What is Trauma?
Let’s start with the two main types:
Complex Trauma
Also called relational, chronic, developmental attachment, or little ‘t’ trauma.
This type of trauma is usually a prolonged experience of feeling unsafe, unimportant, or not okay as you are.
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Parents who couldn’t meet your needs because they were emotionally immature, depressed, grieving, financially struggling, etc.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, poverty.
Early experiences of emotional neglect or feeling unaccepted
Molestation or sexual abuse
Living in a chaotic, unpredictable, violent, or verbally abusive home as a child
Living in an oppressive religion, culture, or organization
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Untrusting of self and others
Anxious or avoidant attachment style, codependency
Masking and people-pleasing, or a strong fawn response, ‘earning your worth’
Lacking a sense of selfhood and internal stability
Difficulty being vulnerable or intimate
Chronically anxious or dissociated
Chronic illnesses
Acute Trauma
Also called isolated or single-incident trauma, or big ‘T’ trauma.
This type of trauma often overwhelms your resources all at once, and can leave you feeling helpless and shocked.
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Witnessing or experiencing accidents
Physical assaults, military combat
Medical emergencies or procedures
Unexpected or complex death/loss
Sexual assaults and molestation
Witnessing or experiencing domestic violence
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Body symptoms like pounding heart, muscle tension, headaches, stomach aches, or dissociation
Intrusive thoughts, images, or nightmares
Triggered by sensory experiences
Avoiding triggers
Hypervigilance (looking for threats)
Easily dysregulated, trouble sleeping
Negative beliefs about self, feeling responsible
Trauma is very similar to a flood:
Flooding happens when there is more water than the infrastructure is prepared to handle and as a result, things are damaged. Likewise, trauma can be any event that floods our systems with more than we are prepared to handle at the time, causes emotional damage, and often impacts our relationship to ourselves and others. There’s no universal meter for what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be traumatic- trauma is defined by how someone is personally impacted by an event.
A flood can happen in two main ways: continuous rain over a long period of time, or a sudden rush of water like a tsunami.
Acute traumas are definable events that are triggering, painful, and flooded our systems all at once. They are distinct and triggering memories that make your heart pound, feel disgust, or cause you to start feeling dissociated. Complex traumas are usually long-term experiences or relationships that left you with unmet needs, taught you that you were unimportant, or chipped away at your confidence and trust over time. This type of trauma often occurs within the context of a relationship, so although you may not be able to point out specific traumatic moments, you know your past relationships continue to affect your current connections.
Much like a flood, the impact of the trauma depends partially on the amount of resources the person has at the time of the traumatic event, and how much flooding has already occurred.
Once you know that you’ve experienced trauma, and can identify how it’s impacting you, how do you heal? There are many different methods to heal trauma that are supported by research, but these seem to be the ‘active ingredients’ present in all trauma healing, and will be woven throughout our work together.
