Trauma: What it is and is not
The word trauma has been making its way more and more into social media reels and posts; TV and movies; and sometimes sneaking into conversations with friends, family and colleges. While we want to tread carefully not to sensationalize the topic leading to further minimization, using this awareness to support validation of its effects can empower the general public to become more trauma-informed, ultimately leading to greater support and compassion for those affected. As a place to start, it is important to understand what trauma is and what is not. Psychiatrist Judith Hermann specializing in trauma describes trauma as an event or series of events that overwhelms an individual’s capacity to cope, leaving them feeling overwhelmed, powerless, and disconnected from reality.
Trauma is more than natural disasters and combat.
Big T trauma refers to significant, often catastrophic events that are typically life-threatening or physically endangering, such as natural disasters, serious accidents, assaults, or military combat. These events are generally recognized as traumatic by their nature and severity.
On the other hand, little t trauma encompasses more subtle, yet distressing events that may not be life-threatening but are emotionally taxing and disruptive. These could include experiences like ongoing conflict in personal relationships, parental divorce, insecure attachment to caregiver, or chronic stressors such as workplace discrimination or bullying. While these may not seem as outwardly severe as Big T traumas, they can accumulate over time and significantly impact an individual’s well-being.
What Trauma Is Not.
To help understand what trauma is, it is important to distinguish between what trauma is not, helping us to unblur what is stress and what is trauma. While all traumatic events are stressful, not all stressful events are traumatic. Stress is a normal part of life, and our brain and body are equipped to handle and adapt to stress in most situations. Stress can enhance resilience, motivation, and problem-solving abilities.
However, trauma represents stress that is overwhelming and beyond any brain, and any nervous system’s capacity to process the experience. The experience or ongoing experiences can be stuck and stored, particularly in the limbic system as the fear and survival circuits have been activated, often manifesting as strong emotions, intrusive thoughts and sensory experiences. This leaves people experiencing trauma reliving’s, emotions, body sensations, intrusive thoughts, flash backs as the brain and nervous system have been unable to process the experience as it typically would. It has not been filed away like other experiences we have such as a conversation you had with a friend last week or a minor argument you had with a sibling last year. So, we continue to experience the event as if we were still there and then and not here and now.
Trauma’s impact leaves lasting effects.
Trauma impacts the nervous system to such a degree that it leaves lasting effects on behavior, health, and daily functioning. Trauma can cause dysregulation, making individuals oscillate between hyperarousal (fight-or-flight) and hypoarousal (shutdown or freeze). It diminishes the individual’s perceived control and often leads to persistent feelings of helplessness, hypervigilance, and emotional numbing. This overwhelming nature of trauma persists, limiting a person’s engagement with life and impacting their capacity for joy and connection, and fundamental assumptions about safety and self-worth.
Healing Happens
Thankfully due to neuroplasticity, our brains are not static structures but instead plastic, where healing happens. Recovery involves reconstructing these broken foundations by establishing safety, processing memories, and reconnecting with life. Effective interventions aim to help individuals achieve autonomic balance and a sense of safety. Psychological impact is not only addressed—such as issues of trust, autonomy, and disconnection—but also the physiological responses that are entrenched by the trauma. Healing, therefore, involves nurturing a sense of safety, fostering supportive relationships, and employing strategies that help individuals regulate their nervous systems.
What has been stuck and stored in our brain and nervous system maladaptively, therapy can support processing and filing traumatic experiences away in our long-term memory, where our brain and nervous system then know that was there and then and not here and now. The experience is filed away, in a way it should have always been stored.