Nursing Graduate , ACES , and Trauma Therapy

Well, hello ya'll. I'm offically a nursing school graduate. In one year of full time training my salary is the highest it ever was with a master's degree in education, as well as counseling. I can make $30/hr, even more as a LPN. I guess people don't want to be cheap when it comes to their life. Maybe not the case with the soul, where I was making $15/hr as a master's level therapist at the biggest agency in Central Florida. For some reasong the critical work of healing people's souls is not as big as a priority as their bodies. I say the order is reversed. Heal the soul, the body will follow. Next, I made $25/hr as a special education teacher in Florida untill 2018 with my master's degree. It's laughable.

I was also a guidance counselor, same salary. I would tell kids now based off my experiences focus on having something that no one else does off the street. To be successful, you have to have a skill or a specialized knowledge of some type. Something people would pay to have or know. I always thought, as I was trained from a young age that a college degree means something. People are impressed by it and will hire me for it. This is not actually the case in my experience. I graduated with 2 bachelors degrees (marketing and psychology), and 2 1/2 master's degrees (school counseling, mental health counseling, and reading education). Based off my school loans, I would say the ends does not justify the means.

I get frustrated becasue I wonder, is the low pay because it's "women's" work? Nuturing and educating are not typically things that are valued in our society. But I can tell you in retrospect these things are everything. It's funny I think our society is really starting to wake up and realize this. Not necessarily pay appropriately for it's value, but anyone with high emotional intelligence see's how vitally important these are to everyone.

As a child I think I'm pretty typical of my generation of early 80s babies, or gen x as they say. We were provided all our physical and social needs, just not our emotional one's so much. Or maybe that was just me. I thought it was pretty common for a child of this era to not talk about our feelings, bullying, or even trauma. We kinda pushed it down and got on with the business of life. It's only in retrospect in my 40s I'm coming to realize how important this critical emotional piece was to my development. My parent's did the best they could, being WWII babies. Their parent's went through the depression and both world wars, or at least one. They grew up during the cuban missle crisis, when survival and bomb shelters were a thing. They were tough, and kids were definetly seen and not heard.

Developing a child's social and emotional needs were just starting to be realized in 1943 when Maslow came out with his heirarchy of needs. These state that we have different levels of functioning, and untill one is met, the next cannot be moved though. Starting with physiological needs(food/water/shelter), safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. There's a lot of ways that kids need development, and it goes a lot furthur than just feeding, clothing, and providing shelter.

Basically also what I learned in nursing school(and vaious degrees) is a child needs to trust that their emotional needs will be met when they cry as a baby. This is important to develop trust in adults and they don't need to develop survival skills on their own. This was definetly not the mindset of their parent's I am almost sure. It's funny because no one can really remember. You just kinda know if you trusted your parents to provide for you emotionally or you didn't. I think we're all a little messed up from our parent's putting themselves first at times, versus our social and emotional needs. We're human after all.

It really comes down to reparenting. I started trauma therapy, since the stress of nursing school really brought everything to the surface. It was so crazy my blood pressure went from always being a little high under the 130s to the 160s. I went to my primary towards the end of nursing school, and he took my blood pressure. He thought I was going to stroke out. I wasn't allowed to exercise till our next visit a month later. It's now back in the normal range without having taken blood pressure medication(due to their awful side effects). It only took 3 months of weekly accupuncture, psychiatric panic attack medication, and therapy. Basically the stress was causing my sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) to be in panic mode at all times. There was no off, and my heart thought I was running a marathon which isn't really that far from the truth.

What I learned is that if I was going to survive in the high stress environment of nursing, I would need my nervous system to be in a calmer state. A lot of times people are not even conscious this is what they're doing when they are exercise fanatics, and they can't miss a day. They are inducing a state of relaxation through exercise, their body does not know how to do naturally. Someone with a history of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse cannot handle a lot of extra stress because their body is already operating in a hightened state from these negative experiences.

I found that my coping mechanism for dealing with trauma was denial and repression. This includes memories, as I still cannot access memories from before I was 8. I don't know what happened to those, and it really trips me out my brain is able to do that. I wonder, what else have I been pushing down(not sexually), but in my everyday life to just function. It's come to a head, and I'm learning to value my own judgement(and not minimize my feelings). Also to be OK with being alone. I found this emptiness inside of myself that needed to be surrounded by people and things to distract me from it. I found I'm never truely alone. Even in the primitive wilderness all alone, with no human around I still had little bug friends and my God. It's hard to explain, but the trust there has developed over time.

The afraid of being alone thing is not all the way healed, but I'm on my way and feel pretty proud of where I come. Especially since my therapist who knows my history, called me a bad ass. I'm a strong survivor, and not a victim of my past any longer. A lot of this means checking in with my inner child and how she's feeling. I watch my nephew, and he's so refreshingly honest. I love it, his instints and feelings have not been programmed to be extinguished yet. He's a bad ass, and so is my inner child. She just wants love, hugs, and to be told everything is ok. That's why I feel affirmations and checking in with my body is so important. The body can heal itself and trauma which frankly we've all been through is stored in our bodies.

That's why so many people with difficult childhoods, have so many chronic conditions. There's a study that came out in the 1990s called Adverse Childhood Experiences. You can basically add them up and see somewhat your life expectancy. It's really horrendous to realize, but also so important to helping children in these situations while they are still young enough and develop these chronic conditions that will eventually kill them young. They are below, count 1 for each one, and get your score out of 10. Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire Finding your ACE Score While you were growing up, during your first 18 years of life: 1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often … Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often … Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Try to or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal sex with you? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 4. Did you often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 5. Did you often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 7. Was your mother or stepmother: Often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes or often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or who used street drugs? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill or did a household member attempt suicide? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ 10. Did a household member go to prison? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________ Now add up your “Yes” answers: _______ This is your ACE Score The quiz score is based on ten types of childhood trauma measured in the ACE Study. Five are personal — physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. Five are related to other family members: a parent who’s an alcoholic, a mother who’s a victim of domestic violence, a family member in jail, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, and the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death or abandonment. You get one point for each type of trauma. The higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of health and social problems. As your ACE score increases, so does the risk of disease, social and emotional problems. With an ACE score of 4 or more, things start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent.

Mine was a 4. I won't say what, but suffice to say that it's an uphill battle at times emotionally. I struggle with depression and anxiety pretty regularly. My heart hurts for children with more. I also know my parent's did the best they could, and have come a very long way emotionally since I was a child. Our family is pretty supportive in a crisis situation, and the majority of us have long term sobriety which is such a miracle and amazing in an of itself. I myself will be getting 10 years of sobriety in May 15 this year. I crave spiritual experiences like I used to crave drugs and alcohol.

The good news is that the brain can be rewired through counseling and learning new skills to calm down the nervous system. That's what I'm learning in therapy and it's really excited an old dog can still learn new tricks. I started nursing school at 41, and finished it and passed my test by 42. The hardest part was not knowing my schedule from day to day, and the amount of work in a small period of time to get through. I have been praying about where I should work. I think I would get the best experience at a small hospital, but I'm open to wherever God needs me. I eventually want to be a nurse practitioner like my mother. My father is also a doctor, but I like the idea of working my way up. First I was a CNA, now I'm a LPN. Then a RN, BSN, the ARNP (or master's degree). Unfortunately the trick is I need help paying for it since my $150K in student loans isn't going anywhere. But I know a way will be provided with being able to make good money now as a practical nurse.

Luckily my parent's are both very inspirational professionally. I see how good life can be when you put in the work to reach the top tiers of the medical field. I like that I can see myself still being able to work in an independent career when I am older like they do. I love helping people and being there for kids, elderly, and adults when they need some compassion and help. It's the second chapter in my professional life and I think it's going to be a good one where I thrive. I still want to help reduce global warming, and do my part to undo my carbon footprint in some way. I know carbon drawdown into the soil is the answer, and I want to help with that in whatever way I am called. I'm here for it all, and know that with my God, all things are possible for me. I wish you all the best, and the healing you deserve for yourself.