

I think that the rules for discussing a private citizen and a powerful public figure who makes decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives is more than warranted. It is the responsibility to do so in any democracy. It is necessary to shine light on the powerful — regardless of their political party or beliefs — to better understand them, and when applicable to hold them accountable.

8/3/201:47 PM

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Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thank you for your comment, Amy. And I’m sorry to see you go. The door is always open here.

8/3/2012:51 PM

FMFormer Member

Jane, you are using ACES Connection as a political platform. First I saw this article that had nothing to do with preventing ACES, healing trauma and building resilience: https://www.pacesconnection.com…s-washingtonpost-com. Now this article based on a book that was not written by the POTUS himself. Wouldn’t that be breaking a very important rule of trauma informed care? Not giving the person impacted by trauma some control, a voice for their own story? I imagine we will be seeing many, many more articles about the POTUS from you putting him in the light you choose as we are approaching 11/3/20. I will be unsubscribing.

8/3/2012:49 PM

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Elizabeth PerryMember

Thanks for compiling this synopsis Jane. The more we realize the extent of pain experienced by the powerful and privileged who are making and implementing destructive policies, the faster we will reprioritize our societies. This is the focus of my work regarding ACEs. It’s not them, it’s us. And financial security or wealth, whiteness, education, or an intact family doesn’t protect most of us. That is the salient point of the original ACE Study that stands out most to me. Donald Trump is a symptom, of the pervasive problem of unresolved childhood trauma plaguing humanity from the echelons of power around the world. The blatant example we see every day of a pained human dissociated from his self, others, nature, and reality is my source of hope for our long awaited awakening to who we are as humans and our need to reset our priorities to meet our children’s needs to prevent creating any more broken men.

8/1/209:58 AM

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This is a slide from today’s ACEs Aware webinar. As you can see, interrupting intergenerational transmission is one the goals of screening for ACEs in medical practice. It’s not really about blaming, it’s about freeing people from passing these physical and mental health risks to future generations, none of whom deserve to be born into these ongoing processes. I’d like to acknowledge some other posts that have added the very important dimension of marginalized populations’ stressors, present, and historical, into the calculus. ACEs Aware was founded and supported by the California Surgeon General, Dr Burke Harris, who deserves effusive praise for her work on ACEs. Included in the today’s presentation was the epigenetic factors of trauma and how they affect every body system of those exposed.

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7/29/206:02 PM

Tony BuffingtonMember

Well written, thank you. Like a few others, I’m somewhat concerned by what I perceived as some “blame” directed toward Mr. Trump’s parents. In my view ACEs are an expression of “the biology of Karma”, and without detailed knowledge his parent’s early environments, and their parents, etc. it might be more useful to regret what he was exposed to and focus on “now what?”

7/29/204:20 PM

TD Toni DuPont-Morales, PhDMember

I am placing my comments based on the years I spent as a PO addressing heinous crimes and tragically raised individuals who had little opportunity to address their lives and move toward developing positive change. The social part of the pre-sentence report addresses the upbringing and traumas of the criminal as well as those of their family. Regardless of their history, they received consequences that were often severe at times. The bottom line was that they faced consequences, irrespective of their ACES. Poverty and race were rarely seen as extenuating circumstances.

In all the years I worked, I can not tell you how rare it was to have a wealthy spoiled deviant person in front of me. They had the benefit of the expensive defense team against the State. I’ve read Mary Trump’s book and her warning is that Donald Trump was raised with the ability and skill to avoid consequences and surround himself with enablers. It was a warning as to how pervasive the depravity of the family and their enablers are/were. ACES is about identifying the issues where we as a society, can assist in programs and policies to facilitate positive change and understanding.

7/29/201:55 PM

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There is a fairly broad consensus that President Trump is suffering from mental health problems. I’m an a Green Party member, so I’m not trying to sway anyone’s towards VP Biden, who I serious reservations about also in the mental health area. This is one more example of a source concerning President Trump’s mental health.

“The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is a 2017 book edited by Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, containing essays from 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals describing the “clear and present danger” that US President Donald Trump’s mental health poses to the “nation and individual well being.”

7/29/2012:29 PM

VY Vivian YacopiMember

Although, the results of such upbringing can cause the end results, I do not think it is fair to use ACES Connection to target Donald Trump. What is Mary Trump getting out of this? ($$$$) Not comfortable with this article and seems to be more of a political platform. I will unsubscribe today.

7/29/2012:22 PM

Elizabeth FitzgeraldMember

Brilliant Jane. If only there were some professional gate keeping within professions (outside of mental health) that would allow us to intervene when a person’s personal trauma was causing them to become a danger to themselves and/or others. Cops, politicians, lawyers, cashiers, landscapers, servers…I mean really, we all need each other to help us see what we can’t see. I guess that’s why we need the trauma-informed revolution.

7/29/2010:35 AM

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Leslie Schwartz LeffMember

Excellent article! I have been both fascinated and repulsed by the idea of reading Mary Trump’s book. Reading this synopsis through a trauma-informed, ACEs lens, was powerful, informative and important. Thank you, Jane!

7/29/2010:30 AM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

@Molly Reagh posted:

Hmmm…something does not sit well with me about this article. Many, myself included, have long felt that mainstream ACEs movement does not sufficiently address the intersections of race, class, geography and other socio-environmental factors. This article seems like an apologist stance for bad behavior, without taking into account the extreme privilege that paved the way for Trump to maintain class privilege and be elected president. The ACEs he experienced, while I’m sure traumatizing, should not be extricated from the race and class privilege he also experienced. This argument seems to parallel the narrative that gets played out in the media that white people who commit crimes (the Dylan Roof’s of the world) have mental health issues, when Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) folks get labeled as thugs. It glaringly leaves out the institutional and systemic racism that overwhelmingly bars BIPOC people from gaining wealth or political power and has no impact on white cisgender men who still hold disproportionate and harmful amounts of power. Honestly, it is further proof of our society’s horrifyingly entrenched white supremacy and I highly encourage you to re-think posting this article in its current form.

I agree with you completely, Molly. This essay strives to explain so that we can understand and change our systems, with the understanding that we are our systems. It’s definitely not an apology.

7/29/2010:24 AM

Mike FlaningamMember

Jane, thank you for your fascinating article. A challenge I frequently come across in my practice as a primary care physician for adults, is how to effectively and respectfully get a person, who has certain maladaptive coping mechanisms, to see that their ways of coping are destructive. I wouldn’t expect Mr. Trump to hear Mary Trump’s assessment and respond by thanking her and asking how he can work on changing himself. Patient’s usually don’t come to me because they’ve identified their maladaptive coping as a problem, but instead focus on their headaches, insomnia, or other symptoms. When ACEs are a contributing cause to such symptoms, and we discuss ACEs science, some people have “a ha!” moments, and start on a path towards healing. However, a lot don’t see the connection, even when I’ve (gently) brought up the topic again.

I also want to comment that I appreciate the concern Anna expressed earlier, about all of us associated with ACEs Connection needing to not allow this forum to devolve into political bickering (my description, not Anna’s). However, I feel it’s appropriate to discuss Mr. Trump’s case here, as long as our goal is to advance the awareness and understanding of ACEs, as opposed to people expressing their negative feelings toward him. Many precedents have been set, in this forum, to discuss the childhood experiences of still living people (Darrell Hammond being a recent example). I realize that in most previous cases, it’s people sharing their own stories, while in this case, Mr. Trump is not doing the sharing. I believe we therefore, in a trauma-informed way, should be sensitive to the possibility the person who didn’t share their own story might have a different story to tell.

7/29/2010:01 AM

Molly ReaghMember

Hmmm…something does not sit well with me about this article. Many, myself included, have long felt that mainstream ACEs movement does not sufficiently address the intersections of race, class, geography and other socio-environmental factors. This article seems like an apologist stance for bad behavior, without taking into account the extreme privilege that paved the way for Trump to maintain class privilege and be elected president. The ACEs he experienced, while I’m sure traumatizing, should not be extricated from the race and class privilege he also experienced. This argument seems to parallel the narrative that gets played out in the media that white people who commit crimes (the Dylan Roof’s of the world) have mental health issues, when Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) folks get labeled as thugs. It glaringly leaves out the institutional and systemic racism that overwhelmingly bars BIPOC people from gaining wealth or political power and has no impact on white cisgender men who still hold disproportionate and harmful amounts of power. Honestly, it is further proof of our society’s horrifyingly entrenched white supremacy and I highly encourage you to re-think posting this article in its current form.

7/29/209:50 AM

LH Laura Haynes CollectorMember

Counting ACEs = essentially a rough sorting-hat for being raised in a dysfunctional family/ by dysfunctional adults. Functional healthy families have fewer ACE-level events (though something like the death of a parent can strike even a very wholesome home).

Donald had a huge multitude of “baby ACEs” or “shadow ACEs” as I call them. You can be rich, fed, never hit, ‘privileged’ — but if your own parents do not *connect* with you, it is much worse than an isolated horrible event like a divorce. Being neglected profoundly is orders of magnitude worse than your attentive, loving parents getting a divorce. For you have no resources to deal with anything bad that happens.

Nobody TOOK PLEASURE in baby Donald. Nobody interpenetrated with him. Nobody was his safe place, his place of refuge. Nobody modeled a safe and interested, caring “other.” All the experiences by which human beings learn to attach and self-regulate were robbed from him.

When you never receive secure attachment as a baby, that’s the worst ACE that can exist. A securely attached human being can withstand something like a parental divorce in a VERY different way than a person without that ballast of relational security. A securely attached person has internalized their own worth.

I see the child separation at the border as a kind of sick theatre of DJT’s past. Being ripped away from his mother (the mom as ‘criminal’) as a kind of large scale re-enactment.

7/29/208:54 AM

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Rebecca Lewis-PankratzMember

Beautiful. There are no bad guys. It is a bitter pill to swallow but so incredibly necessary to do the work of healing the River of Cruelty.

7/29/208:31 AM

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EM Edith MannMember

Ever since 2016 I have observed and wondered about Trump and ACEs, and have occasionally shared my view with others. My ACEs perspective is one of understanding behavior, not as an excuse for behavior.

7/29/208:25 AM

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Denise BusleyMember

Dearest Jane, You are a stunningly powerful and gifted writer. Thank you for continuing to use your gifts in such a profound way. I continue to be thunderously grateful.

7/29/208:10 AM

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@Karen Anthony posted:

I’m reading this book now. As an infant mental health therapist I continue to wonder: what happened to Fred Trump in his early childhood? Or Mary? How did they become the parents they were to the Trump children? How far back do we go?

Yes Karen, as a psychologist with an interest in transgenerational transmission of symptoms, I’ve wondered about our president’s family history and reflect on the concept of “undifferentiated ego mass.”

7/29/207:28 AM

I have Mary’s book and have to admit, I haven’t read it yet. I know about the existence of the Goldwater rule concerning not diagnosing those we have not interviewed or tested. That being said, his niece does have insider, collateral information and is a professional herself. I don’t think you need years of training as a clinician to spot something is very wrong with our president at a time in which we need leadership the most. His lack of empathy and self-referented style is apparent. Thank you posting this. He is definitely a tragic man (from Kohut) and even more tragic, is imbued with power that affects us all.

7/29/207:23 AM

Anne Moss RogersMember

Excellent article. Thank you for sharing. I have wondered many times what Trump’s childhood must have been like to produce what we see today. I also think the media played a lot into what he is today. The adoration by them in the early 90s gave him the attention he so desperately craved and fueled his narcissism that had taken root in childhood as a defense mechanism.

7/29/207:21 AM

KA Karen AnthonyMember

I’m reading this book now. As an infant mental health therapist I continue to wonder: what happened to Fred Trump in his early childhood? Or Mary? How did they become the parents they were to the Trump children? How far back do we go?

7/29/207:18 AM

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Laura PinheyMember

Jane, thank you for expressing what many of us have been thinking for several years.

7/29/204:15 AM

Wikipedia — Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thank you for posting your comment, Anna. I always value your opinion and participation.

7/29/2012:24 AM

Anna RunkleMember

Im going to say it: I’m really uncomfortable with this, that this movement and this platform have become so political that it’s now OK to pathologize the private details of a living person’s childhood — details they did not themselves choose to disclose and in fact fought to stop (and that may not even be true).

An adult’s public actions may be fair game, but it is most definitely NOT fair to use a person’s childhood in order to diagnose them, read their mind, or make damning claims that because of trauma, they can “never heal,” they can’t feel empathy, they are destined to be a “small time crook in Jail” (unless wealthy) or that people like them should not be “created.” These kinds of statements are uncomfortably familiar from other times when “science” was used to label and marginalize others.

I hope ACEs Connection will be extra careful never to “weaponize” ACEs science against anyone, whether you like their policies or not.

7/28/2010:43 PM

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David DooleyMember

This is why parenting education must be a part of the solution. Not conventional parenting education, but a new kind…one that reaches everyone, everywhere, all the time.

The Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Institute of Mental Health should be working furiously on this new kind of parenting education. Perhaps parenting education campaigns akin to the smoking and seat belts campaigns of the past. Perhaps multi-media messaging that teaches parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children.

Visit www.advancingparenting.org. Use a computer…our website is not optimized for phones. We are all about finding interesting and perhaps more effective ways of teaching everyone about parenting.

7/28/209:28 PM

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PACEs Science 101 (FAQs) — Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedhealing, health, jane-stevens, mental-health, paces-connection, paces-science-101, trauma, wellnesscareysipp

Jane Stevens 10/1/191:00 AM

What is PACEs science?

The science of PACEs refers to the research about the stunning effects of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) and how they work together to affect our lives, as well as our organizations, systems and communities. It comprises:

The CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and subsequent surveys that show that most people in the U.S. have at least one ACE, and that people with four ACEs— including living with an alcoholic parent, racism, bullying, witnessing violence outside the home, physical abuse, and losing a parent to divorce — have a huge risk of adult onset of chronic health problems such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, suicide, and alcoholism.
Brain science (neurobiology of toxic stress) — how toxic stress caused by ACEs damages the function and structure of kids’ developing brains.
Health consequences — how toxic stress caused by ACEs affects short- and long-term health, and can impact every part of the body, leading to autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis, as well as heart disease, breast cancer, lung cancer, etc.
Historical and generational trauma (epigenetic consequences of toxic stress) — how toxic stress caused by ACEs can alter how our DNA functions, and how that can be passed on from generation to generation.
Positive Childhood Experiences and resilience research and practice — Building on the knowledge that the brain is plastic and the body wants to heal, this part of PACEs science includes evidence-based practice, as well as practice-based evidence by people, organizations and communities that are integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices. This ranges from looking at how the brain of a teen with a high ACE score can be healed with cognitive behavior therapy, to how schools can integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices that result in an increase in students’ scores, test grades and graduation rates.

1. What are ACEs?

ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children’s developing brains and lead to changing how they respond to stress and damaging their immune systems so profoundly that the effects show up decades later. ACEs cause much of our burden of chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence.

“ACEs” comes from the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a groundbreaking public health study that discovered that childhood trauma leads to the adult onset of chronic diseases, depression and other mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence, as well as financial and social problems. The ACE Study has published about 70 research papers since 1998. Hundreds of additional research papers based on the ACE Study have also been published.

The 10 ACEs the researchers measured:

— Physical, sexual and verbal abuse.

— Physical and emotional neglect.

— A family member who is:

depressed or diagnosed with other mental illness;
addicted to alcohol or another substance;
in prison.

— Witnessing a mother being abused.

— Losing a parent to separation, divorce or other reason.

Subsequent to the ACE Study, other ACE surveys have expanded the types of ACEs to include racism, gender discrimination, witnessing a sibling being abused, witnessing violence outside the home, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, being bullied by a peer or adult, involvement with the foster care system, living in a war zone, living in an unsafe neighborhood, losing a family member to deportation, etc.

ACEs fall into three large categories:

Adverse childhood experiences
Adverse community experiences
Adverse climate experiences

Resources:

CDC ACE Study site

The 10 ACE Questions (and 14 resilience survey questions)

The Pair of ACEs: The Soil in Which We’re Rooted, the Branches on Which We Grow

Why are ACEs significant?

1. The ACE Study revealed six main discoveries:

ACEs are common…nearly two-thirds (64%) of adults have at least one.
They cause adult onset of chronic disease, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence
ACEs don’t occur alone….if you have one, there’s an 87% chance that you have two or more.
The more ACEs you have, the greater the risk for chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. People have an ACE score of 0 to 10. Each type of trauma counts as one, no matter how many times it occurs. You can think of an ACE score as a cholesterol score for childhood trauma. For example, people with an ACE score of 4 are twice as likely to be smokers and seven times more likely to be alcoholic. Having an ACE score of 4 increases the risk of emphysema or chronic bronchitis by nearly 400 percent, and attempted suicide by 1200 percent. People with high ACE scores are more likely to be violent, to have more marriages, more broken bones, more drug prescriptions, more depression, and more autoimmune diseases. People with an ACE score of 6 or higher are at risk of their lifespan being shortened by 20 years.
ACEs are responsible for a big chunk of workplace absenteeism, and for costs in health care, emergency response, mental health and criminal justice. So, the fifth finding from the ACE Study is that childhood adversity contributes to most of our major chronic health, mental health, economic health and social health issues.
On a population level, it doesn’t matter which four ACEs a person has; the harmful consequences are the same. The brain cannot distinguish one type of toxic stress from another; it’s all toxic stress, with the same impact.

What’s particularly startling is that the 17,000 ACE Study participants were mostly white, middle- and upper-middle class, college-educated, and all had jobs and great health care (they were all members of Kaiser Permanente).

Resources:

ACE Study primer — KPJR Films, which came out with Paper Tigers in 2015 and Resilience in 2016, put together this five-minute overview of the ACE Study.

ACE Study video — Three-minute trailer for a four-hour CD of interviews with ACEs researchers produced by the Academy on Violence and Abuse.

How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime (16-minute TED Talk by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris)

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study – the largest public health study you never heard of – started in an obesity clinic

Has anyone else done an ACE Study?

Thirty-six states and Washington, D.C. (infographic) have done one or more ACE surveys. Here are links to some of their reports (some states haven’t produced reports).

There are numerous other ACE surveys, including cities, such as Philadelphia; organizations, including the Crittenton Foundation; schools, including Spokane elementary schools; by pediatricians, including Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and Dr. Victor Carrion (2011 and 2013); several countries, including England, Saudi Arabia, and a World Health Organization ACE survey of university students in Romania,; and 64,000 juvenile offenders in the Florida juvenile justice system. You can find a list of ACE surveys, including expanded ACE surveys with more questions, in the Resources Section of ACEsConnection.com.

2. What’s the neurobiology of toxic stress?

Brain science shows that, in the absence of protective factors, toxic stress damages children’s developing brains. Stress is the body’s normal response to challenging events or environments. Positive stress — the first day of school, a big exam, a sports challenge — is part of growing up, and parents or caregivers help children prepare for and learn how to handle positive stress, which is moderate and doesn’t last long. It increases heart rate and the amount of stress hormones in the body, but they return to normal levels quickly.

But when events or the environment are threatening or harmful – we stumble across a bear in the woods – our brains instantly zap into fight, flight or freeze mode and bypass our thinking brains, which can be way too analytical to save us (Is the bear really mean? Is it more interested in berries or killing me? Should I wait until I see it charge?). With help from caring adults, children also recover from this tolerable stress.

Too much stress – toxic stress – occurs when that raging bear comes home from the bar every night, says pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris. Then a child’s brain and body will produce an overload of stress hormones — such as cortisol and adrenaline — that harm the function and structure of the brain. This can be particularly devastating in children, whose brains are developing at a galloping pace from before they are born to age three. Toxic stress is the kind of stress that can come in response to living for months or years with a screaming alcoholic father, a severely depressed and neglectful mother or a parent who takes out life’s frustrations by whipping a belt across a child’s body.

Resources:

Harvard University Center on the Developing Child

Video: Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development (2 min)

An Unhealthy Dose of Stress (Center for Youth Wellness white paper)

The Science Behind PTSD Symptoms: How Trauma Changes the Brain

Brain Story Certification, Alberta Family Wellness Initiative

3. What are the health effects of toxic stress?

Chronic toxic stress—living in a red alert mode for months or years — can also damage our bodies. In a red alert state, the body pumps out adrenaline and cortisol continuously. Over time, the constant presence of adrenaline and cortisol keep blood pressure high, which weakens the heart and circulatory system. They also keep glucose levels high to provide enough energy for the heart and muscles to act quickly; this can lead to type 2 diabetes. Too much adrenaline and cortisol can also increase cholesterol.

Too much cortisol can lead to osteoporosis, arthritis, gastrointestinal disease, depression, anorexia nervosa, Cushing’s syndrome, hyperthyroidism and the shrinkage of lymph nodes, leading to the inability to ward off infections.

If the red alert system is always on, eventually the adrenal glands give out, and the body can’t produce enough cortisol to keep up with the demand. This may cause the immune system to attack parts of the body, which can lead to lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia.

Cortisol is also extremely important in maintaining the body’s appropriate inflammation response. In a normal response to a bee sting or infection, the body rushes antibodies, white blood cells and other cell fighters to the site and the tissues swell while the battle rages. But too much swelling damages tissue. Cortisol controls this fine balance. So without the mediating effects of cortisol, the inflammatory response runs amok and can cause a host of diseases.

If you’re chronically stressed and then experience an additional traumatic event, your body will have trouble returning to a normal state. Over time, you will become more sensitive to trauma or stress, developing a hair-trigger response to events that other people shrug off.

Biomedical researchers say that childhood trauma is biologically embedded in our bodies: Children with adverse childhood experiences and adults who have experienced childhood trauma may respond more quickly and strongly to events or conversations that would not affect those with no ACEs, and have higher levels of indicators for inflammation than those who have not suffered childhood trauma. This wear and tear on the body is the main reason why the lifespan of people with an ACE score of six or higher is likely to be shortened by 20 years.

Resources:

What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing, by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity, by Nadine Burke Harris, 2018.

Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease by Robin Karr-Morse with Meredith S. Wiley

Biologial Embedding of Early Social Adversity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012

PubMed childhood adversity research publications

4. What’s epigenetics and how does that relate to historical or generational trauma?

Most people believe that the DNA we’re born with does not change and that it determines all that we are during our lifetime. That’s true, but the research from epigenetics — the study of how social and other environments turn our genes on and off — shows that toxic stress can actually change how our genes function, which can lead to long-term changes in all parts of our bodies and brains. What’s more, these changes can be transferred from generation to generation.

Epigenetics means “above the genome” and refers to changes in gene expression that are not the result of changes in the DNA sequence (or mutations).

Resources:

WhatIsEpigenetics.com — This New York-based blog and news aggregator covers the field of epigenetics and is funded by EpiGentek. It includes backgrounders, including epigenetics fundamentals.

Epigenetics — From the Genetics Science Learning Center at the University of Utah, this section includes explainers and an overview of how the social environment affects your epigenome.

Epigenetics 101: A beginner’s guide to explaining everything (TheGuardian.com, 2014)

5. Positive Childhood Experiences and resilience research: If you have a high ACE score, are you doomed? No!

The good news is that the brain is plastic, and the body wants to heal.

The brain is continually changing in response to the environment. If the toxic stress stops and is replaced by practices that build resilience, the brain can slowly undo many of the stress-induced changes.

There is well documented research on how individuals’ brains and bodies become healthier through mindfulness practices, exercise, good nutrition, adequate sleep, and healthy social interactions.

Here’s a good article that weaves the unified science of human development together: Scars That Don’t Fade, from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Proto Magazine.

In the last few years, researchers have started to examine the impacts of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) on children and adults. We at PACEs Connection are particularly interested in the interplay between positive and adverse childhood experiences. Here’s some of the relevant research:

A team of researchers — Dr. Christina Bethell, Jennifer Jones, Dr. Narangerel Gombojav, Dr. Jeff Linkenbach and Dr. Robert Sege — published research in 2019 that found a dose-response association between positive childhood experiences — such as feeling like family stood by one during difficult times and feeling safe and protected by an adult in the home — and adult mental and relationship health among adults who had experienced ACEs, irrespective of how many ACEs they had. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels | JAMA Pediatrics.
That same year, Bethell, Gombojav, and Dr. Robert Whitaker reported that at each level of ACEs, “the presence of flourishing increased in a graded fashion with increasing levels of family resilience and connection.” Family Resilience And Connection Promote Flourishing Among US Children, Even Amid Adversity | Health Affairs
In 2014, Bethell, Dr. Paul Newacheck, Dr. Eva Hawes, and Dr. Neal Halfon found that children with higher ACE scores were less likely to demonstrate resilience, live in a protective home environment, have a mother who was healthy, and live in safe and supportive neighborhoods. However, almost half of the children who had experienced ACEs also demonstrated resilience, and “resilience mitigated the impact of adverse childhood experiences on grade repetition and school engagement.” Adverse Childhood Experiences: Assessing The Impact On Health And School Engagement And The Mitigating Role Of Resilience | Health Affairs
In a study published in 2021, Whitaker, Dr. Tracy Dearth-Wesley, and Dr. Allison Herman wrote that “greater childhood family connection was associated with greater flourishing in US adults across levels of childhood adversity.” Childhood family connection and adult flourishing: associations across levels of childhood adversity – Academic Pediatrics (academicpedsjnl.net)
Dr. Yui Yamaoka and Dr. David Bard reported in 2019 that “the number of adverse childhood experiences was associated with both social-emotional deficits and developmental delay risks in early childhood; however, positive parenting practices demonstrated robust protective effects independent of the number of adverse childhood experiences.” Positive Parenting Matters in the Face of Early Adversity – PubMed (nih.gov)
Among juvenile offenders, Dr. Michael Baglivio and Dr. Kevin Wolff discovered in 2020 that “high ACE scores were associated with increased reoffending, and high PCE scores were associated with decreased recidivism, as measured by both rearrest and reconviction. Further, among juveniles with four or more ACEs who have six or more PCEs, reconviction was 23% lower and rearrest 22% lower when compared to those youth with four or more ACEs and less than six PCEs, controlling for a host of demographic and criminal history measures.” Positive Childhood Experiences (PCE): Cumulative Resiliency in the Face of Adverse Childhood Experiences – Michael T. Baglivio, Kevin T. Wolff, 2021 (sagepub.com)
Dr. Michael Baxter, Dr. Eden Hemming, Dr. Heather McIntosh, and Dr. Chan Hellman published research in 2017 that demonstrated that higher ACEs scores were associated with lower hope in a study of caregivers who brought children in for a child abuse medical investigation at a child advocacy center. Exploring the Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Hope: Journal of Child Sexual Abuse: Vol 26, No 8 (tandfonline.com)
In 2019, Dr. AliceAnn Crandall, Dr. Jacob Miller, Dr. Aaron Cheung, Dr. Lynneth Novilla, Dr. Rozalyn Glade, Dr. M. Lelinneth Novilla, Dr. Brianna Magnusson, Dr. Barbara Leavitt, Dr. Michael Barnes, and Dr. Carl Hanson observed in a study of adults that “higher counter-ACEs scores [i.e., positive childhood experiences] were associated with improved adult health and that counter-ACEs neutralized the negative impact of ACEs on adult health.”ACEs and counter-ACEs: How positive and negative childhood experiences influence adult health – ScienceDirect
A study by Whitaker, Dearth-Wesley, and Herman in 2020 showed that across levels of childhood adversity, greater childhood family connection was associated with greater flourishing among young adults with type 1 diabetes. Childhood Family Connection With Flourishing in Young Adulthood Among Those With Type 1 Diabetes | Pediatrics | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network
Finally, in 2016, Bethell, Gombojav, Dr. Michele Solloway, and Dr. Lawrence Wissow examined ACEs, resilience, family protective factors, and emotional, mental or behavioral conditions (EMB) in children and youth in the U.S. The authors found that children with ACEs had higher EMB than children without ACEs, but the presence of resilience was significantly associated with lower amounts of EMB for both children with and without ACEs. In addition, the prevalence of EMB was lower when family protective factors were present, even if the child had ACEs, although the presence of two or more ACEs decreased the effect. Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience and Mindfulness-Based Approaches: Common Denominator Issues for Children with Emotional, Mental, or Behavioral Problems (nih.gov)

Who’s using PACEs science?

Many people, organizations, agencies, systems and communities are beginning to implement trauma-informed, resilience-building practices based on PACEs science.

Pediatricians (here’s an update on the Children’s Clinic) and public health clinics are screening patients for ACEs. By the end of 2017, between 1,000 and 2,000 pediatricians had integrated ACEs screening into their practices. Here’s an article about Kaiser Permanente pediatricians in Northern California who have started screening kids for ACEs. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, MacArthur genius award winner, recommends physicians adding ACE screening to measurement of other vital signs, such as blood pressure. A rural health clinic in Pueblo, CO, changed its medical practice after it integrated ACEs screening. A family physician in Tennessee educates his opioid patients about their ACEs, and it helps motivate them to heal themselves. The physician also understands that ACEs leads to damage that is chronic and, thus, he treats addictions as he does diabetes, as a chronic disease.
Many schools — including schools in San Francisco, CA, Spokane, WA, San Diego, CA, and Walla Walla, WA — have integrated healing-centered/trauma-informed practices into classrooms, playgrounds and school policies. These schools have seen 90 percent drops in suspensions after one year; after three years, the schools no longer expel students and some no longer even have the need for in-school suspensions. The grades, test scores and graduation rates increased, and the students most benefitted were those with the highest ACE scores. By the end of 2017, several hundred schools across the U.S. were integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs science.
Head Start (early childhood education program) in Kansas City has integrated trauma-informed practices in a program called Head Start Trauma Smart. (NYTimes article about the program.)
Home-based early childhood intervention, such as Child First. (NYTimes article about the program.)
Police departments and courts have integrated trauma-informed approaches. Safe Babies Courts have integrated PACEs science in resilience-building practices that provide wrap-around services for families; a year after participating in Safe Babies Courts, 99 percent of the children suffer no further abuse. Some prisons are beginning to educate inmates about PACEs science.
Homeless shelters and the faith-based community are integrating practices based on PACEs research. At the heart of their approach is educating those who are homeless and people in rescue missions about PACEs science; it often changes their whole understanding of their behavior, because they realize that they weren’t born bad, that they had no control over what happened to them as children, that they coped appropriately, given what was available to them, and that they can change. Batterers intervention programs that have integrated PACEs science have reduced recidivism rates from what was accepted — 20 to 60 percent — to zero to four percent.
Cities and states are integrating practices based on PACEs science. By the end of 2017, several hundred communities around the U.S. had launched PACEs initiatives. This report on self-healing communities describes how integrating ACEs science drastically reduced youth suicide, teen pregnancy, juvenile arrests, and high-school drop-out rates — all at the same time — in communities in Washington State that integrated practices based on PACEs science.
Research on families shows that interventions — such as Nurse-Family Partnership, Healthy Steps, and Child First — can improve the lives of parents and children. Evidence-based parenting practices (Incredible Years, Triple P Parenting, etc.), increase the health of parents and children.

Resources:

Growing Resilient Communities provides guidelines and tools for communities to launch and grow local PACEs initiatives, and measure the progress of their work.

What does trauma-informed mean?

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAHMSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a trauma-informed approach refers to how an organization or community thinks about and responds to children and adults who have experienced or may be at risk for experiencing trauma. In this approach, the whole community understands the prevalence and impact of ACEs, the role trauma plays in people’s lives, and the complex and varied paths for healing and recovery.

A trauma-informed approach asks: “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?” It is designed to avoid re-traumatizing already traumatized people, with a focus on “safety first” (including emotional safety), and a commitment to do no harm. But a trauma-informed approach is most successful when an organization or community builds policies and practices based on a foundation of ACEs science.

Resources:

SAMHSA overview of what trauma-informed is and isn’t

National Center for Trauma-Informed Care

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach — Introduces a concept of trauma and offers a framework for how an organization, system, or service sector can become trauma-informed. Includes a definition of trauma (the three “E’s”), a definition of a trauma-informed approach (the four “R’s”), 6 key principles, and 10 implementation domains.

Any legislation or federal policies?

Updates on U.S. state and federal legislation can be found in the State ACEs Resolutions and Laws section of State PACEs Action on PACEsConnection.com. Some examples:

California legislature resolution to reduce ACEs

Massachusetts bill on trauma-informed schools

Vermont attempt to pass ACEs bill

Overview of state, federal legislation

US Department of Health and Human Services guidelines to state health directors (and the letter to state health directors)

All resources:

CDC ACE Study site

A Critical Assessment of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study at 20 Years (attached)

Wikipedia — Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

The 10 ACE Questions (and 14 resilience survey questions)

Harvard University Center on the Developing Child (neurobiology of toxic stress)

Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (Canada)

ACEsTooHigh.com – News site covering PACEs research and practices

PACEsConnection.com – Social network (with 60,000+ members across sectors) and more than 400 community sites that support ACEs initiatives in cities, counties, states, regions and nations.

WhatIsEpigenetics.com – News site covering epigenetics

Epigenetics — Explainers and backgrounders about epigenetics

National Center for Trauma-Informed Care

Community Resilience Cookbook — Nine case studies of cities and states that are integrating PACEs research)

Videos:

ACE Study video (three minute trailer)

Video: Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development (2 min)

How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime (16-minute TED Talk by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris)

Books:

Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity, by Nadine Burke Harris, 2018.

Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease by Robin Karr-Morse with Meredith S. Wiley

The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy, and My Life, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

For other books, go to the ACEs Connection Books community.

Documentaries:

Paper Tigers — What does it mean to be a trauma-informed school? And how do you educate teens whose childhood experiences have left them with a brain and body ill-suited to learn? This film follows six students through a year in America’s first trauma-informed high school.

Resilience — Resilience chronicles how trailblazers in pediatrics, education, and social welfare are using cutting-edge science and field-tested therapies to protect children from the insidious effects of toxic stress.

CAREgivers — How is the professional care provider affected emotionally and physically, and who helps them?

For a list of all documentaries addressing PACEs science, and how to access them, go here.

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Jane Stevens
Publisher, ACEsTooHigh.com
Founder, PACEs Connection

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MS Mary SoleroMember

If individuals want society to be less aggressive, more calm, less reactive, and more cooperative and collaborative… For the developing brain to develop the capacity for empathy, compassion, and all that comes to mind when thinking about what it means to be human, it requires certain developmental and social experiences at crucial junctures. Drywall Installation Arlington Drywall Contractor Pros

11/6/252:11 AM

FMFormer Member

ACE Science is woefully limited by leaving out everything about the development of the stress response system and healthy brain architecture, Resiliency is developed in infancy via a secure attachment. A secure and loving attachment in infancy develops a brain’s limbic and cortical regulation over the brainstem’s reactivity leading to control over violent, aggressive and impulsive behavior. Focusing on anything but healthy early brain development will always be radically suboptimal.

If people want the society to be less violent and more cooperative and collaborative, more relaxed and less reactive… the developing brain needs certain developmental and relational experiences at critical points in time in order for a brain to bring forth the capacity for empathy and compassion and everything one thinks of when one considers what it means to be human.

3/7/2010:33 AM

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

We’re in the process of revising our ACEs Science 101 PPT, Elaine. We’ll post it when it’s finished.

3/4/2010:09 AM

ES Elaine SpicerMember

My question: is there a powerpoint that goes along with the ACES Science 101?

Thank you!

3/4/209:48 AM

Dale FletcherMember

Gail Kennedy (ACEs Connection Staff) posted:

Dale- i encourage you to post your question to the ACEs in the Faith Based community!

I did that too Gail. Thanks!!

9/18/1910:32 AM

Gail KennedyMember

Dale- i encourage you to post your question to the ACEs in the Faith Based community!

9/18/1910:30 AM

Dale FletcherMember

I’m presenting a talk to a group of Pastors on ACES but the slide deck on ACES that I received does not have any slides on Neuroplasticity, from either a science perspective or from a biblical perspective.

Do any of you have a few slides that you’d be willing to share with me?

Thanks so much in advance!!

Have an awesome day!

9/18/1910:02 AM

Dominic CappelloMember

May I stress the link between family trauma and poverty. Living without resources means lack of access to survival resources like food, safe shelter, medical care, behavioral health care and transport to vital services. It also means lacking the resources to thrive: family centered schools, parent support, early childhood learning programs, youth mentors and job training. ACEs prevention programs, if it is to include our most vulnerable children and families, can build into theor strategic plan and priorities the strengthening of ten key family resources. For more information on a data-driven and cross-sector approach that addresses health disparities please visit www.resilienceleaders.org

5/22/182:41 PM

Gail KennedyMember

Thanks for identifying that, Dale! I just fixed it.

12/11/174:01 PM

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/n…/article3306980.html

Dale FletcherMember

Hi Jane,

FYI – a link above in the paragraph:

Who’s using ACEs science?

– Faith-Based Community – is broken. I found the new link:

Hope this helps! Have a great day!

Dale

12/11/1710:37 AM

Emily Read DanielsMember

Jane, this is great! Great! I love ACES Connection; I am grateful for the resource. It is connecting me to fabulous people and fabulous efforts – thank you!

But there is one “bone of contention” that I will pick – this reference list is missing the work of Bessel Van Der Kolk, Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Bruce Perry… we DESPERATELY NEED TO MOVE BEYOND COGNITIVE/BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES to treating trauma. As someone that has YEARS of experience working with children and teens and working with that kind of approach to treating depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance misuse, cutting, ODD – you name it, I have worked with it – it’s an epic fail. EPIC! The emerging modalities of treatment (e.g. somatic experiencing, trauma-informed yoga, trauma drama, rhythmic movement and music, etc.) make way for regulating the body’s stress response!

We are a culture OBSESSED with the mind and the power of the mind – to the detriment of the body. We must remember that when someone is struggling with anxiety, depression, rage, etc., the individual is experiencing an overwhelming visceral body experience.

I just had to share this…in all the trauma-informed training and efforts I see going on, I am thrilled. But then I get “un-thrilled” when it’s the same means of practice we have been endorsing and implementing for years (without success!). It’s time to move beyond behavioral and cognitive behavioral approaches to resolving trauma.

10/24/1712:12 PM

❤️ 6

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thank you for your comment, Vincent, and for all the work you did that provided the solid foundation for this new understanding of us humans!

9/24/1711:19 PM

Vincent J. Felitti, MDMember

Jane, I am repeatedly grateful to you for your skills in disseminating all this information so interestingly and understandably. Thank you!

9/24/179:54 PM

❤️ 2 👍 1

Jane StevensPublisher, ACEsTooHigh; founder, PACEs Connection

Thanks, Melissa & Paul. If there’s anything else we need to add, let me know.

1/20/1611:38 AM

Melissa L. Baker, MPHMember

Jane, this is SUCH a valuable compilation to have in one place!

i will use these resources and links in my next presentation.

thanks!

1/20/164:20 AM

Learn about PACEs Connection & who we are.

Paul GilmoreMember

Thank you for this concise review of ACE’s. My senior research project looks at the use of ACE scores in serving adjudicated youth with histories of harmful sexual behaviors. Your post provides a lot of information and resources that will be helpful to my project. Much appreciated!

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Comments

Carey Sipp commented:
Thanks for posting, Laura! For posting this, and so many more blogs over the years. I’m thinking of the ones YOU’VE written (you are…

Carey Sipp commented:
Thanks, Jeoff. A lot of great relationships and ongoing work came from this incredible gathering. It laid the groundwork for deepening…

David Dooley commented:
Thank you for commenting, Mr. Holmes. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Can you give me an example?

Tommy Holmes commented:
I loved how you highlighted the connection between ACEs and community resilience! It’s so important to empower people with this…

Patrick Anderson commented:
This one landed, Dr. Long. What I’d underline is that you’ve framed being pushed out as a pattern rather than a run of bad luck — and…

Robert Hawk commented:
That story is heartbreaking and really shows how history and present-day realities can intersect. Reading about Black history in China…

David Dooley commented:
Thank you for writing, Mr. Anderson. You wrote… “Your instinct that the utopia requires entirely new forms of parenting education that…

Cecilia Pace commented:
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Neurofeedback helps military family overcome suicidality, depression

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedanxiety, depression, life, mental-health, traumacareysipp

Carey Sipp 11/19/188:05 PM

Stacey Breitmann, trauma survivor, mom, military wife, neurofeedback advocate and coach.

“I want to see as many troubled families and individuals as possible – especially people such as I, who have experienced multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) – have access to neurofeedback. It has changed my life by changing my brain. I grew up in a horrific situation, never able to trust being safe. Stress would take me back to that childhood place of feeling terrified. Neurofeedback helped me become more rational, as my brain was trained to function with less stress. Now that I am not in constant panic, I can see the parts of our lives that are not going the way we want them to go and can look at these challenges with clarity and openness instead of fear and blame, shame, or guilt,” says Stacey Breitmann, trauma survivor, mom, military wife, and neurofeedback advocate.

For the Breitmann family in North Georgia, the last few years have been intensely stressful. Todd, a Lt. Col. in the Air Force for 24 years, retired in 2012, and fell into depression and anxiety when his military career came to an end. In an attempt to change the mood by changing the focus and location, the family bought a farm, sold it, tried life in a Winnebago for a couple of years while homeschooling their daughters on the road. Finally, when they settled in North Georgia in 2016, family stresses and Todd’s depression became so crippling that he became suicidal. Residential treatment seemed to be the best option.

In Todd’s absence, his wife Stacey did what good military wives do: She ran the household – as the mom and the dad. But the stress of being left behind this time were life-threatening for her too. Her fears that Todd might take his life during treatment drove Stacey beyond depression into being suicidal, too.

To read the rest of this post by Carey Sipp, ACEs Connection SE Regional Community Facilitator, click here.

https://careysipp.com/2018/11/…cidality-depression/

Carey Smith Sipp

carey.pacescommunites@gmail.com

Why I believe Gregory Williams and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedgregory-williams, healing, health, mental-health, ptsd, shattered-by-the-darkness, traumacareysipp

Carey Sipp 2/5/197:55 AM

When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others.

Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study). The groundbreaking research shows that the more childhood trauma you experience, the greater your likelihood of having serious illness, social and emotional problems — a life punctuated with trauma and drama.

Gregory Williams learned about the ACE Study around the same time he started telling people about his childhood trauma. That he learned about it as he began speaking his truth is no accident. That the science explained so much about his life and touches so many aspects of it – personally and professionally – has made him passionate about spreading the word about ACEs science. His passion is, for many reasons, an incredible gift to the world.

A little background on ACEs science

The original ACE Study queried more than 17,000 people in San Diego in the mid 1990s. The participants — mostly white, college-educated, all with jobs and great health care — completed a questionnaire of nearly 200 questions about their health and wellbeing. Researchers distilled the results of those questions to 10 types of childhood trauma that most people had experienced as children in their families, up to age 18. Five questions asked about physical, emotional or sexual abuse, and emotional or physical neglect. Five more asked about family dysfunction – violence against the mother, parental separation, mental illness, alcoholism or other addiction, and incarceration of a family member.

The study showed that 64% of the respondents had at least one ACE (adverse childhood experience), and that ACEs usually did not occur alone; if you have one ACE, there’s an 87% chance you have two or more. For the 12% of respondents with an ACE score of four, the consequences proved serious and expensive: The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; alcoholism, 700 percent; attempted suicide, 1,220 percent. For people with an ACE score of 6 or higher, the risks are grave, literally. Their lifespan is shortened by 20 years.

The ACE Study produced 70 research papers and led to 37 US states doing their own ACE surveys, which produced similar results. Several nations and cities, as well as hundreds of organizations, have also done ACE surveys. The ACE Study has led to more than 1,000 research publications that show the link between ACEs and all types of disease, including auto-immune diseases, skin cancer, diseases of the eye, etc. — each supporting the original finding that childhood trauma causes adult disease and dysfunction.

There are many reasons why this is the case. A big part of it, though, can be explained by brain science and physiology. Toxic stress harms the structure and function of the brains of children. Basically, children with high ACE scores become “wired” for “flight, fight, freeze” behavior, and their lives – with higher incidence of illness, violence, drama, risky behavior, and trauma – are the living proof.

In addition to the fact that the wiring — the connections of brain cells (synapses) – becomes more developed in the parts of the brain that deal with survival than the parts of the brain that deal with long-term planning, the stress hormones of cortisol and adrenaline flooding a stressed body cause, over time, increased inflammation of all organ systems. At the cellular level, constant stress is like an ongoing chemical boil in the body. Kids who are constantly exposed to toxic stress are likely to grow into teens and adults whose brains and bodies are set to react to everyday challenges with fight, flight, or freeze fear. Think of an engine constantly revved at the highest revolution per minute. Such an engine is likely to break down more frequently and burn out more quickly.

The ACE Study was developed by two visionary physicians courageous enough to risk their reputations to make the connection between toxic stress and adult health issues. The life work of Drs. Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda, the study helps make sense of some of what has happened to Gregory in the decades since the day, as a 17-year-old with strength and a voice, he looked his father in the eye and told him to STOP the horrific sexual abuse he had experienced daily for 13 years.

Childhood trauma makes some people sick; it makes others want to die. Gregory helps get this point across by sharing the truths of his resulting heart condition, surgery, and challenges with suicidality, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, and perfectionism.

Borrowed time, buffering factors, resilience, hope.

Gregory, with an ACE score of 8, also knows he would be living on borrowed time, and would most likely be dead, were it not for his also being an example of another aspect of the science: how buffering factors – in his case, caring relatives – helped offset some of the negative physiological consequences of the abuse, helping him become somewhat resilient, which he will share more about in subsequent work.

How Gregory survived the pain, shame, guilt, fear, and the physical manifestations of those emotions – the toxic stew of stress hormones that eat away at every cell in the body – can be explained, in part, perhaps, by research on resilience, another part of ACEs science.

Resilience research shows what helps people build the ability to respond to adversity and survive. We know from these studies what a profoundly positive impact that one consistently caring adult can have on a child who is being abused.

That Gregory survived is a miracle. That he had caring adults in his life, I believe, made all the difference. Even though, perhaps, they didn’t know what was going on, an aunt and uncle whom Gregory saw several times a week from the ages of four through about age eight, provided a home base of safety and stability, love and some joy in the midst of the terror you’ll read about soon.

I tell you this because despite Gregory’s story being so horrific, it is because of who he is as a person who somehow maintained optimism, that this is also a story of hope and triumph over adversity. His recognition of the people who loved him as a child is to me one of the most important parts of his story. It is also a call to action to all of us to look for opportunities to be that caring adult for a child, and to be the caring adult to question why a child is upset, is acting out, or is not thriving.

Explanations, divine timing, how speaking his truth is saving Gregory’s life, and will help save the lives of others.

For Greg, discovering ACEs science – information shared with him by a close friend and physician at Baylor College of Medicine – was a life-changing moment. ACEs science might explain why a valve in his heart had given way and needed to be repaired when he was 48. It certainly explained why he suffered from OCD. The science helped make sense of why he could not sleep – his hypervigilance – even though it’s been 38 years since the last time his father abused him. Even after his father’s death in 2002.

Yes, darkness had always brought fear, but Gregory’s new understanding of the physical effects of that fear – the impact of cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress hormones — helped him make sense of his health and mental health issues, and also inspired him to speak the truth about what happened to him to anyone who would listen, and especially to physicians. That Gregory works with and hires physicians is one more amazing aspect of his remarkable and profoundly important story.

For Gregory, speaking his truth is saving his life. When abuse survivors cannot tell the truth, cannot share their stories, or when their stories are not believed, the results can be toxic. The stress of trauma builds up in the body. There is much science to support the statement best summed up as the title of a best-selling book on toxic stress and trauma: The Body Keeps The Score.* Gregory’s failing heart valve is an anecdotal case in point.

Out of respect to his mother, Gregory did not share his story publicly, until her passing in 2017. It was when he was able to share his story without fear of harming his mother that this next phase of Gregory’s life’s work was revealed, and began in earnest.

Though I’ve not met Gregory in person, and have only known him for a few months, I know we share a bond that covers lifetimes and a faith that is as deep and wide, as we are both abuse survivors and know, without a lot of elaboration, much about what comes with that experience.

We both know that it is remarkable that we’ve survived into our fifties and sixties. It is fair to say that we both believe our meeting, and my connecting Gregory to his publisher, is no accident.

And then there is the way Gregory and I met, which is as the result of my being offered the dream position of opening up the southeastern United States to help build communities for an organization that advances ACEs science. I’d hoped for that opportunity for five years before the funding came for me to be hired by ACEs Connection, an international social network dedicated to advancing ACEs science, preventing and healing childhood trauma, and building resilience. It was through his research and finding ACEs Connection that Gregory found my address and included me in a mass emailing about his book. I was one of a handful of people who answered the email.

I answered his request for ideas about how to help him get the word out about his book because I wanted to help, and I because wanted to know more about someone who would share the most intimate, sad, dark corners of his life with others, yet who looked so happy about doing it.

Speaking with Gregory, I immediately understood: After having the story bottled up for decades, his being able to speak and write about his abuse is cathartic, healing, and again, is literally saving his life.

It is nothing short of incredible to me though, that in less than seven months since I answered Gregory’s introductory email, Gregory’s self-published book sold more than 100,000 copies, his book is now being published and distributed by a major publishing house (Health Communications, which published a book of mine 11 years ago), he is working on his own radio show (Breaking the Silence), and he is creating, via the book, radio show, his website, and his work with me to take ACEs science into medical schools, an important space for others to be heard, believed, and affirmed.

Further, Gregory is playing an important role in his own community by managing the Baylor College of Medicine ACEs Connection community site. That site is one of more than 170 geographic community sites supporting ACEs initiatives in those communities. Among the sectors represented are pediatrics, education, justice, social work and more. Their members meet and look for ways to bring ACEs science and trauma-informed practices into their communities. Doing so helps communities in many ways, as evidence shows improved school attendance and grades, decreased crime, improved health outcomes and more in areas communities that have been keeping track of the effects of this work. ACEs Connection would welcome your community group into our growing community of communities which includes neighborhoods, cities, regions, states, and nations dedicated to preventing and healing trauma.

Gregory’s work, and the work of ACEs Connection, is creating the space for millions of people – and thousands of physicians – to be educated, engaged, and offered the chance to become activists to help prevent childhood trauma and its devastating lifelong impacts.

That Gregory has the trust, respect, and attention of physicians can change medicine, and more.

Gregory’s experiences are likely to have special impact on the lives of the one in four girls and one in five boys who are victims of sexual abuse. For millions upon millions of adult men and women survivors, Gregory’s story and awareness of ACEs science will help explain the “why” of so many of their lifelong physical and mental health challenges, and why their lives – our lives – have seemed, or been, harder than most. For many of us who experienced a high load of toxic stress, our brains were literally wired to create and be attracted to more toxic stress. This revelation will, I hope, inspire a tremendous amount of self-empathy, and empathy from and for others. Yes, the old saw is true: Hurt people do hurt people. Understanding the why behind the hurts, the addiction, the impulsivity, the violence, can help stop the pain, shame, guilt, and hurt.

My hope is that Gregory’s story will help prevent sexual abuse and other childhood traumas, and I know that is his greatest hope, too.

That Gregory speaks to physicians, has their respect, trust, and attention, and has the complete backing of his employer, the Baylor College of Medicine, is especially heartening to me, and to others who advocate for medical professionals to recognize childhood trauma as the root cause of most all adult disease, most all social ills.

I know we both want to

see the science of childhood trauma and resilience research taught in medical schools, so physicians can better understand why a patient is suffering from a stress-related illness, and, in addition to prescribing traditional medical interventions, can also offer recommendations and supports that may help reverse the damage done by years of toxic stress. Imagine a prescription to “spend a day in nature” or “go help coach a little league baseball team” or “join a choral group”? Physicians who are prescribing just such “therapies” are seeing success in programs to prevent opioid addiction relapse, depression, and more.
see physicians ask what’s going on “at home,” and ask, even if informally, questions about their patients’ trauma history, even if it is on an ACE survey that only shows the total score and is not included in a medical record,
see obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians, and family practice physicians ask pregnant women about their own childhood trauma, as studies show that pregnant women who are aware of their own childhood traumas, and of the impact of childhood trauma, are less likely to experience post-natal depression or to abuse their children.
see kindergartens, elementary, middle and high schools become places where children aren’t shamed and blamed for acting out and asked, “What’s wrong with you?” but are instead asked, “What’s happened to you? How can I help?” and where their parents are not shamed or blamed, either. When parents understand more about the lifelong health consequences of trauma, the likelihood of children being traumatized decreases; children who feel safer at home do better in school.
help people learn that the body is resilient, our brains and bodies want to heal. Given understanding, acceptance, community, and information about resilience research, people with high ACEs scores can develop greater resilience as individuals, and in their families, workplaces, and communities.
see communities foster groups of laypeople and professionals from all sectors, including education, medicine, justice, the arts, mental health, and housing, to identify and prevent trauma including structural racism and income, health, and education inequality, as racism and poverty are as every bit as stressful and toxic to a child as any other type of abuse.

Though we didn’t know each other through our years of parenting – Gregory has two adult sons and three grandchildren, and I have a son and a daughter – we both vowed to stop the cycles of abuse with our own children. We are both grateful to have relatively healthy, happy adult children, and worked hard and mindfully to prevent cycles of addiction and abuse.

That Gregory works for a leading medical institution that supports his promulgating ACEs science is no accident. That I work for an organization that is all about preventing and healing childhood trauma; building resilience, creating a trauma-informed world, is no accident. Again, our faith is affirmed as we marvel at the timing!

I hope that helping to bring this book into the light, and Gregory’s using his radio show, prodigious talents as a writer, speaker, and interviewer, as well as his leadership position at Baylor College of Medicine, will raise awareness among doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, teachers, law enforcement officers and policymakers of the need to learn and teach all professions about the devastating consequences of childhood trauma. I hope policymakers will hear the alarm to understand that policies that punish people for the addictions and behaviors that are the direct result of childhood trauma do not help, but instead further traumatize already traumatized people.

I hope Gregory’s audience is wide, loyal, accepting, and encouraging.

I truly believe Gregory will change the world by taking this book into medical schools and teaching physicians and nurses about the root cause of most adult illness: childhood trauma. He understands and makes clear that while the sexual abuse was the most dramatic part of his trauma, that the secrecy, isolation, neglect, verbal, and other physical abuse was deadly as well. This is, indeed, important information to share as policymakers learn about creating schools, hospitals, businesses, cities, states, nations that are about preventing and healing childhood trauma, and building resilience. As we face, in our communities, adverse community experiences including structural racism, bullying, income inequality, and, in our world, increasing numbers of adverse climate experiences – the loss of homes, livelihood, a way of life – as the result of wildfires, storms, floods and other natural disasters, I hope we will become gentler with each other and more mindful of protecting our environment, our natural resources.

I look forward to Gregory’s subsequent books about how he is continuing to heal, as I believe he will shed light on childhood trauma and its impact across the lifespan. He will educate a new generation of physicians and allied health professionals about ACEs science and resilience research and findings, and share ways patients can use their own agency to find life solutions that do not include addiction and risky behaviors to handle their fears.

ACEs scores and “obits” and hopes

In the effort to demystify, remove stigma, and help prevent AIDs some 30 years ago, families started sharing that their loved ones had died of acquired immune deficiency (AIDS). Some shame was lifted. Acceptance was more widespread. Empathy helped spur funding research into cures, and campaigns to raise awareness. Education, and prevention, helped slow the spread of the disease.

As suicide has become epidemic, many families of loved ones are choosing to share, in obituaries, the cause of death as suicide, in hopes of raising awareness, reducing the stigma, encouraging others to get help.

Someday perhaps ACEs scores will be listed in obituaries, in hopes of people understanding the direct correlation between childhood trauma and adult disease and premature death. As a woman in my early sixties, I’ve lost many friends who had high ACE scores, and am watching others suffer from chronic diseases that are, no doubt, related to their ACEs. I know I want my ACE score listed in my obituary, not as a point of shame or pride, but in hopes of its being a “teachable moment.” I also want to include information about resilience research, as in, “despite having an ACE score of 8, Sipp credited her long life to the exercise, diet, community work, and other healthy endeavors that were part of resilience research, an evidence-based way of helping to reduce the impact of ACEs, which she practiced and promoted as a part of her work.”

That Gregory and I have both been able to share our truths, learn about ACEs science and resilience research, and find joy and purpose in helping to prevent childhood trauma will, I hope, prevent our obituaries from being published any time soon! I hope that is true, too, for the millions who will experience “aha moments” as they learn the truths about the importance of our preventing trauma in the lives of others, be it by preventing blame, shame, bullying, racism, and violence, or by our promoting health, acceptance, empathy and love, especially toward children and their families. As families and communities heal, I believe we will heal the earth. Learning and teaching ourselves how to be kinder and gentler to ourselves, each other, our earth? There is nothing more sacred; no work more vitally important.

*The Body Keeps the Score Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van der Kolk, MD, 2014

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Carey Smith Sipp

carey.pacescommunites@gmail.com

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Trauma tried to kick down the door. Compassion is helping me heal.

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedcarey-sipp, family, healing-trauma, kicking-the-door-down, life, mental-health, self-compassion, trauma, writingcareysipp

Carey Sipp 1/26/207:03 AM

The artwork is an original piece titled “Someone at the Door” by Chicago artist Ken Shaw. I bought it about 35 years ago.

(The first part of this piece was written in-the-moment, as an email to a friend following what, for me, was a traumatic experience. The second part of this piece was written about 10 days later, as part of a healing reflection. It occurs to me that this experience, and the reflections, might help someone else experiencing trauma and/or seeking compassion for self or others.)

PART 1 – AN EMAIL TO A FRIEND AFTER THE TRAUMA.

A woman just banged on my door and damn-near broke it down. It scared the bejesus out of me. F*#k. Half-asleep I opened the door. She was looking for Jake. No Jake here.

I talked to her for a couple of seconds and then she reached into her purse for God-knows-what. THAT’S WHEN I FREAKED. Was she reaching for a gun or a knife? I didn’t know. I closed the door. She pushed and pushed against it, but I finally got it closed and locked.

Then she got mad. And started yelling and then kicking the door. Kicking the door. Kicking the door.

Heart in my throat. I found my phone and called the police.

They arrived and found her next door, banging on that front door, looking for Jake.

They got her down the steps and have been out in the street with her for 15 minutes. God. CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) City.

Drunk, doped, and psycho people freak me out.

I was already agitated having gone to sleep worried about the political tension between the USA and Iran. These existential threats weigh heavy on me. Potential war. Australia burning out of control. Floods swamping the South. Then there is my dog, Cosmo, barking, barking, barking.

My heart is pounding out of my chest.

Writing this is helping me calm down.

I am here. It is now.

I’ll play Scrabble on my phone. I’ve read that playing a game after a traumatic event can help prevent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I wonder if it can help folks who, like me, already have Complex PTSD and don’t want it to get worse because of some random-ass occurrence like a large and apparently out-of-control woman trying to break down your door while accusing you of harboring a guy named Jake?

Okay. Breathe deeply. I wonder if the police will check on me or not. Damn. I could be having a heart attack and they wouldn’t even know. And I could do something about that. I could call them and say, “Please come check on me.” Okay. My heart rate is slowing down a bit.

Damn. I had gone to bed early because I didn’t sleep well the last two nights. Both nights I’d checked my phone during the night. That is not a smart thing to do when I want a good night’s rest. I flunk sleep hygiene.

Well, the police left. I don’t know what happened to that woman.

She was about 5’9 and probably weighed 180. I’d opened the door thinking it was my housemate’s son banging on the door. Maybe he and his mom had driven straight through the night and were back from their trip.

I’m so damned glad I got the door closed. She just kept kicking it. For about two minutes she kept kicking on it. I cannot believe the police didn’t ask me if I wanted to press charges. I get that pressing charges would just extend the trauma. But they didn’t even come back up the steps to check on me or call. Nada.

What a weenie I am. There are people in flood zones, fire zones, war zones and I’m freaking out because a tanked-up human tried to kick the door down. But, trauma is trauma. A friend would remind me not to diminish how terrified I was; I am. Again, she reached into her purse, I thought she had a gun. Guns terrify me. Absolutely terrify me. Mention them and sometimes I can smell gun oil.

Okay. I am gonna be alright. I’m gonna play Scrabble for a few rounds. I suck at

Scrabble. I’ll do it anyway. I’ll get up and dance to discharge all this adrenaline. I remember the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) advice and push against the wall. This helps.

I put my back against the wall and breathe and push, using my thigh muscles to really press in. I turn around and face the wall and push, push, push on the wall.

This helps. I jump up and down. I do pushups.

I have power and agency. I am strong and I’m in my body. This helps. I have choices. I have choices.

I can drink water and eat and go to the bathroom and turn on music or a movie or write. I have choices. I am alive and I have choices. It is 2 a.m. or so and I can write some more and I have choices. Thank God for choices.

PART 2 – A FEW DAYS LATER:

I look back on the whole experience of the woman at my door and I am overwhelmed with compassion for myself as a little girl. When I was a child, my father, who was a traumatized human himself, would often wake us all up in the middle of the night after a night of drinking. He fought with my mom. He had a hair-trigger temper. He grabbed her by her hair, twisted her arm behind her back. Smacked her.

One time he broke the glass to get into the back door.

Another time there were gunshots.

Guns were always around and, in my mind, were a constant threat. I was always afraid that he would use one on Mother or himself or on all of us. Or one of our pets.

And so as I reflected on the recent night and all of those nights as a terrified, helpless child, I felt tremendous compassion for myself that I went through that kind of trauma and drama night after night. And that day after day I would want to go back to sleep and not go to school because I was so very tired. But Mother always pushed me to get dressed and out the door to school so she could go to work.

Never, that I remember, did we ever stay home after one of those crazy nights.

So that little me would go to school. Lots of times I would get carsick on the way to school, get there, go in, and have a hard time not throwing up.

It wasn’t until third grade, when I began to have sleepovers at friends’ houses, that I got my first glimpse that other people’s dads didn’t break into their homes in the middle of the night.

In addition to feeling tremendous compassion for my younger self, I thought about the woman who tried to kick the door down. I began having compassion for her. Hell, if some things in my life hadn’t gone SO WELL, I could have been her.

I also know the experience of this woman coming to my door was random, not intentional, as the adverse experiences in my childhood were. I began wondering how she ended up in this neighborhood. She is somebody — a daughter, sister, aunt, niece, maybe even a mom — and she is NOT her behavior. She could have just been out for a cocktail and somebody could have slipped a “Mickey” into her drink. Or she could have been out drinking because she was in horrific grief. We never know why people do random, sometimes bizarre things.

My dad? I feel compassion for him too. I have for years, thank God. I’ve felt compassion for both of my parents. I think he drank and acted out because he was in pain from his childhood trauma, and from World War II, when, as a young submariner, there is no telling what kind of fear he experienced.

His trauma doesn’t excuse his violence. But seeking to understand the roots of his behavior has softened my heart and helped me to forgive and move on and to have, sometimes for long stretches, healthy relationships with men I have loved.

I am grateful that I can look at my father and mother, both of whom terrified me, with compassion. They were also terrified and terrorizing. Like the woman at my door.

And THAT is the whole point of integrating this new knowledge about ACEs science into our lives, right? A “turnaround”?

Somebody in the cycle has to stop and connect with the reality that the behavior of someone who is acting out – drinking or raging or whatever – is not about us.

It is about the person who is acting out and something that happened to them, some pain they are expressing in a way that is the best way they can in the moment. And probably most of their acting out is a cry for help. I have to remember that.

And in my job with ACEs Connection, I know I have to remember this and move forward with compassion, and model this to the people with whom I work. I want to show people how to not traumatize and terrorize already traumatized people. And that is why I need to practice self care, compassion, and compassion for others.

Days later, as my body still works to settle down after those flight-fight-freeze moments of terror, this means I treat myself gently.

Carey Smith Sipp

carey.pacescommunites@gmail.com

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Christine Cissy WhiteIt’s not trauma-informed unless it’s informed by trauma survivors.

Carey:
What an important, beautiful and clear piece of writing to show the then/now/then/now push and pull when it comes to our responses, reactions, and how we relate to ourselves during and after current fear and trauma. It all gets tangled and intertwined. I appreciate you sharing your responses and how you calibrated over time. I especially love your current compassion for the child you were who didn’t have the same knowledge, resources, languages, and tools and then the compassion for others past and present, including those who caused your fear. That moved me so much. Keep writing!

Warmly,
Cis

1/27/202:40 PM

Carey SippFormer Volunteer Co-Director, PACEs Connection Revitalization

Tina Cain posted:

I wish I had my NFB machine I’m gonna get. If you wanted, I would come find you and I would do all I could to help. I’m so sorry.

Tina – That is so sweet!

I love neurofeedback and have been doing it for two years. My NFB provider in Wilmington saw me two days later and it was a big help. I go weekly. Used to go twice a week. NFB is a big part of my self-care program! We should talk. We will talk. Thank you!

And I am doing well. Have wonderful friends here. A good EMDR therapist. I reached out for help. Looked at what went “right” that night (police here quickly; support from friends; I knew to practice extreme self care; it was random and I live in a normally extreme light peaceful neighborhood; etc.)

Thank you for your concern!

1/26/207:39 PM

FMFormer Member

I wish I had my NFB machine I’m gonna get. If you wanted, I would come find you and I would do all I could to help. I’m so sorry.

1/26/205:19 PM

LH Laura Haynes CollectorMember

Beautiful healing here!

1/26/2011:56 AM

Learn about PACEs Connection & who we are.

Dana BrownInterim (Volunteer) Executive Director PACEs Connection

Dearest Carey:
Thank you for your courageous, insightful, wise words, Carey Sipp. Your reflective thoughts carry a lifetime of pain, abuse, fear, hope, compassion, and love.

Compassion with self, and others in our lives who we have a relationship with, and folks in the public we don’t know well, permeates through your blog. Highlighting “voice and choice” when you didn’t have a voice (childhood – woman banging on your door) and your life’s evolution to deeply knowing you have choices (self-soothing strategies, the “turnaround”, the CRM model) will plant seeds of hope within all who read your piece.

Much Love and Light surrounding you, Carey, as your healing journey continues. I love you dearly…

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Comments

Carey Sipp commented:
Thanks for posting, Laura! For posting this, and so many more blogs over the years. I’m thinking of the ones YOU’VE written (you are…

Carey Sipp commented:
Thanks, Jeoff. A lot of great relationships and ongoing work came from this incredible gathering. It laid the groundwork for deepening…

David Dooley commented:
Thank you for commenting, Mr. Holmes. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Can you give me an example?

Tommy Holmes commented:
I loved how you highlighted the connection between ACEs and community resilience! It’s so important to empower people with this…

Patrick Anderson commented:
This one landed, Dr. Long. What I’d underline is that you’ve framed being pushed out as a pattern rather than a run of bad luck — and…

Robert Hawk commented:
That story is heartbreaking and really shows how history and present-day realities can intersect. Reading about Black history in China…

David Dooley commented:
Thank you for writing, Mr. Anderson. You wrote… “Your instinct that the utopia requires entirely new forms of parenting education that…

Cecilia Pace commented:
[heart] Pace, Cecilia reacted to your message:

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A Better Normal Friday, June 26th at Noon PDT: “Grief/Family Trauma in the Time of COVID-19”

August 10, 2026Uncategorizedemotional-sobriety, grief-and-covid, healing, health, life, mental-health, tian-dayton-x-grief, traumacareysipp

Carey Sipp 6/19/201:44 PM

Please join us for the community discussion of A Better Normal, our ongoing series in which we envision a future in which every community, organization and system has integrated practices based on ACEs science to create a better normal. The one we had wasn’t working very well.

“Grief/Family Trauma in the Time of COVID-19”

With Tian Dayton, PhD, psychologist, author. Moderated by ACEs Connection staff members Carey Sipp and Alison Cebulla

Friday, June 26th, 2020

Noon to 1pm, PDT (3 p.m. – 4 p.m. EDT)

Click here to register

As Tian Dayton, PhD, writes, “The uncertainty and unpredictability that are part and parcel of COVID-19 over time can produce many of the same trauma symptoms as we see when treating PTSD. But in this case, we’re not talking about a one-time event with a clear beginning, middle and end. Rather the length and duration here are unclear and the finish line is constantly in motion. We hear conflicting information and don’t know who to trust. We worry about what our future and the future of those we love might hold. This kind of daily atmosphere can lead to a kind of ‘anticipatory grief’.”

Dayton shares this quote from Stacey Colino of US News and World Repor t: ”Pre-trauma stress is a phenomenon you won’t find in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). The symptoms are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (including grief, sadness, worry, disturbing intrusive thoughts, sleep troubles and nightmares, and avoiding situations or activities that are reminiscent of the stressful event) but in this case, they stem from anticipatory anxiety about an event that may occur in the future.”

“The symptoms we’re describing here,” notes Dayton, “like anxiety, shock, disturbing thoughts and mood shifts can, if they remain unacknowledged or unattended to, morph into PTSD. Taking the time to work through the feelings that this period is bringing forth in us as they happen, can go a long way to acting as a preventative to later problems and life complications.”

During the discussion Dayton will strive to:

Cut through the emotional and psychological “red tape” of pre-trauma symptoms that might be keeping us immobilized.
Discuss anxiety or depression that may be leading us to act out in abusive or neglectful ways.
Look at symptoms that are making us want to eat, drink, or drug our way back to calm rather than adopt the healthy habits that will not only bring calm, but give us the life skills to carry forward that will enable us to change and grow.
Discuss the need to feel our feelings as we have them, so we can heal them, in the here and now, as having mini healings now may help us avoid the need for maxi healings later.
Discuss how pain from the past can get mixed up with today, leading us to be confused and overwhelmed.
Discuss how the present, the very real stress of today can take its toll on our peace of mind, as uncertainty, and conflicting reports as to what to do, can evoke our fight flight, freeze response.
Discuss the very significant anxiety about what the future will hold; what’s next? When will this be over and what will “over” look like? My world is changing; what does that mean for me?

Dayton will also help participants to look at the many faces of grief:

Anticipatory grief
Age correspondence reaction
Parental Inner Child Grief
Complicated grief/mourning
Inhibited grief
Cumulative grief
Collective grief
Normal grief

Dayton will also discuss post traumatic growth and share from her latest book, Maintaining Emotional Sobriety During COVID-19 and how it can help us see, as she says, “What’s getting triggered inside of you, as a window into your inner world, a way to get to know yourself, your coping styles and your manner of being in intimate relationships. You can learn. You can grow from adversity by meeting it with openness, humility and grace.”

Dayton is a Senior Fellow at The Meadows. She is the author of fifteen books including The Soulful Journey of Recovery, The ACoA Trauma Syndrome, Emotional Sobriety, Trauma and Addiction, Forgiving and Moving On andThe Living Stage. She has developed an approach for incorporating experiential work into treatment programs and group work, Relationship Trauma Repair RTR.

Dayton has a master’s degree in educational psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology and is a board certified trainer in psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy. She is a certified Montessori teacher, and is the director of The New York Psychodrama Training Institute. A nationally renowned speaker, expert, and consultant in psychodrama, trauma and addiction, adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs) and self-help related issues, Dayton was on the faculty at NYU for eight years teaching psychodrama.

She is also a fellow of the American Society of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy ASGPP, and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, Scholar’s Award, President’s Award and Gratitude Award. Dayton is the former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy and a member of the professional standards committee. She is also the winner of The Mona Mansell Award and The Ackerman/Black Award, and has been a guest expert on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Montel, Ricki Lake, John Walsh, Geraldo. Dayton blogs for Thrive Global and The Huffington Post.

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