Episode Notes

The ACE Study is from the early 1990s, where they sampled about 17,000 people, having them take a survey that asked them, "From the ages of 0 to 17, how many of these things happened to you?" And they listed out 10 indicators things like sexual abuse, physical abuse, did you grow up in a household where there was mental illness, did you grow up in a household where there was drug abuse, did you grow up in a household where your parents were separated or divorced, where you saw a mom being treated violently? 

There were 10 of these, and they would have folks say yes or no to that, and then they would walk away with a score from 0 to 10, 0 meaning no trauma. 10 meaning the most. And what they found, after giving that survey to 17,000-plus people is two-thirds of the people said that they had had at least one of those things, and many of them said many of those things happen to them when they were between the ages of 0 and 17.

Key Points Discussed:

• People that have had trauma tend to respond in a very particular way because they need to create safety for themselves. (2:30)
• In the program that I ran,  my friend looked at me and she said, Well, that's great, but how are you going to transfer that behavior? And I was stopped in my tracks by that statement, in fact, it kept me awake for two weeks. I was waking up in the middle of the night trying to think to myself, she's right, what if we can't transfer that behavior, what good is the work that we're doing. After two weeks of thinking about that question, the answer came to mind, and I think I literally woke up, sat up in bed with the answer, and that's my cliffhanger right there. (3:28)
• When people have had trauma, they need safety, their brains are actually wired to be on this heightened alert for safety because they haven't had safety. And we see a lot of these behaviors where people fight by yelling or raising their voice or saying obscenities. Or flight, running away. Or freezing. And this is all in service to get people safe. There's a part of the brain called the amygdala. And that's what it does. It's on this alert. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. (4:06)
• I ran this program for eight years with kids from the juvenile justice system, and talk about trauma, you're talking about some of the deepest trauma. Lots of people dying, lots of situations where folks are starving, seeing their parents be very physically abused over and over again, I mean all kinds of stuff. And yet, we had this amazing level of cooperation and connection with the youth. (8:50)

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