Maybe you had a rough childhood. Perhaps there’s one singular moment you experienced as a kid that still haunts you. Or you may even have a hard time remembering extended periods of your childhood and don’t know why. All of these situations could be connected to adverse childhood experiences you encountered in your formative years. And the trauma from them very well may continue to negatively impact your life today—even driving your addictive behaviors.
What is Trauma?
VerywellMind.com defines trauma as a distressing event or experience that impacts your ability to cope and function. The fallout of trauma produces emotional, physical, and/or psychological harm as a result. Trauma can develop from one singular event or a series of ongoing experiences over an extended period of time. And it can happen anytime or anywhere.
For some people, experiencing a traumatic event can be difficult in the moment, but the effects of trauma eventually dissipate. However, when childhood trauma occurs as a result of adverse childhood experiences, its effects can be far-reaching.
Adverse Childhood Experiences, Explained
Adverse childhood experiences (also known as ACEs) are any potentially traumatic events that occur during your childhood (ages zero to 17). Such events may occur at a set period of time. Or they can also be specific aspects of your environment that negatively impact your sense of safety, stability, and bonding, shares the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A study by the CDC concluded that adverse childhood experiences are actually common in your formative years, as 61% of adults in the United States have experienced at least one ACE in their lifetime. Among US adults, 16% have even experienced four or more ACEs. Within the population, however, females and racial or ethnic minorities are the most likely to experience four or more ACEs.
When an adverse childhood experience happens to you, the toxic stress it generates can actually change your brain development and affect how your body responds to stress. These changes can consequently lead to physical and mental health problems as you grow into an adult. As many adults try to look back on the source of their struggles, they find that ACEs and trauma are very intertwined in their lives.
What is an Example of an Adverse Childhood Experience?
In 1998, a now well-known CDC-Kaiser Permanente study analyzed the impact of adverse childhood experiences on physical and mental health problems in over 17,000 adults, shares JoiningForcesforChildren.org. The researches divided these ACEs into three categories: abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Among those, the study identified 10 key adverse childhood experiences which are still commonly accepted as ACEs today, including:
- Physical Abuse: This involves activities causing intentional physical harm, including hitting, kicking, punching, throwing, burning, shaking, or beating.
- Emotional Abuse: Any behavior that negatively impacts a child’s mental health is considered emotional abuse. This may include threatening, rejecting, isolating, ridiculing, and purposefully not talking to a child.
- Sexual Abuse: Such abuse sexually engages or exploits a child directly, and includes unwanted touching, rape, child pornography, and indecent exposure.
- Emotional Neglect: This includes failing to meet a child’s emotional needs, ranging from ignoring the child or not providing social support.
- Physical Neglect: This type of neglect involves not providing food, clothing, medical care, shelter, and other basic physical needs.
- Mental Illness: Living with someone with a mental health disorder may model inappropriate behaviors and leave a child improperly cared for.
- An Incarcerated Parent: Having an incarcerated parent or caregiver exposes a child to single-parent challenges, feelings of abandonment, and potentially inappropriate behaviors modeled by the parent prior to imprisonment.
- Witnessing Your Mother Treated Violently: Seeing violence in the home is traumatic for a child in general, but especially seeing violence toward their primary caregiver—usually the mother—due to the child’s attachment to her.
- Substance Use in the Home: As a result of substance use in the home, the child may not be properly cared for, and the child can also be exposed to abuse, domestic violence, neglect, and other ACEs.
- Divorce: When divorce happens, a child is exposed to fighting, yet they also may be neglected in the process. The child may also feel responsible for the separation or unloved by their parents.
Addiction: The Long-Term Impact of ACEs and Trauma
So how can ACEs and trauma from your childhood affect your life as an adult? Because this trauma occurred while you were still developing, it can inflict damage later on in several different ways. You may be more prone to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, for example. Adverse childhood experiences can also cause mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Yet at Sana at Stowe, the most prominent long-term consequence of ACEs and trauma that we see is addiction. One of the developmental fallouts of adverse childhood experiences is your inability to regulate difficult emotions. As a result, it becomes easy to seek out substances as a way to provide temporary relief from your emotions. Over time, this unhealthy coping mechanism shifts into an addiction. And this only adds to the struggles your lingering childhood trauma continues to cause.
Heal Your Trauma and Addiction at Sana at Stowe
If you’re dealing with addiction, trauma from adverse childhood experiences may be the source. However, there is good news: with professional treatment, you can heal from both addiction and trauma at the same time. At Sana at Stowe, our trauma-informed addiction treatment team is ready to help you achieve long-term sobriety and reclaim your life. Contact us today to get started.
