THE ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES STUDY
What is ACE? It stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences.
The ACE Study is an ongoing collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente. Led by Co-principal Investigators Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, and Vincent J. Felitti, MD (ACEStudy.org)
FACTS
The ACE Study is perhaps the largest scientific research study of its kind, analyzing the relationship between multiple categories of childhood trauma (ACEs.) Requested participation of 26,000 consecutive patients seeking medical treatment at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego; 70% agreed. Initiated in 1995 and 1997 - enrollees are being tracked. 17,000 middle-class American adults undergoing comprehensive, biopsychological medical evaluation with Kaiser Permanente: Lead Researcher Vincent Cohort population was 80% white including Hispanic, 10% black, and 10% Asian. Their average age was 57 years; 74% had been to college, 44% had graduated college; 49.5% were men. In any four years 81% of all adult Kaiser Permanente health care members seek medical evaluation; there is no reason to suspect study selection bias.
Looked at eight general categories:
Recurrent and severe physical abuse (11%)
Recurrent and severe emotional abuse (11%)
Contact sexual abuse (22%)
Growing up in a household with:
An alcoholic or drug-user (25%)
A member being imprisoned (3%)
A mentally ill, chronically depressed, or institutionalized member (19%)
The mother being treated violently (12%)
Both biological parents not being present (22%)
EXCERPT
Break EVERY Stinking Chain! Healing for Hidden Wounds
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’”
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
When I was 14 years old, I was living with my family in Piper, Kansas, which is a small suburb of Kansas City. It was 1974, the year that President Richard M. Nixon resigned from office. We didn’t have a VCR then, only a tape recorder. I was home alone and wanted to record the live news report of President Nixon’s famous resignation announcement and exit from the White House. I used my little tape recorder and sat in front of the television holding it up to the speaker. After a while, I really needed to use the bathroom. When a commercial break came, I turned off the recorder and ran into the bathroom. I was in such a hurry to get back to the television, that I missed clearing the doorway by just a fraction of an inch. Unfortunately, that fraction of an inch was enough to catch my pinky toe on the doorstop. I screamed, and jumped around on one foot. I was in excruciating pain! I was dedicated, though, and while holding my foot, I turned on the recorder to get the rest of the proceedings. Later, my parents took me to have it x-rayed and, sure enough, it was broken. On the surface, I couldn’t tell it was broken, but the pain certainly told me something was wrong. Because the wound was beneath the surface, I had to have an x-ray to know that my foot was broken.
Hidden wounds, wounds deep beneath the surface can cause a lot of pain on the surface, and in our society, we have a major problem with pain—both physical and emotional. Addiction to pain medication has become such a major problem that one Oxycodone pill is so expensive on the black-market that it’s currently cheaper to buy Heroin. Emotional pain and physical pain are connected, and the brain responds to both similarly, demanding action to alleviate it. However, for many people, the source of the pain remains hidden beneath shame, guilt, and fear.
Taking something to deal with the emotional pain works, temporarily. However, the answer to the problem of pain is not NO pain. The absence of pain can be a problem in itself. One addiction counselor said, “Trauma is the problem, substance use is the solution until the solution becomes the problem” (unknown). Numbing pain has a similar impact to the disease of leprosy. Leprosy, a mildly contagious disease now mostly restricted to tropical Africa and Asia, affects the skin, mucous membranes, and eventually the nerve endings.11 Brand and Yancy write, “Leprous people live a virtually pain-free existence. Many of us would do anything to live a pain-free life. Yet in fact, the absence of pain is the greatest enemy of the leper. Again and again they wound and impale themselves. Yet they don’t feel a thing.”12 The purpose of physical pain is to warn you about damage or potential damage to your body that needs your attention. When we don’t have pain, it’s not that the damage doesn’t occur, we just don’t feel it. Therefore, we don’t do anything about it.
Psychological and emotional pain is similar to physical pain in that it demands a response. While a physical wound is visible, emotional wounds aren’t because they strike beneath the surface, affecting your inner-most identity. When a physical wound is pervasive enough, we call it trauma and take people to the emergency room. When emotional and psychological wounds are pervasive enough, we also call them “trauma”. However, we frequently hide these wounds; bury them deep in our memories where we hide them from others and ourselves beneath fear, guilt, and shame. Dr. Vincent Felitti, a physician, researcher, and one of the co-founders of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study points out that, when it comes to emotional or psychological trauma, time does not heal, it conceals.13 However, similar to the experience of a leper, when emotional wounds go unattended or intentionally ignored, the wound spreads, affecting more and more of your mind, emotions, and even your spirit.
Defining Trauma
Trauma, whether physical, psychological or emotional, creates pain and demands action. The word “trauma” comes from the Greek word that means an injury or wound. Psychological trauma is a wound also, but to the inside of you, your identity. The term “traumatic stress”, as in “Post-Traumatic Stress” is the demand for action in the brain that comes out of the experience.14 When you are physically bleeding, the action you take is obvious. You try to stop it! Alternatively, you may pass out. If someone sees you bleeding, he/she may take matters into their own hands and do something about it. When it comes to emotional bleeding, however, your responses may be concealed or your response may be even to conceal your pain. The quote by C.S. Lewis, which I used at the beginning of the chapter, is so true: “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard (sic) to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”15
Your brain doesn’t seem to distinguish between physical and emotional pain. Pain is pain, and most of the chemical responses, fight, flight, fright or freeze, are the same. In addition, there’s a universal expectation we humans have about pain…it SHOULDN’T happen, ever! Thus, we find ourselves spending an excessive amount of money on pain medications, prescription and non-prescription drugs, alcohol, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines to deal with not only physical pain, but also emotional pain.
We label many different kinds of events as traumatic. Some events that people have considered traumatic include: physical abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, death of a loved one, domestic violence, living with an alcoholic or drug addict/ abuse, living with someone with a mental illness, having a mental illness, growing up poor and hungry, rape, a parent never telling you they love you, death of a pet, threatened killing of a pet, family member in prison, family member in combat, being in combat, abandoned by a parent or a spouse, screamed at, called names, or watching someone else be abused. This is not a complete list, by any means! Later, as we talk about what makes an event traumatic, this list will grow quite a bit.
Trauma Myth #1
I will be confronting and discussing six myths people hold regarding trauma and it’s healing throughout this book. These are myths I’ve come across while counseling trauma survivors as well as training other counselors to work with trauma survivors. Not everyone believes all of the myths, and you may not agree that they are myths. You may think they are true statements. These myths are thoughts and beliefs that, while they may actually have a kernel of truth in them, overall they are untrue when it comes to their application to psychological trauma. Some of them are urban legends that are passed down as ways to cope with pain or explain away something. They may be unspoken beliefs that protect people from reality that is painful and hard to bear. They may also be thought of as assumptions people make that haven’t been voiced or really thought through. These myths are important to call out and challenge because they block people from healing from trauma or from even identifying the source of their wounds. Even if you don’t agree, be open minded as you read about each thought and the information supporting its being considered a myth.
Myth #1 is, “If it happened when I was a child, it doesn’t affect me anymore.” This is the most common myth I hear. However, it isn’t true! Let’s consider the facts, then you decide for yourself.
Research shows that 61% of men and 51% of women surveyed in the general population report experiencing at least one trauma in their lifetime.16 In addition, 59% of men and women report experiencing at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) in their lifetime, and 9% experience 5 or more ACE.17 So, how do you know if it’s still affecting you? You may think, “That happened so long ago it doesn’t bother me anymore!” Actually, what research shows is that traumatic events that happen especially in childhood will still affect us even 50 or more years later. Why? Because it affects your brain, changes the actual wiring in your brain and therefore it affects your body, your mind and your spirit. It affects us not only directly, but changes the way we see ourselves and the world around us, how we experience relationships and, most importantly, how we view and experience God. Wherever you go, you take your brain with you.
Think about this example: Paulo grows up in Brazil and Paul grows up in Georgia. Both Paulo and Paul are born not speaking, not walking, not doing anything but crying. Because Paulo’s parents speak Portuguese, he learns to speak Portuguese; because his family lives in a rural environment, he learns to ride horses, to plant and harvest his food. Because Paul’s parents speak English with a southern accent, Paul learns to speak English with a southern accent; because his family lives in the suburbs of a large city, he learns to ride in cars everywhere, to ride motorcycles, to play football, to go to the grocery store and Chick-fil-a to buy food. These experiences shape the way he sees himself and how he sees the world around him. If Paulo grows up with an alcoholic father who goes into rages, what will that teach him about the world? If Paul grows up with loving parents until age 10, but then they suddenly get divorced, what will that teach him about the world?
Of all these lessons learned, which ones will they forget? When will Paulo suddenly forget Portuguese and start speaking English or Paul suddenly forget English and start speaking Portuguese? NEVER! Both boys learn only what they were taught and personally experienced. You learn what you live, and you live what you learn because your brain is recording your experiences.
Your brain is like a super-computer. Even though you can only see a few things on the screen, there are lots of programs running in the background that influence what you see and what you are able to do. In addition, God has wired us with some specific expectations about life and when these expectations aren’t met, not only do we grieve these contradicted expectations, but we adapt and change the way we develop, the decisions we make, and how we experience relationships, including God. Just because you don’t repeat the same exact pattern doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you, especially when the damage is on the inside. There isn’t an x-ray machine to use on your identity in order to tell if something got broken, like with my toe.
In a research project called “The Still-Face Experiment”18, the research asked a mother to interact with her 18-month-old child. In the video, the baby is happy, babbling, talking and interacting with the mother in a warm and happy way. Then the researcher asked the mom to turn away for just a second and, when she turns back, not to respond to the baby. She didn’t leave the room or move away, but kept a blank expression on her face without responding to the baby’s attempts to interact. You can see by the baby’s reaction that she notices it right away. In the 2 minutes the mother doesn’t respond, the baby reaches out with both hands pleading with the mother. She shrieks very loud, she loses control of her posture and begins to cry. When the mother starts responding again, the baby goes back to interacting. Other researchers have repeated this experiment multiple times with the same results. It demonstrates that, even at this young age, God wired us for interaction and connection. When we don’t get that, even for a short while, it affects us emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. Imagine what would happen if the mother continued this for hours or even days. The impact would change the baby’s behavior in more permanent ways. Traumatic experiences disconnect us, interfere with our attachments, and trigger grief.
THE IMPACT OF CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY
Another ongoing research project called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study started in 1995 and is collecting data on 17,000+ middle-class Americans from San Diego, California. The researchers looked at 10 types of childhood adversity including sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, psychological abuse and neglect, loss of a biological parent (to death, divorce or abandonment), alcohol or drug abuse in the home, a family member going to prison, mother being treated violently, and depression or mental illness in the home. Of those surveyed, 2/3rds had at least one source of adversity and one in fourteen had an ACE “score” (zero-ten possible) of four or more.19 Since it started, and as of the writing of this book, the principal investigators, Dr. Vincent Felitti and Dr. Robert Anda, have published 61 research papers that are available at CDC.gov. Researchers replicated this study in 20 US states and Puerto Rico as well as China, Macedonia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. As of the writing of this book, people have completed ACE surveys in Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Macedonia, with further studies underway in Montenegro, Romania, Russian Federation and Turkey all with the same general results.20 In fact, some show an even stronger link than the original study.
This research demonstrates a very clear link between childhood trauma and adult addiction, depression, anxiety, obesity, homelessness, unemployment, domestic violence, sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, elective abortion, and suicide attempts in addition to COPD, cancer, liver disease, and a 20-year decrease in life expectancy.
The ACE Pyramid
The ACE researchers have diagramed their outcomes in the shape of a pyramid. The pyramid shape illustrates the nature of the connections between childhood adversity and the multiple layers of impact. Adverse Childhood At the base of the pyramid are ACE experiences. We’ll call this level one. As we move upward, each subsequent level is slightly smaller, demonstrating that, while each level clearly builds on the previous levels, not everyone makes this journey up the pyramid. However, as the number of adverse experiences increases, the more likely a person is to develop the symptoms, or move up the pyramid. Let’s look at each level individually. We’ve already discussed the first level, Adverse Childhood Experiences. They are the ten types of childhood adversity studied by the researchers.
Level 2: Interrupted brain development. People who have experienced childhood adversity show signs of interrupted brain development, shown in level two of the pyramid. What this means is that research shows decreased neuro-connections between the frontal cortex and the rest of the brain, as well as decreased development in various parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, which is responsible for sequencing of events and other memories. When you are born, your brain is very plastic. Organization has already begun even before birth, and your mother’s physical and emotional state affects this first bit of organization. As you begin to interact with the outside world, your brain begins to organize itself further, and this continues throughout your entire life. The first years are very important because they build brain architecture. During these early years, researchers estimate that new connections between neurons, that is, brain nerve cells, are forming at a rate of 700-1000 per second! Think of building a house; first, the builder lays the foundation, then the posts and beams go up, then the walls and the roof. Each new experience builds on your previous experiences.
Because traumatic experiences like those listed above raise the stress level from positive or tolerable to toxic, the stress hormones created interfere with healthy brain development, weakening connections in the brain. Additional research on toxic stress and the brain by Dr. Bremner shows that military veterans diagnosed with PTSD have smaller hippocampi. Many other researchers have found the same result. What this means is that there are less connections and less integration in this part of the brain than in others. Research makes it very clear that toxic stress damages the brain whether it happens to the person as a child or an adult. The difference is, during childhood, the foundation of brain architecture is forming and the brain will build all future learning on this foundation.
Level 3: Social, emotional, and psychological problems. Interrupted brain development, or at least altered development, leads to social, emotional, psychological and spiritual problems.23 While the ACE study does not address spirituality, I’ve included it here because other studies have considered the impact of childhood trauma on spiritual development. Examples of issues at this level include, adults with an ACE score of four or more were 460% more likely to be suffering from depression. The likelihood of adult suicide attempts increased 30-fold, or 3,000%, with an ACE score of 7 or more. Childhood and adolescent suicide attempts increased 51-fold, or 5,100%, with an ACE score of 7 or more. Research outside of the ACE study links childhood trauma to spiritual obstacles including a lack of worthiness, existential questions about the meaning and purpose of life, a negative view of God, and increased insecurity in attachment to God. Also, unresolved religious questions about the beliefs they grew up with, disillusionment about their faith or religious beliefs, distrust, anger, guilt, and other miscellaneous obstacles.24,25
Level 4: Adoption of health risk behaviors. In an attempt to manage their social, emotional, psychological and spiritual problems, people adopt behaviors that put their health at risk. According to Dr. Robert Anda, one of the ACE researchers, research accredits 78% of adult IV drug use to unhealed, unaddressed childhood trauma. In addition, research accredits 65% of alcoholism and 50% of general drug abuse to unhealed, unaddressed childhood trauma. A focus on obesity, or food addiction, is how Dr. Felitti started his research on ACEs. In another study of obese and morbidly obese patients, researchers found that 66% identified at least one or more adverse childhood experience, most commonly physical and verbal abuse.26 The likelihood of having a BMI of 40 or more, the cut-off for morbid obesity, increases significantly as the number of ACE increases.27
However, that’s not all. Research has been around a long time that proves smoking cigarettes causes cancer, and the government outlawed smoking in most public places. People who smoke pay huge prices and excessive taxes for cigarettes. Fifty years after the Surgeon General’s first warning about cancer and smoking, it remains the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States and kills 443,000 people each year!28 In addition, there is a clear “smoking divide”. While smoking rates have declined overall, in poorer populations, the decline is significantly slower. It’s especially slow at poorer counties like Kentucky where, in one county, nearly everyone still smokes. According to the ACE study, a male child with an ACE score of six or more is 250% more likely to smoke as an adult. Therefore, it appears that the use of substances, like drugs, alcohol, food and cigarettes, actually is an attempt to deal with a problem. While people know the risk, the immediate reward of the substance might just be worth the later risk of addiction, disease, and death.
Level 5: Disability, diseases and social problems. The adoption of risky behaviors leads to physical and mental disabilities, diseases, and social/family problems. As the number of ACE (0-10) increases, the more likely a person is to experience heart disease, chronic lung disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, lung cancer, liver disease, injuries, HIV and STDs. While some of these diseases are a result, perhaps, of risky life choices, heart disease is also be linked directly to ACEs due to the chronic stress created by childhood trauma. One study of Native American women in a primary care setting found out that 77% reported childhood physical or sexual abuse or severe neglect.31 The higher the ACE score, the harder time an individual may have in making a living. There is a graded relationship between ACE scores, Absenteeism, Serious Financial Problems and Job Problems. The more ACEs, the more likelihood of an adult having had 50 or more sexual partners and being at risk of unwanted pregnancy, socially transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDs. The more adverse experiences one has as a child, the higher the risk of becoming a victim of domestic violence. This is the case for both women and men. Just as the risk of becoming a VICTIM of domestic violence rises with the number of ACEs, so does the risk of perpetrating domestic violence, as applicable to both men and women.
Level 6: Early Death. The peak of the pyramid is early death. A person with an ACE score of 6 or more has a decreased life expectancy of 20 years. While the average life expectancy in the United States is climbing toward 80 and even 90, many childhood trauma survivors in the ACE study are dying 20 years earlier.
The studies on childhood trauma that demonstrate the links to adult problems is compelling! Yet most people don’t know anything about it. As Christians, we operate under the belief that we are immune, but we aren’t. While research does show that people who attend church and believe that God is for them and not against them make less risky choices, research of a church-going population found that the same obstacles to spiritual growth were present when a person experienced childhood trauma.32 Additionally, we may have adopted survival responses that affect our family directly and pass the trauma down generation after generation. Christians are a part of the world and what affects our neighbor affects us. We are part of the community and we are supposed to be light and salt, a place for hope and healing. Just like flying with a child, we have to put the mask on our self before we can put it on our children.
In addition, we, of course, have bodies. When we experience salvation, it is the rebirth of our spirit, not the rebirth of our body. Our bodies are still impacted by a fallen and broken world, even if we don’t want them to be. Our bodies and our choices are not perfect and won’t be until heaven. When I eat too many sweets to try to numb my anxiety, it affects my body just as it would anyone else’s. I have to live with that impact and God may not heal these consequences until I get a new body in Heaven. Nevertheless, while trauma creates pain, loss, disease, social problems, and early death, God still heals. He has wired us for connection, and He has wired us to heal. Connection is something God uses to help us heal. However, this kind of healing doesn’t start on the surface, it begins on the inside.
Inside-out Healing
One famous scientist said, “Science is thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”33 God designed us to heal physically from the inside out; it’s wired into our DNA. When my middle daughter, Nikki, was around 9 years old, she was carrying some drinking glasses from upstairs to the dishwasher downstairs. She decided to jump over something and lost her balance. She fell, banging the glasses into each other and they broke. It cut her hand between her thumb and pointer finger. There was a lot of blood and, fortunately, my husband was the first on the scene. Knowing that I don’t do well with blood—pass out!—he washed it out and stopped the bleeding before calling me into the room. Using all of my courage, I looked inside the cut. I could see what I thought was the white of a tendon. As calmly as I could, I told her it would probably need stitches. We drove to the emergency room but the doctor said he would not be putting in stitches, however. He said they would use Superglue™, or at least a product that was only one molecule different from the version of Superglue™ we use at home for repairs. He said that the military used this product on the battlefield because it seals the wound preventing bacteria from entering and causing infection. In addition, we wouldn’t have to return to get it removed. Since the body heals from the inside-out, as it healed, it would push the Superglue™ “plug” out and eventually it would just pop out of the skin. Sure enough, several weeks later, Nikki came up, “Mommy, the glue popped out of my hand!” It’s amazing what learning to work with God’s created design for healing can do!
God is consistent, and because He designed physical healing to work this way, emotional healing should work the same way, inside out. God, of course, can heal any way He chooses to because He is above His creation. However, it does seem that He mostly works with His creation and follows the physical laws He put in place. Because the outside is visible, we tend to focus on the importance of looking good on the outside. Jesus knew this about people and said that we should pay more attention to the inside first, and then the outside will come into line with the inside. The outside is actually a reflection of the inside, similar to the way a mirror reflects your image back to you (Matthew 23: 25-28).
Our spirit, the part of us that lives on forever, is the core part of us. The part that is born-again when we choose salvation through Christ. When we are born again, this new life moves through the rest of our being starting inside and moving out. Think of it as concentric circles, like a dartboard. Your spirit is instantly made alive through salvation, and then God’s renewing power moves outward through the rest of your identity—your mind, will and emotions. Your identity is formed by the interaction of your spirit, your genetics (brain, body, personality), and your mind. Your mind is your conscious awareness, what you think and feel, your memories, your ability to make decisions and choices. Your mind emanates from your brain, and your brain is inside your body. Your behaviors happen outside, but their genesis is inside, beginning with your identity and influenced by your spirit.
This is a complicated concept and many people have tried to conceptualize ways to explain it. One part of you can’t be separated from the other until you die. Traumatic experiences wound the innermost part of us, our identity. God seems to have designed us to heal in the same order, from the inside out. We find several clues to this in the scripture. In Matthew 13:1-9 and 18-23, Jesus told a parable about a farmer who went out to plant his seeds. Farmers know that if you want to plant something, you have to clear out what was already there; you have to till the soil and prepare it. In this parable, the farmer was planting by hand rather than by machine, so some of the seeds fell on the pathway next to the garden. The ground was hard and the seeds couldn’t even begin to penetrate the soil so they were trampled on, or birds came and ate them. Some of the seeds fell in the shrub next to the garden where there were thorny bushes and weeds. They grew, but so did the thorns and the weeds. Eventually, the growing plants were choked and died.
Some of the seeds fell on what looked, on the surface, like well-tilled soil, but underneath were rocks. When the seeds grew and began to put down their roots, they bumped into the rocks and could only go so far. While the plants began to grow on the surface, they couldn’t get enough water or sustenance to maintain the growth and, when the hot sun came out, it burned up the plant and killed what had grown. Some of the seeds however made it into the well-tilled, well-prepared soil of the garden plot. There, the seeds started putting down roots that could grow deep in the soil. On the surface, they formed mature plants that grew and produced a harvest of food. Farmers know that soil perfect for planting doesn’t just “happen”, it’s tilled, prepared, watered, and fed.
Think of the soil as a person’s heart or mind. Trauma is like the rocks in the soil; while you might not see them from the surface, they are there and they get in the way of your completing the mandate Paul wrote in Colossians 2: 6-7, “And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” As you put these two thoughts together, you can see that rocks lodged in the “soil” of your mind or your personal identity, keeps your roots from growing down deep into Christ.
Trauma is similar to a bomb buried in your brain. Bombs buried beneath the surface in war-torn countries can stay hidden for a long time. You can’t tell it’s there until it explodes, destroying the person or animal stepping on it. Traumatic experiences lurk beneath the surface of our minds, hiding from plain sight, until one day something happens that triggers it and, KABOOM!!! It explodes all over you. Fortunately, God knows the location of the bombs in your brain and He knows how to diffuse them.
Imagine holding a Styrofoam cup. This cup represents your inner-most self, your personal identity. Now, on the outside write the four basic human needs, Love, Acceptance, Worth, and Security. You can recall these easily by remembering the acronym L. A. W. S. Space them around the cup so that the whole cup is used. All humans are born with these needs and we all long to have our cup filled. We experience disappointment, hurt, anger, and loss when we don’t get our needs adequately met. Inside the bottom of the cup, write the word “Fear”. We all experience fear; fear of not being loved, not being accepted, not feeling worth and not feeling secure. Having our needs met helps us to manage our fear. As a child, God’s design for our relationship with our parents is for them to meet these basic needs and then, as we mature, we should transfer our dependency for these needs onto God.
Instead, we transfer these needs on to other people and other things. For example, when we get into a relationship, we expect that person will meet these needs for us so we hold our cup out to them and, for a while, it seems to work. Then, they stop filling our cup and we become disappointed, maybe even angry, bitter or resentful. In John 4:1-4 the disciple John tells of a time when Jesus met a Samaritan woman by a well and offered her “living water.” She had been married five times and the man she was living with wasn’t one of those husbands. She kept searching for her needs met through relationships with men, but she continued to be disappointed, disillusioned, and most likely exploited.
While holding the Styrofoam cup, use your pen to poke holes around the bottom half of the cup. This is what the experience of adversity or trauma does to your identity; it punches holes in your cup. Therefore, when you point your cup at others, jobs, success, etc., or even at God, it flows out the holes and you are still not satisfied. Your fear increases and you become desperate! That is when people turn to sex, drugs, or alcohol to numb the pain. However, when we turn to God, He wants to heal the “holes.” He wants to plug them so that when He fills us, we don’t continue to feel empty, just like He wanted to heal the Samaritan woman. He wanted her to stop turning to men, and start turning to Him. Do you have holes in your cup? Perhaps holes you haven’t even been aware of. Are you ready to let God heal them?
Let God dig the rocks out of your life and prepare the soil of your identity. Let God diffuse the bombs buried in your brain, so that they stop blowing up your life. Let God plug the holes in your cup and daily re-fill you with His perpetual love, acceptance, worth, and security. In the next chapter, I will be introducing Strategic Trauma and Abuse Recovery© which consists of three Strategic Phases of Healing©. These three phases are further broken down into stages in order to provide a map or path to follow as you begin.
Summary of Chapter 1
Pain is a problem, but NO pain is not the answer.
Psychological or emotional pain is similar to physical pain and demands a response.
Because we don’t know what to do about it, psychological pain or trauma gets buried beneath shame, guilt, and fear. When it comes to psychological trauma, time does not heal, it conceals.
“If it happened when I was a child, it doesn’t affect me anymore” is a myth Even if it’s been 50 or 60 years since it happened, it’s still affecting you in some way.
We learn what we live and we live what we learn. Just because you don’t repeat the same exact pattern doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you.
The impact of childhood trauma is pervasive and devastating, leading to multiple emotional, social, psychological, physical, spiritual and financial issues. Amongst other things, an ACE score of 6 or more can cause up to a 20-year shortening of your lifespan!
The Parable of the Farmer planting seed is a good analogy to explain the impact of trauma in a person’s life. The rocks in the soil are like traumatic events in the mind or identity that get in the way of our roots growing down deep into Christ.
Your “inside” is your personal identity, and God heals traumatic stress from the inside out. He can dig the rocks out of the soil of your identity and diffuse the bombs buried there that keep blowing up your life. He can plug the holes in your cup.
Strategic Trauma and Abuse Recovery© or S.T.A.R. provides a map for walking through the process of healing from trauma and will be introduced in the next chapter.