Comment by bookofjoe 4 days ago
This is the first time I've heard of an ACE score; I had to look up what it stood for: https://www.christineortollcharity.org/post/adverse-childhoo...
I suspect I'm not the only one here in this boat.
Therapy is definitely the way to go here. They're professional unpackers. Plus I've never heard someone say they regretted starting therapy. I've heard a lot of people say they regretted quitting or waiting to start.
My wife had a really bad experience with therapy when she went with postpartum. It's not all sunshine and roses, and they can and will switch from "I care about you and want you to get better" to "I might need to send people over to your house who can separate you from your child" pretty quickly. Not seeing the therapist anymore produced a marked improvement in her affect.
I’m kind of worried about something like this where it backfires. Not sure it would be the therapist’s fault but in terms of an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. The nagging curiosity of wanting to unpack my baggage is so insanely small. I am mostly fine and don’t dwell on it much at all. As I’m beginning to think it would be nice to verbalize the past a bit and how that’s made me who I am, I’m also not necessarily looking for change and it seems overwhelmingly risky that opening the bottle may actually cause me to get depressed or somehow interfere with the good in my present life. For that reason I’ve held off. It’s still a curiosity of mine, it’s also probably going to take hundreds of hours to fully unpack so it’s a little expensive too.
My dad — whose entire family was killed by the Nazis in Lithuania in 1941 after they'd enabled him to escape to Sweden and then the U.S. in 1939 when he was 17 — went back to his home there for the first time when he was in his 70s.
Upon returning home, he became VERY depressed and it persisted for the remaining 8 years of his life.
It was clear to me and my brother that the change from his normally upbeat and optimistic self stemmed from seeing in person the very places he lived and frequented and the memorials to those killed.
> I've never heard someone say they regretted starting therapy.
Let me be the first one then. I went in with an open mind. When the first one did not work, I tried another. After two years and zero benefit, I regretted spending the time. Cost was not an issue as it was covered by insurance.
In the end I concluded that therapy isn't for everyone. Many people do benefit from it, but many others see zero benefit.
It is also possible that I was not a good candidate for therapy because my issues were super minor.
> but I think I’ve suppressed a lot of stuff and ultimately is starting to wear me down.
Unpack it. It's easier than you think and more worthwhile than you might guess. It's not some massive liberating experience but it can remove some blocks and make change a more familiar sight in your life.
> and I end up just laughing and making some jokes and stuff but never have similar stories to share.
Things like this will "get in the way" a lot less often.
> bringing up some weird emotions I hadn’t experienced or thought I had dealt with
You have this perspective already. This is actually a great sign. Too many people find out at the end of a self inflicted tragedy.
> In my mid 40s and have been having an increasing desiring for no particular reason to unpack some baggage.
ACE 6 for me.
40s is when it caught up with me, and of course kids exacerbated it for me too there was a lot of people and places I never wanted to see again, in fact when I met my wife I told her I was an orphan!
As I got older I started feeling genuinely alien to my coworkers, they are so happy and their parents loving and their upbringings wholesome. I just feel absolutely stunted by comparison, half-developed, half-grown. Weed helped me process a lot of my feelings and anger I guess, that's good enough for me but as Rambo says: "I’ve not changed. I just try to keep a lid on it".
First time for me too… How is the ‘ACE score’ even validated for people not near the average?
Since presumably ‘former gifted children’ were in the 99th percentile, and above, during the relevant period.
ACE seems to be 10 questions where you get a point for every yes, to assess childhood trauma.
A 10 is the max and a 0 is the min. Based on the questions, any score above 0 indicates some level of real trauma.
>any score above 0 indicates some level of real trauma
I got 1 with no trauma, but the questions vary significantly in "weight" and the one I went 'yes' on was alcoholism (and with no abuse or anything else, so it's definitely better than the questions like SA from a family member etc.)
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
My question was trying to expand on what the linked article already says.
Perhaps I misread your comment?
It looked like you were associating ACE with a gifted indication. My mistake.
I wasn’t associating ‘ACE’ with anything, it’s the other way around…
i.e. How do we know that anyone, associating any ‘ACE score’, with those far away from the average, is valid? as opposed to random conjecture?
I have no opinions on whether any ‘association’ exists at all or not, but clearly at least a few dozen do, hence me asking the question.
Yes, especially if you're going to post. The expectation is that if you're posting you've read the article.
OK. My comment-question has been downvoted and I've been told by a number of HN readers that YES — I SHOULD "have to click on a link to find out what an acronym cited in a post means."
From now on when I comment using medical acronyms like AKA and AMA I will not spell out what they stand for (as I've always done up to now as a courtesy to readers so they don't have to sidetrack themselves looking it up) but rather will provide a link.
https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/professional-issues/doc...
My first time hearing of it too, am ACE 10.
In my mid 40s and have been having an increasing desiring for no particular reason to unpack some baggage. I think I’ve done ok in life generally, much better than the course my childhood put me on, but I think I’ve suppressed a lot of stuff and ultimately is starting to wear me down. Most notably, I just feel like a fraud a lot of times. My peers talk about how they did stuff in college and before (stuff normal people got to experience I didn’t, going on family vacations and being social in college) and I end up just laughing and making some jokes and stuff but never have similar stories to share.
I’ve completely disconnected with my family as a coping mechanism for example but now that I have a young kid asking about his family on my side it’s bringing up some weird emotions I hadn’t experienced or thought I had dealt with. Idk. Maybe therapy is in my near future so I’m glad this is being openly discussed here.