REGARDING ASKING PARTICIPANTS TO CALCULATE AND SHARE THEIR ACE SCORE
In my experience, it works well to have people report out their ACE scores in a large group of people who do not work together, such as a conference.
However, when you have a group of people who work together, it gets a lot more complicated. Consider this example --
Twenty staff members of a social service agency provide the following results:
1 ACE = 2 people
2 ACEs = 10 people
3 ACEs = 7 people
10 ACEs = 1 person
In this situation, it is only natural for 19 people to wonder and to guess (perhaps accurately) who is the person who reported 10 ACEs. That undermines the intended anonymity of the process.
It is important to bear in mind that --
If I report 3 ACEs, no one knows which ACEs I have. But if I report 10 ACEs, everyone know that I have experienced all of the ACEs on the list.
Especially for someone who is learning about ACEs for the first time, this may put them in the position of either lying, or exposing themselves to their co-workers to a degree that they do not find comfortable.
When I give presentations, I frequently tell participants that if they want to calculate their personal ACE score they can go to ACEs Too High (acestoohigh.com) and click on the tab that reads, "Got Your ACE Score?"
Then I tell them that their ACE score is not that important; the more basic question is, "Was you childhood low stress, medium stress, or high stress?" Using this approach I have found that people often choose to share significant childhood stressors, which may not even be on the list, for example, their father was away fighting in Vietnam for several years during their childhood, or they were in foster care as a child. The conversation is enhanced, not limited by this approach.
Debbie
Deborah Bock
Anchorage, Alaska