Our experiences in childhood have a very big impact on who we are as a person in the present. When we face any situation in the present, we have automatic responses that are triggered by our past childhood experiences.
How we conduct ourselves as adults is highly dependent upon what kind of child we still feel within us, called our Inner Child.
If as a child, we felt physically and emotionally secure, then our later adult Inner Child will be happy.
But with childhood feelings of abuse, later in life a person may feel fearful and have low self-confidence. How much we try to change our current selves, complete transformation cannot be achieved until we also heal our Inner Child.
“In the early 1990s, Dr. Robert Anda collaborated with Vincent Felitti, MD to investigate child abuse as an underlying cause of medical, social, and public health problems. This effort led to a large-scale study funded by the CDC to track the effects of childhood trauma on health throughout the lifespan. Called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study), the findings were reported in more than 70 publications in major medical and public health journals. Data collected from more than 17,000 patients showed that ACEs:
-
- Were common, with 28 percent of study participants reporting physical abuse, 21 percent reporting sexual abuse, and many reporting that they experienced a divorce, parental separation, or having a parent with a mental and/or substance use disorder.
- Had a profound negative effect on health and well-being, including significant increases in alcoholism, heart disease, and cancer.
- Were a prime factor of past, current, and future health behaviors, social
problems, and early death in the study population. Examples include an increase in the rates of obesity, drug abuse, smoking, chronic depression, and attempted suicide.
Continuing research in neuroscience and epigenetics has made it clear that ACEs have a neurological impact, often across generations. This impacts health outcomes throughout the life cycle and is a root cause of many adult health issues.
Addiction and suicide are two of the health issues that are most highly correlated with high ACE scores. Find out your ACE Score by taking this test. Pine Tree Institute’s ACE Test is here. https:www.pinetreeinstitute.org/aces-test/. ”
pinetreeinstitute.org
