https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/

I think that I place much blame on Mormonism for my problems in my upbringing. Maybe it isn't warranted?

I have a score of 5. My wife's score is probably lower. I'm going to print this out and ask her. I know my kids have taken this and don't even have a 1.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2019 09:51AM by cl2.

5 confirmed kills and I was an ace!

...don't know my "ACE" score, but my "ASS" score was amazingly high......academic............Doctorate-level high.

I am here to serve.

0

ziller once showed quad aces in a no-limit hold'em game in a oklahoma casino ~


in b 4 ~ semi-true story ~



anyway ~


brb ~ having an drink b 4 taking the test ~

I have never won an A.C.E. Eddie Award for film editing.

I ace'd it.

Things looked pretty bleak in my early life: vicious domineering mother, only party restrained by my moderate dad (until he died when I was just 15 and Mother and I actually battled physically. I ripped her weapon of choice away from her, and threatened to clock her something fierce with it, so she left me alone after that. I heard her lamenting to my grandmother once, "I can't hit her any more, so I don't know what to do."

It never occurred to her that my grandmothers asked me to do things in a polite way, "Could you please do thus-and-such for me?" I was always happy to help. As opposed to my mother's dictatorial orders, snapped out like a drill sergeant, which I generally ignored. I tried to suggest that if she used "the magic word" (like, "PLEASE," or "COULD YOU HELP ME WITH??" it would have been an entirely different dynamic. But she never understood that concept. So it was war.

4

Same here. It was kind of eye-opening because I know my children and grandchildren's would likely be higher. But it does make me feel lucky that alcoholism, extreme poverty, parental divorce, etc. did not add to my score. I think there are many mormons who could score a 0. And as long as nothing ever bursts their mormon bubbles, can have a very happy and pretty much trauma-free life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2019 10:04PM by NormaRae.

3

4

A lot of the insults and even swearing occurred Sunday morning before hauling ass for Sunday school. The harder that my family tried to be the perfect mormon family, the more unhappiness resulted. My absent working Dad blamed my working Mom for not properly disciplining the wild Goops. My Mom was a victim of abuse and the vicious cycle of abuse continued. Mormonism fanned the flames of family discord.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2019 10:09AM by messygoop.

Thank you all for your replies. It is something that helps me. To know how varied we all are. It helps to not extrapolate all the time that my experiences in life are as important as I make them. Abuse seems to be that creeping element in life that we never talk about and forget exists.

I am so glad some people have low scores. I'm also glad that my higher score has not limited me as much as other people with high ACE scores.

On my 49th birthday last Saturday my mother called and talked to me and my wife for an hour. She said she couldn't afford the postage to send me the usual Dollar General gift. I told her that her just reaching out meant more to me than gift.

She said that growing up in a severely abusive home (I would guess her ACE score is a 6 or 7 or more) she said her wonderful mother (who was a nice woman but didn't stand up for her kids) who she misses (died in 1988) was one good thing in her early life. But mentioning her mother was an after thought. She said school and going to college and the church were the only good things in her life.

It was sad. I'm glad I've not perpetuated high ACE scores.

ACE score of 8


Resiliance score of 12 - they hit because they love...

Finally out long enough to fix the shit.

Elder Berry Wrote:

>
> I think that I place much blame on Mormonism for
> my problems in my upbringing. Maybe it isn't
> warranted?
>

In the end, my take is that even Mormons know right from wrong in regard to how children are treated. While the church could do more to encourage parents to treat their children better, the parents know better if only because they know it's wrong when they see others do it or they knew it was wrong when their parents treated them in such a manner.

I'm one of the lucky ones, too. My ACE score is zero.

scmd1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the end, my take is that even Mormons know
> right from wrong in regard to how children are
> treated.

I've seen an attitude of have kids and let the wards sort them out. In some ways I was one of those kids. I think neglect is rampant in Mormonism. Who are these children coming down? Not even their parents know or care.

> I'm one of the lucky ones, too. My ACE score is
> zero.

Good for you!

I think my family still would have had problems, but the intensity of the situations would have been lower. Mormonism was the pressure cooker that made family life so unbearable at times. There were so many arguments over FHE, mutual, extra church activities, scouting. I've already shared how liberal my parents were when it came to Mormon expectations. I actually despised my family at one point because they were no where close to appearing like the perfect "happy" mormon family.

These were the phrases that triggered the most conflict in my home:

The prophet says...
Heavenly Father expects...
The scriptures teach...
The church believes...

I have cousins in SLC who told me their father beat them when they were reluctant to get ready for church.

I think Don Bagley had that happen as well?

There was some corporal punishment over church. I consider Mormonism to be an enabler of child abuse, at the very least. I'll go farther,sex interviews with kids is abuse. So, yes, I blame the church plenty.

I was slapped, sweared-at, called names, and sometimes "formally" spanked (performed like a ritual, by my father, and he would pull down my pants to attack my bare skin) if I balked at going to church, or was late. Illness was no excuse, but I was allowed to stay home from school, or maybe the schools wouldn't allow sick contagious kids to attend school, I don't know.

My ACE score was 3. Should be a 5. The test should have people add the NUMBER of people in their home who treated them in this way. Both my 6-years-older brother and my mother were physically abusive, threatening, and also bi-polar. My father was just plain abusive and cold. My brother was verbally sexually abusive. I think my father would have killed him if he had been sexual with me. Brother would threaten to act out all kinds of perverted sexual acts on me, and describe them in graphic detail. I was horrified of my brother. I still lose it when I hear men shouting, or sudden loud noises, and I can't be in a room or a car alone with a man.

My dad was about to beat me for for not wanting to go to church, but mom stepped in and stopped him. I was about 11 at the time.

I did get a spanking in the driveway for not working hard enough cutting wood one Saturday when dad was trying to get it done so he could go some priesthood meeting that evening. I was about 7 then. I remember later that night getting ready for a bath and my mom saw that dad had left marks on my butt because he hit so hard.....she was actually pissed and let him know it.

The family that beats together stays together for eternity!

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The family that beats together stays together for
> eternity!

We can be spanked together forever some day!

1 - and it still stings all these years later.

That is why ACE is so important an indicator of potentially destabilizing of individuals as they grow and develop. There are actually genes which only activate in an environment of abuse changing the child slowly.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/epigenetics-abuse/

7

I got an 8 on my Resilience Score.

https://acestoohigh.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/resilience-19.jpg

https://acestoohigh.com/2017/02/05/__trashed-4/

Also, while I believe I was one of the more abused children, all 10 of us didn't get away with really low ACE scores.

What does that say? I don't really know. Every one of us kids and our parents would be considered responsible functioning adults. They are all Mormons with the exception of my brother and I who are in the middle of the family exactly. He is number 5 and I am number 6.

I'm the only one that I KNOW of us who has delved into unsafe sex, drugs, and alcohol.

But we are totally dysfunctional. I've seen functional and we aren't that. Island personalities in a forever family. And this is the interesting thing about ACE. We all have underlying emotional problems but I think with Mormonism we have our emotionally destructive fix. The monster under our beds is Mormon I think.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2019 01:40PM by Elder Berry.

This is unreal - I just learned about this yesterday from a co-worker for the first time. Mine is pretty low, a 3, but I do feel like emotional neglect and trauma is underrepresented on the test.

doubledipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mine is pretty low, a 3, but I do feel like
> emotional neglect and trauma is underrepresented
> on the test.

I totally agree.

I noticed something interesting in the scales.

As I was reading the first set of questions, I wondered "why isn't there a place for the church?" I mean, for many of us Mormonism and the Mormon church were extremely important--and egregiously negative in terms of inculcated guilt, sense of inadequacy, abusive teachings, parental neglect, etc. It seemed to me that there should be a way to register that fact when calculating ACE scores.

Then I read through the resilience questionnaire and discovered that lo and behold, social institutions such as churches are viewed as a potential source of support and strength. In other words, the people who put those scales together could not conceive of a religion that was a source of trauma rather than a source of succor. This is one more area in which the LDS experience is beyond the ken of normal people.

My guess is that many of us should add a point to our trauma indices to account for the destructive effects of the church. Psychologists and sociologists may not see religious organizations as a sufficiently significant source of emotional harm to merit a separate question, but for subsets of people like Mormons, members of crazy cults like Beth's, and the victims of Catholic molestation, etc., ignoring the elephant in the room gives an unduly sanguine impression of childhood.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2019 07:47PM by Lot's Wife.

I agree. The frosting on the cake of abuse is the philosophical indoctrination that you are deserving of suffering and abuse and aren't worthy. Mormonism takes this to the level of cult interrogations.

1, I WAS sickingly fortunate and I have the Olddog which

is the icing on the cake.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2019 09:11PM by saucie.

A 1 !!!


What the hell ?!?!

You're a 10 !!!


...maybe I should look up ACE score? Nah. You're a 10.

While I admit to loving the Olddog too, I'd be interested in seeing the cake on which he is the icing ;-)

No pics, please. For the love of God. . .




ETA: That's a comment about EOD, not Saucie. I once saw a photo of the latter, and she's (almost) enough to make an atheist believe in God.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2019 12:19PM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No pics, please. For the love of God. . .
>
>
>
>
> ETA: That's a comment about EOD, not Saucie. I
> once saw a photo of the latter, and she's (almost)
> enough to make an atheist believe in God.


Why thank you Lottie...

Two of my brothers. I have a disabled brother and he was not abused. My dad was very hard on my brothers. My youngest brother, whom I'm the closest to of all my siblings, still is angry at my dad and he's been dead 10 years. My older brother made peace with my dad as my older brother had a brain bleed and my dad took care of him including giving him IV antibiotics for his infections. He had 5 brain surgeries. They spent my dad's last years together driving to the farm. My dad could barely walk to the truck and my brother couldn't drive.

I have faint memories being sexually abused by some neighbor kids, but I didn't use that one. I won't go into more of that situation.

We had a lot of fighting in our house more about church than almost anything except finances. My dad didn't attend much. He was a farmer and his watering days were then. He wasn't that interested either.

We spent a lot of time working on the farm and some kids would consider that abusive. We didn't have a choice. We just did it. I didn't like it and swore I'd never marry a farmer (and almost did). BUT it taught us all to work really hard. We've all been very successful and only one of us has a college degree.

So here are variations of what you can put down for the numbers. How much yelling was there? My brothers got hit. My mother did not. The 2 older girls (me being one) got spanked some, but not much and since I was the third child, my dad spanked me the lightest, almost as though I wasn't getting spanked. The 3 younger were luckier except my youngest brother. My little sister was the "sweetheart" to my dad, though she didn't turn out to be one. She was sexually molested by the neighbor kid.

I did add to my kids' numbers because of who I married. They had to go through a horrible separation that still continues on, but as you mostly know, he and I live together and get along fine. My daughter at least thanks me for making it possible for our lives to be this way now. I didn't go through the resilience stuff.

Ours has closed and is now a halloween store.

Oh. ACE *score*. Sorry.

Families can be together forever
With Heavenly Father’s half baked plan.

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> With Heavenly Father’s half baked plan.

We can be fully baked together forever someday.

My mother's father was a chain-smoking alcoholic. Her grandfather was an apostle. While she said she was never physically abused, she was verbally abused. She often felt humiliated because everyone in SLC knew her family and she felt she must have reeked of tobacco smoke.

She was damaged and this had an effect on her children and also my cousins, who's parents suffered as well.

Mine's 8. My father was probably a sociopath. He matches clinical signs for extreme grandiose narcissism plus antisocial behavior, machiavellian traits and criminal versatility. The "dark triad" is very present in his profile but he was a little higher in neuroticism than the classic picture of a psychopath. He was extremely abusive towards his wife and kids, and I was a favorite target.

Aside from all the other crud having a high ACE score does physically, I have to say the lies, exploitation and shame of my childhood absolutely predisposed me for cult membership. I swallowed the COJCOLDS fish hook eagerly and felt subtly guilty and anxious for years after leaving.

I didn't know about ACE scores and their relationship with health when I went to the doctor in my mid-thirties complaining of constant fatigue, vague pain, and the inability to exercise hard enough to maintain a healthy weight. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and put on very helpful treatment. It wasn't until last year that my new doctor told me about ACE studies and their positive link to autoimmune conditions. For anyone who is interested, I recommend "The Body Keeps the Score" by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk. It explains childhood trauma and its effects on lifelong health in great (warning: sometimes graphic) detail. A very good read for anyone dealing with old wounds.

Mine was a 6. I had the RS president for a mother. When they would talk about the teenagers using drugs or any other bad things I would get the belt when she got home. I wouldn’t tell her what I was using, I wasn’t using anything But I deserved it because there had to be something else I was doing wrong
If families are forever I don’t want to be there. I’ve had enough.

Well. That was depressing.

Actually I find it very uplifting. I read about other people's ACE scores and rejoice in the fortitude of the human spirit. Even people with 0 understand. We aren't damaged or broken.

A friend coworker of mine is from India. She claims that people from India would all have high ACE scores. She claims that Asian parents are all abusive. I guess I would have to google it. I'm sending her the test.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm
> sending her the test.

She got a 2. She was really surprised. I'm thinking her assertation is probably not as much truth as I suspected it might be before her score.

9

I feel like I should win something.

It's nice to see you, Dogzilla.

Hope all is well.

Maybe you won the dodging of the bullets on these graphs?

https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/

Yeah, don't think so. I've experienced every one of those except for the liver problems and the COPD. So far.

I will say that I made a conscious decision to stop the domestic violence cycle by not marrying or having kids and I'm glad for that. I see where my sister's trauma has affected her parenting and how her kids have some underlying issues that could be traced right back to our childhood experiences.

And one thing that's been interesting to me about doing geneology (which I still do because it's fascinating to me), is how you can see the after effects of trauma in subsequent generations, just from looking at geneological records. You see hospitalizations, alcoholism, drug abuse, divorce, sending kids off to live elsewhere, families split up, crippling poverty...

For example, my great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War. He was shot in Georgia for stealing food and supplies and was treated by a doctor there. I have the where-does-it-hurt medical record -- his injuries plagued him for his entire life and he had dysentery for the rest of his life as well. Well that guy was the one in his family whose wife left him. He had to get a divorce, but he couldn't until she'd abandoned the family for a full three years. Meanwhile, he had an illegitimate kid with his next wife. Then I found the divorce record which was just a few months before the second wedding record and realized my great-grandfather was this out of wedlock baby.

And my great grandfather died in a car wreck when my grandma was 17, which meant she had to go get a job as a seamstress and support her family (8 kids + mom -- so my teenaged grandmother supported a family of 9!) And then my grandmother married a guy who fought in WWII. And three of their four kids are/were completely messed up. And that trauma keeps on trickling down. And I'm hoping my sister's grandkid (Y'all, he is SO cool.) is far enough removed from all that, and that my sister didn't quite experience the same traumas that I did, so that maybe he'll be okay. Or do better than the rest of us.

Anyway. Good to see y'all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 02:55PM by dogzilla.

Nice to see you.

My mother's score possible could be as high as yours except no divorce there. She was raised in a very abusive environment of all types of it and subject to it until after she graduated from BYU. Abject poverty was her life. My father was the first child of an infamous polygamist that his mother divorced when he tried to marry another wife. He was probably neglected a lot but not abused to my knowledge. He became his mother's listener when she married a man who basically lived in their basement and only gave my grandmother attention for sex.

The generational nature of abuse is probably very true. While physically assaulted a lot by both of them, the verbal abuse was from my mother. The sexual abuse from a sibling and a scoutmaster. It feels generational. Pay it forward.

I did want to mention that one of my grandmothers was the pampered daughter of someone who rose to The First Presidency while my other grandmother was probably a prostitute working in the Provo dance halls and married a guy from the band who abused her and flaunted his other sexual relationships in front of her most of my mother's youth.

So I'm the product of a dance hall girl and Mormon royalty.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 05:30PM by Elder Berry.

I forgot to give my score in actual numbers. Came out at 5.

ACE: 1 to 3, due to wiggle room in some of the questions. For example: no physical violence or abuse, but lots of shouting and cursing. And how do you define a "problem drinker"?
RESILIENCE: pretty high, but I didn't do the full calculation.
LATER LIFE: no smoking (tobacco or anything else); moderate to high alcohol intake but no social, legal, or medical consequences so far; no depression or antidepressant prescriptions; and no jaundice, COPD, suicide attempts, or perpetrated domestic violence. I did survive cancer, gallstones, and marriage--34 years next March. Luck probably plays a role, too.
This one was a real eye-opener.

Backseater Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Luck probably plays a role, too.
> This one was a real eye-opener.

Genetics are key. I believe I have a relatively high "happiness" level in my personality.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/11/a-scientist-has-discovered-why-happiness-might-very-well-be-genetic.html

that the shouting and cursing was often while getting ready for church, which seems to be a somewhat similar experience for Latter-Day Saints and Southern Presbyterians.