<p>Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are well-established predictors of depression, yet the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship remain partially understood. Research has primarily emphasized negative self-referential processing (SRP), the tendency to endorse negative self-descriptions, while largely overlooking the role of positive SRP, or the ability to endorse positive self-beliefs. The present study examined whether both positive and negative SRP uniquely mediated the association between ACEs and depressive symptoms in a large sample of young adults. Participants (<i>N</i> = 574; <i>M</i>_age = 18.7) completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, and the Self-Referential Encoding Task. Individuals with a history of ACEs reported significantly greater depressive symptoms, endorsed fewer positive and more negative self-descriptive adjectives, and demonstrated higher negative and lower positive SRP. Parallel mediation analyses revealed that both positive and negative SRP partially mediated the association between ACEs and depressive symptoms. Importantly, negative SRP exerted a substantially stronger indirect effect than positive SRP, although diminished positive SRP also accounted for significant unique variance. These findings suggest that exposure to adversity may foster vulnerability to depression through dual pathways: the reinforcement of negative self-cognitions and the diminished capacity to maintain positive self-beliefs. By incorporating both positive and negative SRP, this study extends prior work and highlights the importance of examining self-referential cognition as a multidimensional mechanism linking ACEs to depression. Interventions that target not only the restructuring of negative self-schemas but also the strengthening of positive self-beliefs may be particularly beneficial for individuals with histories of childhood adversity.</p>