Your Childhood and Your Health Today

The relationship environment created by authority and parental figures in our formative years - as well as our choice of response - often determines our health and wellbeing throughout our lives. There is a simple test called the ACEs questionnaire that helps to quickly identify your Adverse Childhood Experience score. The ACEs website takes time to load, so please be patient. Those who score high may have suffered trauma that make them more likely to have chronic health problems that tend to worsen with aging. It is important to note that a given incidence on the questionnaire, like divorce, is not necessarily a trauma, but how divorce is handled within a family, often is. Still, divorce is worth tracking simply because few divorces are handled well when children are involved.

The goal here is not to blame but to address and learn to prevent. 
We can prevent future health problems of the chronic sort by becoming better parents, teachers, supervisors, etc. To become better people, we must become better at relating to others, especially those in our charge.

Relating Styles

​Pathological relating is:

• Irresponsible
• Disrespectful
• Aggressive, passive, or passive-aggressive
• Too confining or too free.

Healthy relating is:

• Responsible
• Respectful
• Assertive
• Bounded in the "just right" zone.

Particularly when it comes to children, but also as an adult, the will and ability of each person determines how health problems manifest over time:

• Resolute people may internalize and end up with chronic personal health problems;
• People that give up may externalize and end up being part of chronic societal health problems.

We can choose to relate in ways that contribute to trauma or help offset trauma. It is our choice. Let us choose the healthier way.

Healing from Trauma

Our past traumas show up in our present. We cannot change the past, but we can change how we respond in the present. There are probably many ways of accomplishing this. Most people will likely find themselves in need of professional help, but it can be done, individually, as well. A good place to start may be with trauma recovery specialist, Michele Rosenthal. I don't know her, but found her serendipitously. As I found my own way to healing the past, I can tell that Michele Rosenthal is on the right path. By right, I mean she is taking an approach that more closely resembles what I know to be needed for true healing to take place.

We can heal from the past and we can change the future by changing the present: How we choose to relate to every person, place, or thing, matters.

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Trauma creates change you don't choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.
Michele Rosenthal

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Originally posted 4/25/2023