How To Break Generational Trauma with the ACE Test

Acknowledging trauma is frequently the most difficult step, particularly if dysfunction seemed normal during childhood. The ACE test offers a clear, structured way to begin asking questions many people have never put into words: Was I emotionally safe as a child? Was I protected? Heard?

How Generational Trauma Gets Passed On

Generational trauma, also known as intergenerational or transgenerational trauma, is the invisible inheritance many families carry. The emotional imprint of unresolved pain is transmitted through behaviors, beliefs, and nervous system reactions. It is not solely a genetic or environmental issue.

Children learn not only what is said but what is shown. A parent who experienced a turbulent home life as a child may become emotionally distant, excessively domineering, or easily agitated, not because malice, but because they never learned how to feel safe themselves. That child may then grow up thinking unpredictability is normal or that love always comes with fear.

Examples are everywhere:

• A father who has never been able to calm himself views emotional shutdown as a sign of strength.
• A mother who experienced early parentification might turn to her own kids for emotional support.

  As a survival strategy, hypervigilance may be passed down from grandparents who have survived famine or war.

Although we are not the ones who start these patterns, we frequently find ourselves repeating them unconsciously. You can purposefully cut the thread by using the ACE test to determine where it might have begun.

What Is the ACE Test and Why Does It Still Matter

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test is a 10-question assessment developed from a landmark study by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente in the 1990s. Its goal was straightforward but significant: to quantify the impact of childhood adversity on long-term health outcomes.

The test inquires as to whether a person had experiences with substance abuse, parental separation, physical abuse, or emotional neglect in the home prior to the age of 18. One point is awarded for each “yes” response, which adds up to the final score.

What makes this important now? Because research keeps proving what many people already know: unresolved childhood trauma doesn’t simply go away; it manifests itself in adult relationships, health, stress reactions, and even parenting styles.

While that is not the whole picture, the Adverse Childhood Experience study found that a higher ACE score is linked to a higher risk of addiction, chronic illness, depression, and anxiety. [1] The ACE test is not a diagnosis. It serves as a starting point and a map to show how the past continues to influence the present.

If you’re curious to explore how your early experiences may still echo in adulthood, you can try this quick, based on theory ACES Quiz as it can help reveal how your emotional patterns and reactions may have roots in childhood. What’s more, after getting the results, you will be offered insight into how you show up in your personal and professional life.

Benefits of Taking ACE Test

It offers language for what was never named

Many people grew up thinking their experience was “normal.” The ACE test gently challenges that belief and offers a vocabulary for hidden pain.

It connects emotional pain to physical health

Decades of research have shown clear links between high ACE scores and chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, and substance use. Understanding these connections helps people take proactive steps for their long-term well-being.

It opens the door to compassion for self and others

Recognizing that your reactions or struggles may stem from unacknowledged trauma creates space for self-forgiveness. It also helps explain generational dynamics—why a parent shuts down emotionally or repeats harmful behaviors.

It gives clarity without shame

The test isn’t diagnostic; there are no “bad” scores. It simply helps map experience to outcomes and points toward what might need tending.

It empowers action

Knowing your ACE score can guide your choices: to seek therapy, build boundaries, nurture emotional intelligence, or simply pause and care for yourself differently.

What to Do With Your ACE Score

The discovery of your ACE score can cause a variety of feelings, such as relief, grief, clarity, and even shock. The next step is to use the insight as a guide for what you might need right now, rather than to analyze the number.

1. Don’t deal with it alone

If your score seems high, you might want to discuss it with a trusted support person or a trauma-informed therapist. You can make sense of the things that continue to affect you by discussing your experiences in a safe environment.

2. Seek out trends rather than assign blame.

Rather than posing the question, “What’s wrong?” “What happened to me?” is a question to try. This perspective change has the power to transform blame into boundaries and guilt into comprehension.

3. Make a plan of care that respects your story

This might include building in rest when you feel overwhelmed, learning skills to regulate strong emotions, and choosing relationships that offer safety, not repetition.

4. Start conversations with family (if safe)

Sharing your story can occasionally spark a conversation between generations. Your parents or grandparents may have been influenced by their own trauma and have passed it on to you out of survival rather than choice. Slowly and voluntarily, healing can occur between people.

5. Choose Small, Sustainable Steps

You don’t have to transform your life overnight. Change might start with reading a book on trauma, attending a support group, or practicing emotional check-ins once a day.

Your ACE score isn’t your destiny. It’s information. What you do with that information is where transformation begins.

What Happens When You Break the Generational Trauma

Breaking a generational cycle doesn’t mean becoming a perfect parent, partner, or person. It means becoming a more conscious one. Once you recognize the patterns you’ve inherited, you can begin choosing differently, responding rather than reacting, nurturing rather than numbing.

You’re not the only one affected. Studies have shown that even small changes in how people deal with their emotions, communicate, and show empathy can have a big effect on how trauma is passed on. [2] When someone in a family starts to heal, it can affect everyone else. Children feel safer, partners feel more seen, and future generations will have less to unlearn.

Signs You’re Breaking the Cycle

You may notice:

• Instead of doubling down on the conflict, you begin apologizing.
• You give yourself permission to rest guilt-free.
• You establish boundaries without fear of being abandoned.
• You respond rather than react.
• You speak to your child in the way that you wish you had been spoken to.
• You seek help rather than hiding your pain.
• You name your emotions and allow others to name theirs.
• You stop normalizing what once felt, and “just how it is.”

Tools That Support Healing From Generational Trauma Beyond the ACE Test

The ACE test can help identify the issue, but awareness alone won’t solve it. Examining resources that enable you to respond to your past with compassion rather than guilt is the next step after realizing how your early experiences may have influenced you.

Although there isn’t a single trauma-informed strategy that works for everyone, the following are some of the best ones:

1. Therapy that addresses trauma at the root

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is a technique that helps reprocess unpleasant memories to make them feel less triggering.
• Internal Family Systems, or IFS, can help you comprehend your “inner parts” and how they shield your injured areas.
• Somatic therapy: Focuses on how trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind.

2. Self-regulation practices

Movement (such as yoga or dance), breathing exercises, and grounding exercises can all help to relax the nervous system and lessen freeze reactions or hypervigilance. [3]

3. Journaling and story work

Writing about your past enables you to see past experiences from a new perspective and helps you organize your thoughts and feelings.

4. Parenting with awareness

Those with high ACE scores can break the cycle and raise children with safety, presence, and emotional availability by using conscious or gentle parenting techniques.

5. Building a resilience toolkit

Support groups, religious or spiritual activities, artistic endeavors, and establishing solid, secure bonds with people are a few examples of this.