Survivors OWN ACEs: 30 Days of After Oprah (Day 1)

Day 1

It was #Time’sUp at the Oscars and #MeToo at the Golden Globes but for the rest of us non-Hollywood people it’ was game day last night on  on 60 Minutes.

If you’re buried by snow, parenting or symptoms of traumatic stress, maybe you don’t know Oprah tackled childhood trauma, toxic stress, ACEs, PTSD  or whatever you call crap that happens in childhood and kicks our asses all the way into adulthood.

Oprah said, “This story was life changing for me. Life changing. People use this work rhetorically. Lifechanging. It’s changed the way I operate.”

If I had a football jersey it would say #ThankFck4Oprah on the front and #ItsAboutFrigginTime on the back. For survivors like myself, it was Super Bowl Sundae with the cherry on top. Go here to watch the segment or to read the transcript.

“If I could be a dancing emoji about it I would,” said, “I think it’s that important to our culture.”

Except instead of “you get a car, you get a car, you get a car,” it’s more like, “You get an aha. You get an aha. You get an aha.”

Aha 1. Developmental trauma or why my elevator really doesn’t go to the top floor (i.e. it’s not all in our heads)

When I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress in my early twenties. I kept asking my therapist, “from childhood?” “from my childhood?” because I didn’t even know that was possible.

Bonnie Hahn, a survivor of childhood trauma, who was interviewed on the 60 Minutes segment shared a similar sentiment. “I didn’t understand it because PTSD was for the veterans coming home from the war. That was what I thought it was. I had no idea.”

I too thought trauma stress was reserved for veterans. I thought the rest of us who agonized over the ache of childhood had mental-illness/issues we were supposed to work on in private while trying to pass for normal. I knew I was different. The world seemed like it was easier for others to navigate. I thought I was too sensitive. I thought I was flunking “doing” human. I had no idea the “baggage” I was carrying was literally burdensome to my growing brain, body and being.

I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. That was hard.

Most of us deal with what happens to us in childhood in painful isolation. Without public health stats and stories getting to us, as kids, or even grown-ups, we have no context to what does or doesn’t happen for other kids. We don’t know what’s developmental trauma or what’s just-the-way-it-is. We know our experience.

We don’t know what happens to us, as kids, can protect or threaten us for the rest of our lives and has everything to do with health and well-being.

About the Survivors Own ACEs series. 

This is the first of 30 posts about the Oprah segment on 60 Minutes last night.

There are those of us who have been raised with the ABC’s of ACEs and are still slogging it out in adult life if we got through baby-toddler-childhood. However, our first-person perspectives are often missing even when about how adults live after childhood trauma. That’s wrong.

Most of us spend most of our days outside of a clinical hour or conference.

Academic research and medical models often miss the mark. The fail to include the living-while-surviving stuff such as recovering, raising kids, working, managing post-traumatic stress and racism, sexism, poverty (fill-in-the-blank) and paying bills.

We have, as Sebern Fisher says, “fear-driven brains” but don’t get an assist on parenting, partnering, or personing. We often just do life while afraid. We spend a shit ton of energy regulating our symptoms and trying to get back in our bodies (or not).

And we suffer the consequences of ACEs in all sorts of social-emotional-financial ways. And die earlier, on average, when there’s been too much. So if we own the consequences of ACEs and developmental trauma – how about we own this conversation, moment and trauma-informed movement so that maybe it’s informed by trauma survivors and not edupuked all over us?

I’ve been living, thinking, writing, researching and interviewing others about healing and post-traumatic stress for three decades. Add in childhood, and my work spans a half-century. I certify myself as a subject matter expert on trauma-informed? I can speak about life and healing informed by trauma.  I’m not alone. There are lots of us. But for GRRRR sake, it’s often pretty lonely.

It’s going to take survivors, parents, and teachers to move trauma-informed change in day to day life. And out of classrooms, boardrooms and therapy sessions.

Many are thrilled that Oprah said trauma, said ACEs, and “trauma-informed” last night. And it’s nice that the conversation got mainstreamed in such a major way. But that’s not what delights me most. It’s not just the topic but who is talking and how because language matters and so does experience.

I’m delighted the world gets the shift from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” but I’m also clear that survivors have questions for one another and others. 

Sometimes, it’s not the questions that need to change but the one who is doing the asking. Asking is good but don’t frame all interactions and call that a relationship. Preview the agenda and ask and then allow for feedback. Maybe, let’s let those with the most skin in the game lead the conversation. Maybe, don’t just invite us in from time to time but insist on our inclusion at the strategy, policy and implementation level.

When that happens it goes in different directions. Cue Oprah. Oprah, who isn’t relegated to the “lived experience” corner but speaks with and to and as us.

Oprah is a survivor helping us OWN this movement.

#ThankFck4Oprah and #ItsAboutFrigginTime

Aha 2 Preview: There’s a test for that?