Show Me Your ACES: ACES Part 1

EP27: Show Me Your ACES

00:00:00 Cinnamon: Over the course of these next two episodes, I want folks to get a better understanding of what an adverse childhood experience is, especially in the first responder world, and how it affects your brain as it's developing, and why these are so relevant so many years later. How we know it's relevant. We can still tie things back to our current thoughts, feelings, behaviors. I watch people struggle with a lot of these behaviors that they're trying to figure out how do I stop doing this thing that feels so autopiloty -- if that's an adjective and it takes work, it takes intention, you can't just know what you're doing and then stop because it is imprinted into you now that this is your way of being, this is what you do, this is your organic way of handling a situation. And to stop doing that, it takes a lot of work. When those things are pointed out, when we have the information, we can be like, "Oh."

00:01:04 Cinnamon: It's the first responder, the first to get the call, the first on scene, greeted by God knows what, pushed beyond the limits that they don't even set. Then what happens? You're listening to after the tones drop. We're your hosts. I'm Cinnamon, a first responder trauma therapist who founded our practice after seeing the need for specialized care following a local line of duty death. 

00:01:31 Erin: And I'm Erin. I'm a first responder integration coach. 

00:01:04 Cinnamon: We help first responders receive transformational training, therapy, and coaching.

00:01:41 Erin: Now we come to you to explore demystify and destigmatize mental health and wellness for first responders. 

00:01:50 Cinnamon: Our show brings you stories from real first responders, the tools they've learned, the changes they've made, and the lives they now get to live.

00:02:05 Cinnamon: A quick heads up before we start, we want to acknowledge that some of the content we discuss on our show can be triggering for some listeners. Some of our episodes may touch upon themes like traumatic experiences, PTSD, suicide, and line of duty deaths. We understand that these topics are sensitive and might evoke difficult emotions. If you are currently struggling with your mental health or have experienced traumatic events recently, listen with caution. You may consider taking periodic breaks or skipping the episode altogether. We want to thank you for joining us today. Your dedication to serving our community is inspiring, and we're here to support you in any way that we can. Now, if you're ready to proceed, let's begin.

00:02:51 Erin: Well, it's finally time. Cinnamon gets her day in the spotlight, as if she's not always in the spotlight. 

00:02:59 Cinnamon: I like that. I like that, though. That what really puts me in the spotlight, is talking about childhood trauma.

00:03:05 Erin: Yeah. It's your time to shine, right?

00:03:07 Cinnamon: Let me tell you all the things that I know about the bad things that happened to us. 

00:01:04 Erin: Well, somebody's got to tell us, because it looks like most of the time, we're completely unaware of how these childhood circumstances translate into our adult lives. So you're right.

00:03:22 Cinnamon: It's true. It's kind of like it's shocking to me how shocking it is to others that the experiences that we had when we were kids, when we know that most of our personality development, most of the important things that are ever going to happen in our lives happen in the first five years. And then when we do certain things, certain ways, it's like we become 18 and we're a completely clean slate and we enter adulthood and we don't bring anything with us. That's like how we think. And that doesn't make sense to me.

00:04:00 Erin: I wish we did. I wish we had, like a do over. Like, now you're an adult. Here's your license to adulthood. Restart. Clean slate. Wouldn't that be freaking awesome? 

00:04:08 Cinnamon: Oh, wow. 

00:04:011 Erin: And the thing is, too, what you were saying is, like, a lot of these things happen in our first five years. Well, this is when all development really begins to occur. We come out just these, like, blobs that poop our pants. And then next thing you know, in a very short length of time, we are walking, we are talking, we are eating by ourselves. We are doing all of those things. And our brains are heavily being overloaded with data nonstop. So it's a sponge that's going to hold on to stuff.

00:04:43 Cinnamon: Well, even like language, when you just think about teaching a child or even a dog, like what our language means and what our commands are, it just seems like such an organic process. But walk into a restaurant where they speak another language and imagine that's what it sounds like in your house when you're little and you are trying to figure out what all of this means. Or even like if you grow up in a household where there's a secret famous grandma's marinara sauce recipe, you take that sentiment into adulthood, right? And I have friends who are like, oh, yeah, my mom taught me how to make it. My grandma taught her how to make it. And it's special to them, and they want to serve it to their family. And I'm like, that's a good thing that we take. But yet for some reason, we think that we're not going to take the bad shit. 

00:05:38 Erin: Well, you often hear people saying, I can't remember a damn thing from age 13 and before, it's like my brain blocked it out. I hear a lot of people saying that there's those that remember all these different significant moments, but often it seems like people don't because we can't actually put it into a story or tell you what happened. All of a sudden, it's like, well, it couldn't have been that. It couldn't be stuff from childhood. I don't even remember childhood. Well, your brain and your body remember. 

00:06:12 Cinnamon: Like I couldn't tell you a story about my dad wearing a butterfly collar in the 70s and 80s, but I sure know he did, right? And I know that I was like, you have pictures. Yeah, but I don't have like, oh, we were here and then this happened. But I have a snapshot image of that. And so when we think about memories in terms of stories, it does make sense that one, a lot of things we're not going to remember. Two, trauma blocks things out. And three, the further we get away from events, sometimes when they're benign, we can get a little more forgetful. But if we ask people, well, what were they like?

00:06:56 Cinnamon: Or different kinds of questions that aren't story or narrative based memories, we tend to have a lot more things that we can recall. It's like, I can look at a scar on my dad's knee. I wasn't there. I don't remember when it happened, but I know that it's from a chainsaw. Like it kicked back and it cut through his knee and it's been a story. And so our brain is very weird. And I think we also underestimate.

00:07:28 Erin: Oh, our brain is really cool. 

00:07:31 Cinnamon: Weird and cool. 

00:07:32 Erin: Weird and cool. Well, most people know we've been talking about it for months and months and months about First Responder Conferences. And Cinnamon had the opportunity of giving this beautiful, incredible presentation just on the ACEs or the adverse childhood experiences. And the feedback was so amazing. And then, of course, if you listen to episode 22 with Michael Sugrue, he talked about that specifically, and it felt very appropriate just to kind of roll right in to create some context and background and understanding of adverse childhood experiences and what that looks like and how it affects your life even still to this day. And so we decided we're going to break this into a two part series. So this is episode one. This is episode, what is it? 

00:08:27 Cinnamon: Episode A. 

00:08:27 Erin: Episode A, right. 

00:08:29 Cinnamon: Episode 20 something A and then there'll be 20 something-

00:08:36 Erin: Episode 26 A, I believe. 26, 27 A, whatever. Anywho just follow along? 

00:08:45 Cinnamon: You mentioned the podcast with Sugrue. I even think of Zach because we are family, and we did talk about what gets passed in our DNA and that wasn't the time or place, but we'll get into that a little bit today. And even just like, what gets modeled and what gets nurtured and what you see and what you don't see and what is in our DNA about how we deal with conflict or stressors. And hopefully some of that will make sense today. Or in part due. 

00:09:22 Erin: Part due. 

00:09:23 Cinnamon: Let's see where we get to. 

00:09:24 Erin: Okay, well, so Cinnamon, what will we cover together today? What are our listeners going to learn about?

00:09:31 Cinnamon: Okay, so we keep talking about ACEs or even just childhood trauma, but ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. And so over the course of these next two episodes, I want folks to get a better understanding of what an adverse childhood experience is, especially in the first responder world. And even people like our age and older who may have liked, oh, yeah, this happened, but I deserved it. Or, yeah, my parents spanked me, but look at me, I'm fine, right?

00:10:06 Cinnamon: So I feel like it's always really important. Somebody may not say that they've had an adverse child experience, but they can give an example of an ACE and not recognize it as such. So I want to make sure that our listeners have a real clear idea of what an ACE is and how it affects your brain as it's developing and why these are so relevant so many years later. And then how we know it's relevant is because whether the string is short or the string is long or direct or indirect, we can still tie things back to our current thoughts, feelings, behaviors. When those things are pointed out, when we have the information, we can be like, oh, and then what do we do to like, we can't hop in the DeLorean and go back in time and change anything.

00:11:00 Cinnamon: And so people are like, well, it doesn't even matter. It's in the past. There's nothing I could do about it. And so my way of framing it is like, no, you can't change what happened, but you can change the way you think about what happened, and then you can do things that kind of undo the impact. So not necessarily undoing the event, but undoing the impact of the event.

00:11:26 Erin: It's not even not necessarily undoing like, you cannot undo something that's already done, but we can change the perspective and have a different relationship with that. And what I find interesting is the history of ACEs and the whole study that took place for this to even come about. 

00:11:44 Cinnamon: Yeah, I think I only know what I know because I'm in the mental health world, and this is an area that I'm really interested in all the research. So I don't exactly know what initiated this, but back in the early to mid 90s, Kaiser Permanente, the insurance company, and the CDC got together and they were like, okay, what? First off, it was Kaiser Permanente.

00:12:11 Cinnamon: What is happening that differentiates these healthcare patients from these healthcare patients? Why are we seeing these diseases, illnesses, health concerns in these individuals, but not these? What's going on? And so CDC jumped in, and they really just wanted to look at the relationship between our childhood adversity and those long term health and social outcomes. And what they found was that there's actually a pretty strong connection between childhood adversity and the negative outcomes that we have in regards to our health and our social lives later in life.

00:12:56 Erin: What do you mean by that? 

00:12:57 Cinnamon: So I'll get into a few very specific examples, but here's a story that I would share to kind of help make it make sense. So let's say I'm a teenage girl, and this is not autobiographal or autobiographical. I want to say that this is just an example, but I'm a teenage girl and I have a little brother, and I'm living in a domestic violence household. And it becomes my responsibility to keep my little brother safe and quiet and hidden out of sight when my parents are having an altercation.

00:13:39 Cinnamon: And then when I feel safe enough to do so, I may sneak out my window late at night, and I may go run around with some boys, and that may introduce me to drugs or alcohol and even sex early promiscuity. I would love to find Vindictive word than promiscuity. Right? Like, hi, can we just, it's just so derogatory to me. It's like whore. Rather than taking into context, like, what is actually going on like love in all the wrong places. So now let's say the first thing I do is I pick up a cigarette and I start smoking. And I'm in my teens and, like, early teens, and by the time I'm 20 years old, I'm several years deep into a nicotine addiction.

00:14:34 Cinnamon: I've been exposed to alcohol early, and I've already had multiple sexual partners. So now we've got all of these social and health concerns by the time I can even buy alcohol or tobacco. And now what's the likelihood of me given all of that where I'm going to have a real easy time quitting smoking? And if I end up being a lifelong smoker, then I'm increasing my likelihood of cancer. And if I'm sexually active early, I'm more likely to have an early unplanned pregnancy or getting an STI or something along those lines.

00:15:20 Cinnamon: I might even be exposed to criminality, right? And it's not necessarily something because of who I am or what I want to do or that I'm criminally minded or I'm trying to break all these rules. It was, I had all of these responsibilities that I had to perform to survive in my household safely and to keep another human being safe. Remember my little brother. And I'm going to guess that there's a good possibility dad's not super loving if he's also beating on mom. So now I'm trying to escape. I'm trying to rebel in the ways that I can and say I'm not tolerating this. I'm looking for love in all the wrong places. I'm using substances to numb the pain.

00:16:12 Cinnamon: And next thing you know, my adult life is onto a trajectory that I never would have been able to predict because that wasn't what I wanted or how I thought. But because of these other circumstances, because I'm an immature individual, that's the trajectory I go. And then once it gets some steam, it's really hard to stop. And I think we know that because we talk about people who are like, you're so brave to overcome all that. You're an anomaly. You're just a miracle, blah, blah, blah. So we know that someone getting started like that to turn it around is a big deal.

00:16:50 Erin: Yeah, well, like you said, it's not like it was a chosen thing. It was the path that ended up snowballing based on these childhood experiences. Okay, so the findings of the study, obviously you just pinpointed on this one particular thing, but are there other findings that they discovered through the study?

00:17:12 Cinnamon: I mean, there's definitely some key things and with maybe the exception of one or two, they come out in that story that I just gave. But obviously we're going to have a greater likelihood of higher risk for disease. We're going to see a reduced likelihood of actually seeking health care or preventative or proactive healthcare. We even can see minimization of illness and so things can get caught much later. An individual may even report their own health, right?

00:17:50 Cinnamon: Like they can recognize that to self rate their own health they're going to give themselves poor or fair rather than like, yeah, great, I'm good, because they were worrying about other things and then even death, you throw all these together. You talk about smoking cigarettes with some boys after midnight, sneaking out or girls. Absolutely. Okay, so maybe some of that was autobiographical and ultimately you've got death, right? Like we can't talk about all of these diseases that we have higher rates of without acknowledging the possibility that some of these will kill you.

00:18:36 Cinnamon: So there's an answer though, right? And for a lot of us folks that are older, maybe this wasn't an answer because it wasn't something that was on the radar. Mental health has come so far since the 70 and 80s but we know now that early intervention utilizing trauma informed care is going to make a huge difference, right? And I can even separate those. We've got early intervention. So get these kids out of this household or work with the household to change things around so they're not exposed to that. That's the early intervention piece. But then there's also, the trauma-informed care. So that's actually where we come in, where we provide regardless. Like I'm not going in.

00:19:23 Cinnamon: We don't work with kids, but we do provide that trauma-informed care that speaks to how important this stuff is so we can address it and then turn some of those other things around. Whereas when we get clients who are like, "You're not going to ask me about my childhood, are you?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'd love to tell you no, and so you don't have to worry about it, but yeah."

00:19:44 Erin: But not just so directly. Usually there's like some kind of fold in there's like some backdoor that we get in. It's not just like, tell me about when you were three. It's going to be more like, oh, that's interesting. So did your grandfather die when you're younger? Did your mom like there's going to be something that would segue into that.

00:20:02 Cinnamon: Yeah, and sometimes it can be as simple as I am living in Cincinnati, there's one thing that I've noticed about this city is it feels very small townish when people who are local and have lived here their whole lives, it is really important to ask somebody where they went to high school.

00:20:22 Erin: Really?

00:20:23 Cinnamon: Yeah. It's super weird. And I've watched people judge people based on that answer. Even if we're, like, in our 40s, there's like, this is what this means about you. So because that's important. I've never seen this phenomenon before. Like, maybe where I'm back from in a rural area, we ask, but it has a different kind of tone to it. So it may just be, well, where did you go to high school? Or which side of town did you live on? Because Cincinnati definitely has a very distinct east side, west side, and so they'll tell me, "Oh, yeah, I grew up in this neighborhood," and I'm like, "Oh, do your parents still live there?" "No." "Well, did they live there your whole you know, my mom and I did, but my mom and dad got divorced when I was, like, six." "Really? So what's your relationship like now with your dad?" "I see him sometimes, but I'm really close with my mom." And then, boom, thank you. Here I go, tiptoe walking right through that door that you just opened for me.

00:21:24 Erin: And now they're all going to just sit in silence in session because they know the trick.

00:21:31 Cinnamon: They know the trick.

00:21:31 Erin: I'm not going to answer that question.

00:21:37 Cinnamon: Okay, so anybody that's listening that is a current or future client, please disregard. But I think one, I am very curious about that stuff because especially in this region, there are about five bullet points that mean something underneath where you tell someone you're from. But it also helps me understand, how did you end up in my chair? Right. Like, how did you get here? How did you become a first responder?

00:22:12 Cinnamon: Why did you choose to do this and not this? And there's usually a really good story, and it's interesting, and I'm a curious person, so I'm not always using it to get info, but I want to know my people. I want to know who they are and how they grew up and who the important people in their lives are today and who maybe should be important people in their lives today, but aren't or would-

00:22:40 Erin: That typically be important people in other people's lives. And for you, they aren't.

00:22:49 Cinnamon: I hate that word, should. Thank you for correcting.

00:22:50 Erin: You're welcome.

00:22:54 Cinnamon: Right. I should people all the time. So I kind of want to go into, like, okay, well, what is an ACE, and why do we call it an ACE? That adverse childhood experience. And when Kaiser Permanente and the CDC did this research, they basically were able to narrow it down to three key areas. And it makes sense, given what those three areas are, that those would be the big dogs on the list. But it's abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, right?

00:23:34 Cinnamon: That kind of wraps it all up. There's not a lot outside of that and at least in the conversations that we are having in the 90s, those were the most obvious. We'll talk a little bit about the advanced ACEs and the things that we've learned that we probably need to be including because they are impertinent to someone's development. But the original ACEs were abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.

00:24:02 Erin: There's a lot of kind of bits and pieces and parts that fold into each of those sections too. Because as you said in the very beginning, people will easily say, especially if you grew up like 70s and 80s. Like, yeah, my parents whooped my ass if I did A, B and C. And that was the thing, this corporal punishment. But that being said, that doesn't mean that because we deserved it or we backtalked our mama or whatever that story is, that it didn't leave some type of lasting impression. You probably didn't back talk your mama again or you were real clear that you were feeling real feisty and strong the day that you did again. It's those things that impact you.

00:24:49 Erin: Hey there listener. If you could ask any question or freely talk about any challenge related to being on the job and no one would know, what would you say? We are excited to share about our confidential hotline that we created just for you. Through this confidential hotline, you can leave a message, sharing a success, a struggle, or simply ask a question. We will spotlight calls and offer feedback and insight from a licensed therapist and a certified coach who work exclusively with first responders. You can access our hotline voicemail by visiting afterthetonesdrop.com and clicking the voicemail tab. Additionally, you can join our mailing list if you'd like or easily follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all the most recent updates. You know the drill. Telephone, tell a friend, tell a first responder.

00:25:57 Cinnamon: I was thinking of the person who approached us in the parking lot at the conference. Some of the language that was used was, yeah, it left a mark across my face, but I deserved it because I had done X behavior. And you kind of jumped in right then and you're like, did you ever say that again? And the person was like, no. And you're like, then it left a lasting impact. And here's the one thing that I feel like is so important when we talk about this stuff. This is not about bashing parents. Like the older we get, and especially you, because you are a parent. And me, witnessing my friends become, well, they've long become parents, their grandparents now.

00:26:48 Cinnamon: Our parents were and are doing the best they can. And when you're little, you just kind of like your kingdom is real small and you think they are the king and queen and they know all the things, right? As you get older, you're like, oh, you all are clueless and just doing the best that you can like you are winging it day in and day out. And so I want to be really clear that this is not a critique of anyone's parenting, whether it be our listeners or our listeners parents, or even yours or mine. Because we both have stories that we can throw into the mix of this, and they are no different than everyone else who was just doing the best that they could, given what tools, knowledge, what that time period had available for them.

00:27:40 Erin: Yeah, and that's really part of it too, is that as we become adults, we can look back and be like, dang, now I'm an adult, now I'm a parent. Now I can see why they did the things they did. And now I can see like, oh, this was how my grandparents were, and that's why my parents were that way, and so on and so forth. And interestingly enough, it's a common conversation, too, where people are like, they come in and they say, man, the way that I am messed up right now is clearly affecting my kids. I'm seeing how they're showing up in our family or in the pushback that I get, or the defiance, and I got to change this trajectory because this is going to end badly for them, too.

00:28:19 Erin: So having that awareness but back in the day, parents were coming in and saying, oh, I blew it with my kid today. They're like, that was not a conversation. And now people are taking that personal responsibility and saying, I can see that my behaviors are directly affecting my kids. Not to say that adverse childhood experiences don't continue to happen, because it does, but the awareness is helpful.

00:28:42 Cinnamon: Wouldn't you say that, like, I do think our cultural awareness about some of the negative things that we've done in terms of parenting in the past have definitely turned around. But I also think that we're sitting here in our 40s and I don't know, maybe my parents were sitting in a room going, I really fucked that one up. But I'm not the person they're telling.

00:29:06 Erin: Oh, I know. My dad does tell me that now. I'll say, man, I did this, this and this. He'll be like, oh, you got that from. You know, I taught you that. And it's usually some maladaptive coping mechanism that I use. And he's like, oh, you got that for me? My dad definitely does.

00:29:24 Cinnamon: Well, and I hear you do it about the kids' call. Like your kids, where you'll be like, oh, I'm butting heads with my daughter because karma got me and she's just like me. Yeah. So we say all that to say as we start walking through what the definitions are of abuse and neglect, I want to be very, very clear and even household dysfunction, I want to be very clear that this is not a dig on anyone's parents. And in addition to that, while also saying that when we look at what the questions are on the ACEs assessment tool. It can be easy to be like as an adult. I can see that I was definitely loved, so maybe I'm going to check no to that.

00:30:21 Cinnamon: But I'm not asking you to tell me what your adult understanding is. It asks a past tense question. Did you feel loved, taken care of, supported, like your family was close, and this is all before the age of 18, so things can change and transform over time and you can have more awareness. But I'm not asking about that. I'm asking about when you were this age, what did you think? What did you feel? What was your experience? Because that we're not basing our behavior, thoughts and feelings and interpretations of situations on our adult understanding of our parents were doing the best that they could. We learned those lessons believing what we believed when we were kids. And that's why we ask those questions that way.

00:31:21 Cinnamon: And why I always want to make it clear, like, this isn't about dogging out your parents. This is about recognizing how you actually felt as a child and how the way that you adapted to that plays out today in some of our behaviors. Because if we just behaved in a way or thought in a way that was reflective of maybe our adult understanding of our childhood experience, we wouldn't even be having this conversation because we've all evolved. So these are things that were imprinted onto us when we were thinking in childlike ways. So let's kind of break this down.

00:32:06 Cinnamon: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about when we say abuse, neglect and household dysfunction, what we mean. So when we talk about abuse, we kind of break that down into three categories. We've got physical, emotional and sexual. But with all that being said, we can have a lot of folks who had various experiences dulled, say, I wasn't abused by my parents, my parents were not abusive. I wasn't an abused child. And that gets tricky. So you can feel that way. And there still might be things on this list that were your experience or you can relate to. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you were an abused kid. It means that there were incidents of abuse, neglect, et cetera.

00:32:59 Cinnamon: So if we start with emotional abuse, Erin, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about emotional abuse?

00:33:06 Erin: Name calling, put downs. Like, you're lazy, you don't do anything right.

00:33:12 Cinnamon: You've been listening to Zach and I.

00:33:16 Erin: Why are you? Well, I mean, actually, I felt like I heard that too. That yeah, just constantly feeling like I wasn't good enough, like, you're dumb now.

00:33:24 Cinnamon: Insulting. And even if it wasn't necessarily as direct as that, when we are so in such a sensitive stage of our life to develop who we are, our character, our personality, to be repeatedly told either directly or indirectly by the king and queen of our world, or the queen or the queen and queen, or the king king, however that works, that we are these negative things or have these negative attributes, it's going to leave a mark.

00:34:02 Cinnamon: So, yes, being insulted, put down, having names called, one of the things that I think of, and I think this is a trick word now, is yelling. A household where there's yelling, and I don't mean like boisterous, joyful, my Greek wedding kind of yelling. I'm talking more about the yelling that goes with scolding. And I have even noticed, and I would assume that there are people that can relate to me, that when anyone talks to me with a very firm voice and it feels like I'm getting scolded, the first thing I want to say is, stop yelling at me.

00:34:44 Erin: What did I do?

00:34:50 Cinnamon: And it's because their voice isn't raised. They're talking like a normal person. That normal volume level. But what translates in my brain is scolding and yelling are the same thing. And so when somebody says, I'm not yelling at you, I don't want you to lower your tone. I want you to change your energy. Choose a different energy? Yeah.

00:35:15 Erin: Well, the yelling goes along with the swearing, like that constant, the parents cussing back and forth at each other. You're a dumb ass, whatever the thing is. So it's almost like the put downs to the mom and dad putting each other down too, with curse words and yelling.

00:35:31 Cinnamon: So I'm going to take this a step further, and I don't know if you can relate to this, so I want to hear just because I do know your dad and I'm a big fan, but I see this in my husband, and I definitely saw this in my dad name calling inanimate objects. So like if they're working on a house project like plumbing or carpentry, and they're like, Goddamn son of a bitch. And I'm like, so that two x four is a son of a bitch. It's that they cuss at those things. And so even though it's not directed me, I'm still witnessing that rage. And so I would love to hear from our listeners about this.

00:36:22 Cinnamon: How many of you are familiar with or exhibit that frustration at inanimate objects where you clearly are angry and you are name calling and trying to hurt the feelings of a thing that doesn't have feelings?

00:36:37 Erin: Guilty. Do you remember the story about Brooks and the swear?

00:36:42 Cinnamon: Oh, that's a good story to tell.

00:36:43 Erin: So my four year old son is with our nanny. This was last summer, so he was three at the time. If this gives you an example of my mouth and the choice words I use. And he is drawing shapes with our nanny, and he's drawing a square, and he gets very frustrated. He slams down his pencil and he's like, fuck, I can't draw a square. And of course, we as adults have to go around the corner and chuckle, which some of you might think this is horrific and so I'm sorry, but I'm clear where he got that from and it's like, how can I even scold him? You know, and then my daughter Lila will say, but you learned it from your mom.

00:37:25 Erin: And I'm like, well matter, right? But it is. I learned it from watching you. Right, but the thing is, it's like even those small traits that our children pick up, it's obviously something that we have done, that they have seen. They are shadowing, they're modeling what they're seeing, I mean, yeah. I definitely curse inappropriately as an adjective or an adverb and it doesn't need to be there. It's pure habit.

00:37:50 Cinnamon: It's empowering, though, because here's the thing that we know about that, right, is that Brooks doesn't necessarily know that it's a bad word that he shouldn't be saying or that we would not encourage him to say or isn't like age appropriate. What he has learned is that when I am really frustrated, this is the appropriate word choice to use in this situation. So that's how, my gosh, how smart are our kids? How smart were we to know that not only is this just a word that I've heard, but I've given it meaning and I know that when I'm aggravated and frustrated, that is the perfect word choice to communicate my emotions. I can't draw this square.

00:38:39 Erin: Yes, well, and then this is where it gets a little bit tricky too, because in that same breath, obviously our children might model us, but then there's a good potential for them to get punished or have consequences. Even though they're modeling us because they're small children. It's a word. To them it's just a word. They see mom and dad doing it, but then that's where sometimes the threatening behavior can come in, which is another form of the emotional abuse side.

00:39:08 Cinnamon: How confusing. I've heard you say toilet. I can say toilet. I've heard you say bread. I can say bread, but I heard you say fuck. And I'm supposed to know that I'm not supposed to say fuck, right?

00:39:22 Erin: They don't even know what that word means. But that's where, too, another form of this emotional abuse is like the threats and the bullying and felt like kind of a good segue into that. Or the gaslighting.

00:39:36 Cinnamon: I was going to say gaslighting. Can you imagine? Like, don't say that. That's a bad word. Wait, but you said it. I know I said it because I'm grown and I can say it. And they're like, okay, so is there a list of words that I should know about that I can't say until I'm 18? And I am not the best person because I think cuss words are stupid. I think they're man made. And if somebody just decided to come along and say left is a swear word, that's about what that means to me.

00:40:13 Cinnamon: Like the shits, the damns, all of that it's all just, like, made up. It does not mean a damn thing. But that is part of gaslighting to say that's a bad word. What does it even mean to be a bad word?

00:40:22 Erin: Yeah.

00:40:27 Cinnamon: Right? Is it like rotten? Like an apple? So, moving on because-

00:40:31 Erin: We can go on this tangent, yes.

00:40:36 Cinnamon: So gaslighting. "Hey, I thought I saw this." Or "You didn't see that?" Well, "I'm feeling sad." "You're not feeling sad." "I'm crying." "You know what? I'll give you something to cry about." "There's no reason for you to be crying." Like confusing a child for our convenience sometimes. Like, this is not an ideal moment for you to break down because we're in the grocery store or we got to go somewhere. We got to do something. And so I'm going to diminish your feelings. I'm going to tell you they're not having these experiences. So we can keep it moving. So baby gaslighting you're like? Oh, shit.

00:41:16 Erin: I know right. Yeah. I mean, gosh, we're all human, right? We do it. We do it. But it can leave a lasting impact.

00:41:26 Cinnamon: Yeah. And I would never describe you as an abusive parent. And that's what I'm talking about. This isn't about bad parenting. This is about recognizing that when we are children, we are not adults with the same understanding. And again, I will go back to I cannot tell you how smart and important I thought my parents were when I was little. And I'm not going to say neither are true. But my world was so small and they were the person or people that got to tell me yes or no, if I could do something or if I couldn't do something. And that made them the directors of everything. So they do have a huge impact on us. Another thing that we kind of talked about at the conference was, does this all have to happen in your house?

00:42:27 Cinnamon: Can things happen in the community, in the neighborhood, in the church, whatever? And we'll kind of get into that. But the one thing that I think of when it gets a little more gray is rejection, right? So that can look like rejection in your home. Like, I had two older sisters that wanted nothing to do with me, right? Like, they were teenagers, and the last thing they wanted was little Cinnamon, tagging along. That felt like rejection. And it also may look like I didn't make the basketball team. There's a way that it can look a little bit more benign.

00:43:04 Cinnamon: And then we have friends that are adopted, and maybe that rejection is what they take away from my parent didn't want me rather than my parent wanted the best for me, and they knew they couldn't provide it. So however, we can feel rejected, whether it's like I'm getting kicked out of my big sister's room all the time or I was adopted out or I was told that I wasn't good enough to meet the minimum bar, like all of that. And again, it's not necessarily indications that we need to call children services, but it's recognizing when we are developing as children, the first time we find out that we can't participate, not because mom and dad said no, but because somebody else said we weren't good enough to participate. That's a life lesson for sure.

00:44:04 Cinnamon: And the last thing I would say on this list would be like, isolation. And that can come. And we saw what when schools shut down during COVID we saw what was happening to our kids not being able to socialize, not being able to be in the classroom, not being able to participate in their extracurricular activities. We saw a spike in depression and anxiety because we are community based creatures. And again, you only have the coping skills that you've needed to acquire. And being in isolation like that and not having peers or people that you feel safe sharing things with can be really difficult.

00:44:45 Erin: Absolutely.

00:44:47 Cinnamon: So that was emotional abuse, right? So physical abuse and sexual abuse are way more clear, right? We know that sexual abuse, the physical touching, but there's also non touching things like taking inappropriate photos or trafficking photos or trafficking children. And then when it comes to physical abuse, I think this is where a lot of us will say, yeah, this happened, but I'm fine. And like, yeah, you can be fine, and recognizing it still happened. And as I explained it on Friday, that the attempt to cause bodily harm and that bodily harm is just defined as any hurt or injury to a person that interferes with their health or discomfort. And so whether it be a spanking with a switch or a leather belt or as my father in law liked to do, because my husband was like a jerk little kid, he would grab him by the ear and pinch and squeeze and move him out of wherever he was, right? Like, is my father in law abusive?

00:45:50 Cinnamon: My God. No. He is like the most amazing man I know. But there was an intent to cause bodily harm because he wanted to make it very clear what was happening without using a lot of words. So then we get into neglect. So this is no, we could just break it down to not being emotionally or physically taken care of.

00:46:10 Erin: Can we pause one second? Before we get into the neglect, I do want to ask something about sexual abuse because we think that we know but there is this thing, it's like, well, uncle or cousin or somebody touched me or did this to me. But there's that fine line of the age difference of when it goes from when it turns into inappropriate. You know, like, people don't consider often like, oh, well, it was the boy next door and we were like experimenting or playing or the girl next door, we were learning about each other's parts. But then it can cross the line into, does that make sense? Do you hear what we see where I'm going?

00:46:51 Cinnamon: Yes, I think so. I'm going to answer what I think you're trying to say and then correct me if I'm off. So in the actual aces, it says a person five years or more older, five years older or more, however it's phrased. And I think what we've come to find out is it can be a peer, it can be at a sleepover, it can be playing doctor after school. And I think the most important thing in this is to is it done in a manner that makes the child feel uncomfortable?

00:47:28 Erin: Yeah, that's like forceful.

00:47:30 Cinnamon: Yeah. I get that children are curious and explorative, and oftentimes they do it in pairs. And that's not necessarily what I'm talking about. We're looking at anal vaginal or oral penetration. We're looking at inappropriate touching that makes them feel uncomfortable. So I don't even want to go in it because I feel like anything I say can be deconstructed. But if I'm just curious, there's no touching, they're showing. There are going to be situations where we could put that in a different category. And there's also those same things that can fall in this category. It really comes down to the comfort of the child and whether it was forced.

00:48:19 Erin: Yeah, okay, great. That's exactly what I was trying to extract from you. Okay, moving on back to neglect.

00:48:29 Cinnamon: Yeah. So I would just say about this one, not feeling loved, cared for, not feeling like the closeness of a family or feeling like you have family support or that people recognize you as important. And one of the things that I've talked to folks about is it's not, again, necessarily like this malicious thing. So even if my dad was a great dad, and he just worked all the time, so he never came to sports events, he never came to parent teacher conferences, he never ate dinner with us.

00:49:18 Cinnamon: He always ate a plate of food that my mom heated up after he got home from work and the kids were in bed. Like, whatever it is, that idea that they were not present or you didn't feel important. Because the way we assess importance is different as children. If I can say my dad was out busting his ass to support my family as an adult or even a late teen, I can recognize that. But when it's Little League and I look over and there's all these dads and mine's not there, it's going to sting.

00:49:51 Cinnamon: And I'm not thinking, well, at least we got food on the table. That's not how we relate to that as kids. So physical neglect, this is just that not being able to provide food, shelter, clothing, or being able to provide it, but it's not clean. Not being able to get medical care when their parents are absent. And again, there are a lot of us that took care of ourselves after school because we had parents working. There weren't all of these after school programs or daycare programs or whatever. So a lot of us were just like on our own. And so it can be because of benevolent reasons. Like they worked a lot and they were making sure that we had what we needed. And it also can be because they were using or they left the family. So again, it doesn't always necessarily exclude one thing or another, or it can be good things that still register as children to us as something that is adverse.

00:50:51 Erin: Yeah, it's how it's processed as a child, really.

00:50:54 Cinnamon: As a child, yeah. Our brains are not capable of doing what we do today. So the last category, household dysfunction. This is pretty clear cut. So was there a member of the household that abused drugs or alcohol? Were your parents divorced? Did you have an incarcerated family member? Was there domestic violence or was there mental illness? Those are the big five when it comes to household dysfunction. Divorce, drugs, incarceration, domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse. Yeah, I think I said substance abuse and drugs.

00:51:32 Erin: Same. Everybody gets it.

00:51:36 Cinnamon: So I kind of mentioned earlier an expanded ACEs, like what that means. And so, like we said, 95 is when this research started and we weren't really talking about some of the bigger things that we're talking about now in 2023. So we were able to recognize that there are going to be things that impact this. And this came up on Friday. Like, what happens if maybe it wasn't happening in your household, but you were being a religious abuse, right?

00:52:12 Cinnamon: Whether that looks like someone is sexually abusing you or someone is abusing you, using a faith that you and your family practice, where it looks like high levels of judgment and criticism and shaming shunning, all of that. It can also be our communities, our access to resource in our communities. Are our communities violent? Are they food deserts? Are we shopping at convenience stores because there aren't grocery stores nearby, so everything's jacking up the price?

00:52:47 Cinnamon: Are we getting bullied at school? We see this a lot. Our clients and even people who aren't our clients, will report high levels of bullying in departments and agencies. And it's just this continuation, like, when are we going to be done with that? But if you're getting bullied or picked on in an academic environment, if you've lived in foster care, if you are a person of color and I've heard lots of stories like, I was the only black kid in an all white school and these are the things that I endured that maybe nobody else did.

00:53:26 Cinnamon: Hell, right before we recorded this, I was like getting my nails done and the woman that does my nails, she was like, I know this is going to sound racist and I don't mean it like this. She's like, but I would never go work at an all white nail salon because I would not be comfortable. And so that idea of her minimizing her employment opportunities simply because she's like, I don't want to be in that environment. I don't want to be uncomfortable all day. I would much rather go to this kind of salon or nail salon to work. I think it's so important to recognize that even if it's not your experience and maybe you can't understand what that would feel like, that does not mean that it can't be a valid experience for someone else.

00:54:07 Erin: Absolutely.

00:54:12 Erin: Hey there to all you fearless folks who've been tuning in to After the Tones Drop. You know, we've been dishing out some real deal mental health wisdom for our first responders and we need your help to keep it rolling. So here's the deal. Take a minute and do us a favor by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. And listen, we're not expecting a novel here, just a few lines about what you're appreciating about the show, whether it's our interviews, perhaps the educational aspect, or just our goofy humor and metaphors and your feedback, it's like the gasoline in our engine fueling us to bring you more of the good stuff. So let's keep that siren wailing and those reviews pouring in. Thanks. We appreciate you.

00:55:03 Erin: So what are the lasting impacts of all of this early adversity?

00:55:10 Cinnamon: So kind of going back to that story that I told you at the very beginning about the teenage girl with the little brother. Obviously, if we are being physically abused or neglected, there's a good chance we're going to have injuries, right? So even if I am trying to make myself ramen noodles after school and I burn myself on the oven, right? Or I am not being watched and I get hit with a baseball bat in the head, or it could be I am being physically injured by a parent and I'm not talking about my father in law in the ear. I'm talking broken bones, fractures, burns.

00:55:56 Cinnamon: We've all heard a story about child abuse with kids with cigarette burns on them. I know there are so many things worse than that, but when I think of the intent that someone has to have to put a lit cigarette up to a child's skin and do that, I don't even know how to go there. So injuries, our mental health, we're going to be more likely to mood disorders and post traumatic stress. So anxiety, depression, increased likelihood of suicidal ideation as well as suicidal completion. We're looking at I gave that example of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy, having complications with pregnancy because of early sexual activity. I'm not saying that somebody can't have sex for the first time at age 25 and get pregnant, but I'm talking about like when the ODS increase, infectious diseases like STIs or HIV, chronic illness like cancer. We were talking about cancer earlier. When we have high levels of stress, we're looking at heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes. We also have an increase of high risk behaviors, like when we're sneaking out that window.

00:57:12 Cinnamon: So we're going to get access to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, unsafe driving practices. Right? I don't remember ever climbing into a car when I was a teenager and everybody's like, buckle up. I was like, how many people can we fit in this car? Right? And if you're from where I'm from, how many Amish horses can we hit? Unfortunately, yes. And then the last one is going to be, like, our opportunities as an adult. So let's say my parents, new in the country, don't speak the language, working all the time. It's not abusive, but it's an adverse childhood experience because I'm having to learn a language and figure out all of my homework on my own, and I don't have necessarily that support.

00:58:03 Cinnamon: So, again, this is not a list of how our parents abuse us. This is a list of childhood adversities. And so the idea that I'm in an English is a second language household with parents who work a total of four jobs. I'm responsible for cooking and maintaining my little siblings. I'm less likely to have a high level of academic performance because I'm stretched so thin, which is then in turn going to change what kind of jobs I can get as an adult that's going to impact what kind of income I can make.

00:58:36 Cinnamon: So now we're looking at how these ACEs are not only impacting us in that moment, but they can impact us for no other reason than this for the rest of our lives.

00:58:44 Erin: It's that ripple effect, for sure. Well, and then obviously, if we're going through all of these things, and since we're constantly talking about the brain, the brain is clearly impacted in some capacity through all of these situations. All of these circumstances. And I remember very clearly you talking about the brain development and the blueprint, which I would love for you to share that with our listener. But what specifically is being impacted in our brains through all of this?

00:59:15 Cinnamon: So I would say that the two most important pieces of the brain, when we talk about almost anything around mental health are going to be that prefrontal cortex. And that's where all of our executive functioning happens, where we think, where we organize memory, all of that good stuff, our moral compass, our creativity, it's all in that prefrontal cortex. And that is what differentiates us from the other mammals, right.

00:59:54 Cinnamon: That prefrontal cortex is exclusive to us humans, and that is the highest order cognitive abilities. So it's the thing that makes us think, let me shit in the toilet and not here in the woods and then throw it at the other orangutan or gorilla. I'm actually going to just leave it in the toilet and flush it, right? As graphic as that sounds like that would be how we're separating that high order cognitive ability in that prefrontal cortex.

01:00:20 Cinnamon: Now, the other piece that is so imperative is going to be your limbic system. And that's more of what we call the mammalian brain. That's the brain for mammals, that section of our brain. It's more, I guess we could say, in the middle. And that is in charge of our behavioral and emotional responses and reactions. And there are some key pieces in there that are kind of important that we talk a lot about in mental health related to post traumatic stress, but we're just going to talk about it in terms of a system. But that limbic system is kind of our fear center, and it helps us gauge when there is danger or threat, and it is designed to help keep us safe. Our prefrontal cortex is designed to shut down when our limbic system has identified a threat, so we don't think ourselves into a killing situation. I use the example with my clients, like, if this building starts getting bombed, our limbic system is going to detect that our prefrontal cortex is going to shut down and we're going to move our feet, right?

01:01:34 Cinnamon: Like we're going to run. That is what we are designed to do. Because if we sat there and said, okay, well, it looks like we're getting bombed and there's a few of us, so we probably should vote for a leader. And before we vote for a leader, we should decide if we're going to use Robert's Rules and if we're going with a majority or has to be unanimous, we're dead. We're not going to make it out.

01:01:58 Cinnamon: So that human part of our brain actually shuts down and the part of our brain that makes us look more like deer, that is what is in charge, but it is designed specifically for that. But when you have, let's say, first world stressors, because there's not necessarily going to be a lot of bears attacking us these days. So, we end up instead of it being like, oh, I'm a caveman and there's a bear and it's going to eat me, I better move now. It's more like, oh, my gosh, I have to do this public speaking event, or my teacher called on me and I have to give an answer or I feel disrespected, right? So these are the parts of our brains that are so important in development and how we understand what is threat and how to respond to threat and what kind of threats we've been exposed to prematurely. So I think that leads us into that brain development. 

01:03:00 Erin: Well, yeah. And then there's the brain development. And I loved how you structured it kind of like the blueprint of house, because it really is a helpful way to understand how we are affected by these adversities. So the nature, right? There's the nature, which is the common thing, right? 

01:03:24 Cinnamon: Yeah. So the way I described it at the conference and how I do it with clients is when we're born, there's like a blueprint for our bodies, right? We can expect to come out with two hands, two ears, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, whatever. Hopefully we can see that, right? But a very similar blueprint is at work inside of our brains. And I think of it as like the blueprints of a house, right? They're on paper, we know what they look like. We know what it's supposed to look like when it's finished. But all it is is plans. When we throw in the nurture or the environment, that's when things can get changed up. And so I talk about the blueprints of the house, and then all of a sudden you've got a three dimensional house where there's no paint color on a blueprint, whether it's inside or outside. You don't necessarily know what furniture you're going to put in there or what vases or pictures are going to hang on the walls.

01:04:35 Cinnamon: All of those things are coming from our environment. So I'm always confused by this why the nature nurture debate is still going. We kind of know the answer is nature has the original blueprint, which gets us so far, but it really is nurture that fills it all in, and it can take that blueprint and go in any direction, whether it's the one in the plan or something completely different. So we have these brain connections, and the idea is that we, for the most part, would live in a world where we are not strapped with stressors that are above our pay grade as children. So I should ideally, right, there's my should again feel safe, feel loved, feel cared for, to feel a sense of ownership or bodily autonomy over my person that I get to worry about play and learning how to make friends and learning new skills.

01:05:50 Cinnamon: Those are the things we want our kids focused on. But if prematurely, before I'm developmentally mature enough or have the coping skills, I have to figure out how to take care of mom, dad, little brother, how I have to problem solve, how to keep people safe if I need to learn how to read people when someone walks in the door so I know how to handle myself, right. So I think about when some of our first responders come home and they aren't necessarily great at being mindful. They think, well, if I don't bring my work home, that means I don't talk about it.

01:06:33 Cinnamon: But that doesn't mean that they're not bringing their work home via a mood. And are your kids already figuring out, like, I have to gauge my parents mood when they walk in the door to figure out how I'm going to behave, how I'm going to greet them, how I'm going to continue to behave with my siblings or with whatever activity I'm engaged in at the time. When we are asking these little people to take on responsibilities that are above their developmental pay grade, then we are going off the blueprint. Because part of being a child is that we have the luxury of feeling safe and secure, loved, taken care of, have provided for.

01:07:16 Cinnamon: And if I'm in a household where all of those assumptions are not there, and really what I'm doing is figuring out how to take care of myself or how to take care of others to ensure my own survival, right? Like, how do I emotionally support mom if mom's depressed? So I can encourage her, so she can get up and make my little brother and I dinner or so she will go to work, whatever, that it's beyond what we are supposed to be doing. Those brain pathways get strengthened. And so when we have the ones that are in the blueprint not being repeated over and over because we don't have that luxury, but rather we have these other brain connections getting repeated and strengthened, then our behavior is going to connect directly to those stronger brain pathways. So that may look like I people please.

01:08:20 Cinnamon: There's always the debate about empaths people that are like, oh, I'm so in tune with others. Well, yeah, if you've been having to watch your dad's mood every time he comes home from work your whole entire childhood, then, yeah, you probably can look at a room and just by facial expressions or body language or tone of voice, figure out what kind of mood everybody is in and how to adapt. These are the fallout of those kind of things and why it shows up in our behavior. I watch people struggle with a lot of these behaviors that they're trying to figure out, how do I stop doing this thing that feels so autopiloty–if that's an adjective. And it takes work, it takes intention, you can't just know what you're doing and then stop because it is imprinted into you now.

01:09:17 Cinnamon: That this is your way of being, this is what you do. This is your organic way of handling a situation. And to stop doing that, it takes a lot of work.

01:09:28 Erin: And a new level of awareness and tools. 

01:09:32 Cinnamon: Yes.

01:09:33 Erin: We've spent this past hour or so really giving the nuts and bolts of what the ACEs actually are and how any old person can be impacted by this and not think that they have been affected by it. And as Cinnamon just pointed out, why can I not get over this one thing? Or why do I keep going back to this one behavior that feels so inappropriate or ineffective in my adult life? Well, we just explained why. And so one of the cool things that we have is a resource for you to, in fact, assess your own self to do the ACEs assessment. So we will make sure that we put that in our show notes, and it's anonymous. So listen, if you choose to jump into this with curiosity, please do so.

01:10:28 Erin: No one will ever know. We're not going to get any information about you, but we invite you to just maybe be curious about it. And if it sounds like something you'd be into, we're going to provide that resource for you in our show notes. But when we come back on the next episode, we're going to do part two of ACEs and what that looks like, and Cinnamon is going to tee up what that's going to look like for our next episode. 

01:10:51 Cinnamon: So, like Erin said, we've covered a lot of that foundational information so we understand what ACEs are, and this would be a really shitty space or spot to just be like, and we're done. You're like, am I just screwed? What do I do? And so the next episode I really want to talk about what do we do if we cannot hop in the DeLorean and go back in time and undo these events that have happened or experiences that we've endured? How do we not just live in those problematic, maladaptive coping mechanisms that we've created? So we actually are going to talk about some epigenetic gene changes.

01:11:37 Cinnamon: We're going to talk about neuroplasticity, and we're going to talk about resiliency. And I am going to give you some really simple, ridiculously, obnoxiously, simple things that you can do that with intention and mindfulness. And I don't mean mindfulness as an exercise, but like, really being purposeful that we can start to turn around some of those negative behaviors or ways of thinking that we can see out of ourselves because of these experiences from our childhood. 

01:12:10 Erin: Yeah, awesome. So come back and join us next time and get the rest of the details on this thing that we've been so excited to share with you and we will talk to you all soon.

01:12:21 Cinnamon: See ya!

01:12:26 Erin: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of After The Tones Drop. Today's show has been brought to you by Whole House Counseling. As a note, After The Tones Drop is for informational purposes only and does not constitute for medical or psychological advice. It is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please contact a local mental health professional in your area if you are in need of any assistance. You can also visit afterthetonesdrop.com and click on our resources tab for an abundance of helpful information. And we would like to give a very special thank you and shout out to Venz Adams, Yeti and Sonda for our show's music.