The ACES Questionnaire

 Before I was diagnosed with chronic PTSD, I was asked to fill out the ACES Questionnaire. This stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. It’s a list of ten things that you answer about things you went through as a child. There is no real score to decide if you have chronic PTSD, they just say “The higher your score, the more likely you are to suffer complex trauma,”. 

Since my very first therapy session at age 17 was someone my mother paid for and arranged, I was basically dismissed as someone who has no reason to struggle, because some of the fact that some of the questions on ACES didn’t apply to me. My parents weren’t divorced. They didn’t go to jail or prison, and they weren’t financially poor. I have no idea if they used substances when I was a child or not. And as far as spousal abuse goes, they hurt each other equally. Some versions of ACES ask only very specifically if your father abused your mother. With my parents, it was back and forth. Mental illness in parents is not something I’m sure I can even answer, because while my mom claims to have had postpartum depression for 15 years, PPD is often given as a reason or excuse for abuse- discounting me yet again. All of the other things are arbitrary. All forms of abuse are denied in my family. So I may have this diagnosis on paper, but I really have no skin in the game when it comes to deserving help. 

I posted some of my frustrations online about ACES. Of course, people came back with how “it doesn’t actually matter if your parents weren’t not divorced.”  But it does- at least enough to be counted on that list. 

Someone gave me an example of a child who survives a school shooting. This person said, “They are still going to be traumatized, even if their parents are still married.”  And while they mean well saying that, they really shouldn’t have to say it at all. If that’s the case, then why not put surviving a school shooting on the ACES list?  Sometimes a divorce is actually in the child’s best interest- and I would definitely rather go through that than to witness a school shooting. 

The phone definitely spies, because This came up in my YouTube suggestions about the elementary school shooting in Uvalde four years ago. It’s over an hour long and goes into detail. I realized that I never watched any minute by minute detailed replay of that event. And wow. One thing I do remember was one little girl who called 911 from her classroom five times before the police busted in to disable the shooter. She told 911 operators that her classroom was “full of victims”. This documentary replays her actual 911 calls. I do remember that in the days/weeks after the Uvalde shooting, this little girl had a very rough time and was in the hospital for quite a while. There was a news story about her, and it showed both her mother and father in her hospital room with her. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re still together, but there’s a good chance they are. Could you imagine actually having to tell this kid, “Oh it’s ok, you can still be traumatized”?  

“It doesn’t matter that your parents never split up, that’s just on there so they can determine how much support you had when you lived through an actual war zone at age ten!  Just don’t check that box!”  

Can you imagine ANYTHING counting against this kid when trying to diagnose her with trauma?  To me that just screams audacity. 

I think the ACES questionnaire should be updated to include school shootings, medical trauma, and bullying.  Certain family structures and marital statuses don’t have a monopoly on hardship.  

That’s all for tonight.