The Weight We Carry in Silence:

Understanding ACEs, Unresolved Trauma, and the Path Back to Life

By Romalyn “Roma” Seriosa Aaron, EdS, LPC, NCC, CTAPSB, EMDR  ·  Stronger Mental Health Counseling Services

If you are having thoughts of suicide or feel unsafe right now, please stop and reach out. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). In Walker County, you can also contact Northwest Alabama Mental Health Center at (205) 302-9000. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. You do not have to earn help. You already deserve it.

Suicide awareness is not only about statistics. It is about the neighbor who stopped answering texts. It is about the teenager who suddenly gave away a favorite jacket. It is about the veteran, the parent, the widow, the child who learned too early that home was not safe. And it is about the quiet truth so many people carry: something happened, no one helped them metabolize it, and the pain found another way to speak.

At Stronger Mental Health Counseling Services in Jasper, we talk about suicide in the same breath as trauma, not because trauma “causes” suicide in a simple, one-line way, but because unresolved trauma is one of the most consistent, preventable risk factors we have. When we understand Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), we stop treating despair as a character flaw and start treating it as a wound that can heal.

What ACEs Are and Why They Still Matter in Adulthood

Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur before age 18. The original ACE Study, conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente, identified ten categories that fall into three groups:

Abuse

•         Emotional abuse — being insulted, humiliated, or made to feel worthless

•         Physical abuse

•         Sexual abuse

Neglect

•         Emotional neglect — no one made you feel loved, special, or protected

•         Physical neglect — not enough food, clothing, medical care, or supervision

Household challenges

•         Witnessing intimate partner violence

•         Household substance use

•         Household mental illness or suicide attempt

•         Separation or divorce of caregivers

•         Incarceration of a household member

An ACE score is simply a count of how many of these categories a person experienced. It is not a diagnosis, a life sentence, or a measure of how “broken” someone is. It is a public-health map of risk. Many people also carry adversities the original list did not name; community violence, racism, natural disasters, combat exposure later in life, the death of a parent, bullying, or the loss of a beloved pet that no one treated as real grief. Those experiences count in the body even if they do not appear on a ten-item checklist.

What the Research Tells Us About ACEs and Suicide Risk

The connection between early adversity and later suicidality is one of the most replicated findings in behavioral health.

•         Among U.S. high school students in 2023, about three in four reported at least one ACE, and about one in five reported four or more.

•         CDC analyses have estimated that a very large share of adolescent suicide attempts (on the order of nearly 90% in one Youth Risk Behavior Survey analysis) is associated with ACE exposure at the population level. That does not mean ACEs “explain away” every suicide. It means prevention that reduces childhood adversity could prevent a staggering amount of later despair.

•         During the COVID-19 period, adolescents with four or more ACEs had far higher rates of poor mental health and past-year suicide attempts than peers with none; attempts were reported at many times the rate of youth with zero ACEs.

•         Umbrella reviews find that ACEs are associated with roughly a twofold increase in the odds of anxiety, depression, and suicidality across the lifespan. The risk rises in a dose-response pattern: more categories of adversity generally mean higher risk.

•         In adults, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, a family history of suicide, and parental incarceration have each been linked to higher odds of suicidal thinking and attempts years later.

Read those numbers slowly, then set them down. A statistic cannot tell you whether you will live or die. What it can tell a community in Walker County is this: the children who grow up around substance use, violence, untreated mental illness, or chronic humiliation are not “drama.” They are carrying a heavier load than their nervous systems were built to carry alone.

How Unresolved Trauma Can Lead Toward Suicidality

Trauma is not the event itself. Trauma is what happens inside a person when the event overwhelms the capacity to cope, make meaning, and return to safety. When that process is interrupted—when no adult believes the child, when the family rule is “we don’t talk about that,” when the veteran is told to “suck it up,” when grief is rushed, the nervous system keeps the file open.

Unresolved trauma can move a person toward suicidality through several overlapping pathways:

The body stays on high alert

Chronic threat wiring shows up as anxiety, insomnia, startle, irritability, numbness, or collapse. Living in a body that never feels safe is exhausting. Exhaustion can start to look like “I can’t do this anymore.”

The story about the self becomes cruel

Children make sense of harm by concluding, “It happened because I am bad, too much, or unlovable.” That story can calcify into depression, shame, and self-hatred, the internal weather that makes death feel like relief rather than loss.

Relationships become both needed and dangerous

If love was unpredictable, people may isolate, cling, explode, or choose partners who recreate the original wound. Isolation is one of the strongest near-term risk factors for suicide. So is feeling like a burden.

Pain is managed in ways that create new pain

Substances, disordered eating, self-harm, compulsive sexual behavior, and other survival strategies can temporarily quiet the alarm. They also deepen depression, legal trouble, medical problems, and shame: the very conditions that raise suicide risk.

Hope gets edited out

When every chapter has included betrayal or loss, the future can stop feeling real. Suicidal thinking is often less a wish to die than a wish for the pain to stop when no other exit is visible.

Important: ACEs increase risk. They do not write destiny. Plenty of people with high ACE scores build steady, meaningful lives, especially when they have even one safe relationship, a community that does not shame them, skills for regulating the body, and treatment that actually addresses trauma rather than only the symptoms sitting on top of it.

Protective Factors: What Interrupts the Path

Healing is not the absence of a history. Healing is the presence of enough safety, skill, and connection that the history no longer runs the whole show. Research and clinical practice both point to the same protectors:

•         At least one stable, caring adult in childhood or a corrective relationship in adulthood

•         Feeling believed when you tell the truth about what happened

•         Skills for naming emotion, calming the body, and solving problems without disappearing

•         Treatment of depression, PTSD, substance use, and sleep problems

•         Reduced access to lethal means during a crisis, and a written safety plan

•         Faith, culture, purpose, and community that treat asking for help as strength

•         Economic and practical stability: housing, food, transportation, childcare

This is why suicide prevention cannot live only in a hotline number. It also lives in how we parent, how we talk about mental illness at church and at work, how quickly a child in Jasper can see a counselor, and whether a veteran can sit with someone who has worn the uniform and will not flinch.

Warning Signs Worth Taking Seriously

You do not need to be a clinician to notice when someone is drowning. Reach out if you see:

•         Talking about feeling hopeless, trapped, or like a burden

•         Withdrawing from people, routines, or things that used to matter

•         Sudden calm after a long period of despair, or giving away prized belongings

•         Increased substance use, reckless behavior, or rage that seems out of character

•         Sleeping far too much or far too little; not eating; neglecting hygiene

•         Saying goodbye in a way that feels final

•         For children and teens: a sharp drop in grades, self-harm marks, or “jokes” about dying that are not funny

If you are worried, ask the question plainly: “Are you thinking about suicide?” Asking does not plant the idea. It opens a door. Then listen. Stay with the person. Help them contact 988 or a trusted adult. Do not swear to keep a lethal secret.

How to Get Help—Today, This Week, and Over Time

If it is a crisis

•         Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7

•         Text HOME to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line

•         Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department if you or someone else is in immediate danger

•         Walker County / Northwest Alabama Mental Health Center: (205) 302-9000

•         The Crisis Center (Central Alabama): (205) 323-7777

•         Veterans can also use 988 and press 1

•         Daybreak (Walker County domestic violence support): (205) 387-1157

If you are ready for counseling, not an emergency room

Crisis lines save lives in the moment. Therapy changes the conditions that keep bringing the crisis back. Look for a licensed clinician who is trauma-informed, who will talk with you about safety without panic or judgment, and who can treat both the present symptoms and the older story underneath them.

In Alabama, many people use insurance (including Medicaid, All Kids, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and others), sliding-scale private pay, school-based services, or community mental health centers. You do not have to wait until you “have it all together” to start.

What Stronger Mental Health Counseling Services Can Provide

Stronger Mental Health Counseling Services was built for exactly this work: helping people of all ages in Jasper and across Alabama name what happened, feel it safely, and rebuild a life that is not organized around the wound.

Roma Aaron is a Licensed Professional Counselor, National Certified Counselor, and EMDR-trained clinician with more than a decade of experience. She is also a combat Army veteran. That combination matters. Trauma-informed care here is not a slogan on a brochure. It is the difference between asking “What is wrong with you?” and asking “What happened to you, and what did you have to do to survive it?”

Who we serve

Children (including toddlers, with play therapy), preteens, teens, adults, couples, families, older adults, and veterans. If the nervous system is human, the work belongs here, whether the presenting problem is called trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, grief (including pet loss), bipolar symptoms, ADHD or other neurodivergence, substance concerns, problematic sexual behaviors, eating disorders, family conflict, self-harm, or suicidal ideation.

How we work

•         Trauma-focused care, including EMDR, to help the brain finish processing “stuck” memories instead of reliving them

•         An eclectic, client-centered mix of CBT, DBT skills, Internal Family Systems (IFS) ideas, motivational interviewing, solution-focused work, family systems, somatic and mindfulness tools, and play therapy for children

•         Collaborative safety planning when suicidality is present—practical, respectful, and specific

•         Support for dual diagnosis: trauma and substance use often travel together, and treating only one leaves the other in charge

•         Individual, couples, family, and group sessions

•         In-person sessions in Jasper and secure telehealth across Alabama, with flexible scheduling

•         Psychological testing and evaluation when a clearer picture would help treatment

First sessions are not a pop quiz. They are a deep, respectful look at what you have been carrying and a shared plan for getting your life back. The aim is not to make you “tougher.” You have already been tough. The aim is to help you feel safer in your own body, kinder in your own story, and more connected to people who can hold the hard days with you.

Where to find us

Stronger Mental Health Counseling Services  ·  310 AL-195, 2nd Floor (come around the back of the building and come upstairs), Jasper, AL

Additional sessions are also available at Mind Body Heart Wellness Center, 401 4th Avenue South, Jasper.

Call or text: (205) 265-2226 and (205) 757-9872

Individual sessions are $100; couple sessions are $150. A sliding scale is available for those who qualify. The practice works with many insurance plans, including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, Medicaid, All Kids, Aetna, Cigna, Optum/UnitedHealthcare, TRICARE, VA Community Care Network, and others, and also welcomes self-pay clients.

A Word Directly to the Person Who Is Tired

If you have a high ACE score, or no score at all but a body that still jumps when a door slams, hear this without decoration:

You are not dramatic. You are adapted. The strategies that once kept you alive (numbing, pleasing, exploding, disappearing, using, overworking) made sense in the house, the unit, or the relationship that taught them. They are allowed to retire now.

Suicidal thoughts are a signal, not a verdict. They mean the load has exceeded the supports. Supports can be added. Loads can be shared. Memories can be processed so they stop arriving as if they are still happening.

Healing is rarely cinematic. It looks like sleeping through more of the night. It looks like telling one true sentence in a counseling room in Jasper and discovering the walls do not fall down. It looks like a child who used to freeze beginning to play again. It looks like a parent breaking a cycle on purpose.

Stronger together is not a tagline we borrowed. It is the clinical fact underneath ACE research and suicide prevention alike: people survive what they were never meant to survive alone when another nervous system is willing to sit close and stay.

If that person needs to be a therapist first, we will meet you there. If you already have people, bring them into the work. Either way, the story is not finished.

You were built to heal. You do not have to do it by yourself.

Resources cited for readers and editors

CDC / Kaiser Permanente ACE Study; CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey analyses on ACEs and adolescent health (including 2023 YRBS supplement data); CDC MMWR reports on ACEs, mental health, and suicidal behavior during the COVID-19 period; umbrella reviews in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry on ACEs, common mental disorders, and suicidality; longitudinal research linking childhood adversity to adult suicidal ideation and attempts. Local crisis numbers: 988; Northwest Alabama Mental Health Center (205) 302-9000; Alabama Department of Public Health suicide prevention resources.

This post is educational and is not a substitute for crisis intervention, diagnosis, or individualized treatment. If you are in danger, call 911 or 988 now.