Comment by ninetyninenine 4 days ago
ACE 0. Feels abnormal looking at everyone here. I don't consider myself that successful. Very average or below in career and also extremely below average in life outside of work. Not very many friends, never been in a relationship (I'm old).
Maybe some trauma really is needed in your childhood to produce more drive.
I'm wondering what's the distribution of ACE.
> To answer the OP directly, I'm not satisfied with my life, and from my ACE score it's obvious that I have no one else to blame but myself.
This isn’t fair to yourself, or anyone else reading this and feeling the same way.
There’s a difference between good parenting, bad parenting, and abusive parenting. Just because your parents weren’t abusive, doesn’t mean they were good at instilling all the useful and/or important values in you.
Also, there’s a difference between blaming your parents for who you are, blaming yourself for who you are, and accepting that things have happened, learning from them, and using it as the basis for growth.
Consider how old you are today. Consider what age your parents were during your formative years. The closer you get to being the same age your parents were, the easier I think it gets to recognise that your parents might have been much like you are: imperfect beings trying whatever resembled their best on any given day.
Ultimately, try to be kind to be kind to yourself, but also be accountable to yourself. Kind accountability tends to work better than blunt brute harshness (just like you catch more flies with honey…)
If you go here and scroll down to Recent Studies, you'll notice that there's many things the ACE test ignores.
But the extended list of adverse experiences is incomplete too:
https://www.christineortollcharity.org/post/adverse-childhoo...
> I have no one else to blame but myself.
Of course not! That sounds sad. (Also, some things just happen / are the way they are, without being anyone's fault)
But maybe you're the best person for doing something about things you aren't happy with :-)
If Ace 0 is a minority perhaps it's normal for people to experience trauma and this trauma is necessary.
You match me in every element, perhaps this outcome is expected for ACE 0. Or it could be confirmation bias.
Any other people with ACE 0 here? What is your life like?
> If Ace 0 is a minority
I don't think it is. In developed nations I'd guess that 0 is probably the majority (maybe 0, 1 and 2). The internet isn't the best place for these kinds of statistics. If they where everyone would be depressed, have contemplated or attempted suicide, have anxiety and a host of mental problems.
There is new research that suggests that talking about problem like depression may in fact cause depression and the internet is amazing at propagating the idea that all sorts of mental issue are something that everyone encounters.
My score was 0 and I have a happy, if middle class life and wonderful family. Stressful at times, but mostly not. It's also not terribly exciting, but that suites me.
> Maybe some trauma really is needed in your childhood to produce more drive.
No. You’re missing the people who don’t post on here, which are those who have died, those who are suffering too much to spend time here. This is a high privilege forum on average, and that there are success stories doesn’t mean it’s somehow good. Ask any one of us what we thought we could have achieved with a supportive “good enough” childhood and often you’ll get tears.
There are very few material benefits for people who climb out of holes, even if they’ve had to go twice as far as the person next to them. A deeper sense of peace or contentment, maybe. But most will compare a 40 year old who’s driven their way out fully out of hell and a 25 year old ready to see how high they can go and choose the one with more runway and less desire to care for themselves.
>No. You’re missing the people who don’t post on here, which are those who have died, those who are suffering too much to spend time here. This is a high privilege forum on average, and that there are success stories doesn’t mean it’s somehow good. Ask any one of us what we thought we could have achieved with a supportive “good enough” childhood and often you’ll get tears.
So you say. I still want data to back that up. What's the distribution? I probably can't get a value about how good people with an ACE of zero ended up.
But I can see a distribution and thus I can see which ACE number is at the tip top of the curve.
Sure. But your statement alone without evidence at face value looks like something you just intuited without proof and out of thin air.
Hence it was reasonable to ask.
Some trauma can make for focus and push. Most everyone has some amount of trauma just for existing. Higher ACE scores correlate with much lower life expectancy and worse outcomes, far higher rates of suicide, mental illness, substance abuse.
It may make for extremely driven people! Maybe many of the people with the most drive get it from a reaction to trauma. That doesn’t mean that the average person does better with trauma though.
Check the CDC site on ACEs. Or almost any other site. The data is astoundingly clear.
I feel similarly. I've noticed nearly every form of self-help material I've read starts out with some trauma the author overcame. Anectodal evidence ofc.
I feel like there needs to be something that "kick starts" you to push yourself. I had a cushy, comfortable childhood that probably needed a bit more discomfort. My parents grew up in more challenging environments and did their best to not pass that on, maybe they did too good of a job. They have significantly stronger work ethic than I do.
Yea there's a lot of people with high trauma who don't make it (like some other posters have said) - we see the survivorship bias. But sometimes I wish I had a bit more kick in the ass younger because now I'm unable to do so to myself as an adult. Artificial trauma maybe suffices - like why is hazing for group bonding still a thing anywhere? Maybe college kids know what they're doing, and the occasional death is just the price we have to pay
Maybe I'm just ranting and none of this would help. I'm average because I'm lazy and it's hard to accept
There's many things the ACE test ignores. It seems to me it has a narrow focus. (Not saying there's anything wrong with that)
For example, bullying. Or if you yourself had some addiction. Or if you yourself had a mental illness, physical impairment, or if you're neurodivergent, and more things, I suppose, that don't come to my mind right now.
ACE 0 or 1 doesn't mean you had a good childhood
You're not alone, ACE 0 and a decent job/life but reached KHHV wizardry recently; suspecting it's common in the hacker/CS community. At least, life in Europe is pretty peaceful, even without considering personal pain.
According to https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/998/096/4a3... there's two more stages afterward: wraith at 50 and overgod at 90. I shall expect your commands.
> Maybe some trauma really is needed in your childhood to produce more drive.
There's probably something there in terms of overcoming difficult situations.
You can achieve the same thing though without trauma, just by doing hard things or being pushed beyond your boundaries.
Go for a swim and hold your breath as long as you can. Then, push yourself to swim a few meters past the point where you held your breath. Keep going for a swim, keep pushing yourself past where you're comfortable.
Make it a habit to do this in various areas of your life - there's your drive.
ACE 1, I think. I don't have many fond memories of childhood. Although my parents weren't monsters, I went to school in an area where high ACE schools would have been common, and being somewhat of a nerd was the odd one out, I struggled socially for my first few decades. There was no Internet in those days to find like-minded weirdos.
So, there is something to overcoming childhood adversity. Since the rise of the modern primary system for electing US Presidents most of our Presidents had traumatic childhoods(1). It seems like most of the people who want a stadium full of people chanting their names are trying to fill the hole where parental love should have been. Of course, most people don't grow up to be President, so I don't think this isn't something that you should be optimizing for!
I think where I ultimately come down on this (and I'm a dad so I've given this a lot of thought) is that a crappy childhood is a high risk play: it might give you a slightly better chance of a really amazing outcome, but at a much greater risk of a truly terrible outcome. A happy childhood doesn't guarantee anything, none of us are guaranteed anything. But it can make truly negative outcomes less likely- though again not impossible. So all things being equal, I want my son to feel loved.
1: Just looking at the Baby Boomer presidents, and staying far away from actual politics, Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, his dad died in a car accident before he was even born and his mom remarried and he was adopted. GWBush had a famously withholding and demanding mother and was viewed as the family scapegoat into his 30's- JEB! was the golden child in that family, George was the family screw-up. Barack Obama wrote an entire book (when he was a campaigning for an Illinois State Senate seat, long before he thought about running for President) about how he never really had a relationship with his father and what effect that absence had on his life. Donald Trump wears much of the damage Fred Trump inflicted on him on his sleeve.
Woah, I match every element of your description.
To answer the OP directly, I'm not satisfied with my life, and from my ACE score it's obvious that I have no one else to blame but myself.
The CDC website has some stats on ACE distribution [1]:
> ACEs are common. About 64% of adults in the United States reported they had experienced at least one type of ACE before age 18. Nearly one in six (17.3%) adults reported they had experienced four or more types of ACEs."
Interesting that zero ACE is a sort of minority.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html