Mysterious Aches and Pains: Symptoms of Childhood Trauma in Adults

Why this resource is helpful:

"What if the ways we struggle, both health-wise and emotionally, are connected? Symptoms of something deeper. Pain that deserves tending to with kindness. In the Western world we view the mind and body as separate, and childhood as separate from adulthood--but are they? A landmark study by Kaiser and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), looked at just that.This enormous study of over 17,000 patients, called The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE) had one central question: are there long-term health symptoms of childhood trauma in adults? More specifically, does childhood adversity (such as maltreatment, emotionally abusive parents, uninvolved parenting, or being traumatized) affect us as adults? Are there health or psychological effects of moving frequently? The researchers wanted to know whether these experiences linger with us in some way, and what they found was groundbreaking. Classically, we think of childhood adversity as physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or being neglected and, although it is all these things, this study encompassed a broader collection of experiences. These included: not feeling loved or valued, experiencing humiliation or fear, verbal abuse, moving frequently, a family member suffering mental illness, or attempting or completing suicide; imprisonment of family; addiction within your family, losing a parent in some way (including estrangement), witnessing domestic violence, or neglectful parenting. Although it wasn"t possible for Kaiser and the CDC to include every childhood adversity (and they did not include some common ones, such as spiritual abuse), the ACE study defined adversity much more broadly than we typically do in everyday life."

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