I am overjoyed that you have discovered this post, and I have high hopes that it will prove useful to you in the course of your investigation. In the next paragraphs, we are going to discuss traumatic experiences.
What exactly is trauma?
Therefore, a traumatic event is nothing more than an emotional reaction to something upsetting, distressing, and overpowering. It’s possible for two people to have quite different traumatic experiences while having witnessed the same terrifying or upsetting occurrence. And they would react to it in a variety of different ways. It’s possible that one individual will have a traumatic response while the other won’t have one at all.
One person in every four adults may have post-traumatic stress as a result of a stressful event. On the other hand, one out of every one to two children who go through a severe experience will develop a traumatic stress response. So trauma occurs on a spectrum. This is a word that is gaining not just more widespread usage in our culture but also more widespread usage in healthcare environments. It used to be designated exclusively for former members of the armed forces.
This is the point in time where the origin of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder may be located. Not until 1980 did this occur. It wasn’t until around 40 years ago that PTSD was identified as a diagnosable condition. And ever since that time, our acceptance of trauma and the widespread effects it has on our society has been growing steadily. So trauma occurs on a spectrum. I prefer to think about the distinction between traumatic situations with a capital T and those with a lowercase T. One way to think about it is that experiences that the majority of people would look at and say, “Hey, that sounds like or that looks like or feels like that would be a trauma.” This is one definition of capital T trauma. Things such as rape, things such as war, and things such as violence are examples.
On the other hand, at the same time, there are also traumatic experiences with a lowercase T. These are the kinds of occurrences that not everyone would consider to be life-altering or terrible. Things have the ability to cause traumatic stress in people and influence them throughout their lives, yet occasionally these things go overlooked until they are later recognized as traumatic.
A straightforward illustration of this would be the experience of being bullied repeatedly and persistently when one was still a youngster. This is an experience that we could or might not consider to be a traumatic one. When we look at the ways in which it affects a person’s sense of self, their feeling of trust and relationships, their ideas about the world, and their arousal and reactivity in the neurological system, we see that it has a negative influence on all of these areas. Their avoidance or dissociation very likely increases their risk of acquiring symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thus, it is clear that traumatic experiences have the potential to bring on PTSD.
When I’m working on anything, I try to utilize a definition of trauma that includes everyone. And the word “neglect” is included in that definition. It encompasses being left behind in addition to other forms of loss that are more sophisticated and intense.
It is less easy to identify neglect and abandonment as active traumas, in which there’s a traumatic event, whereas neglect and abandonment are the absence, the lack of having needs met, whether emotionally, physically, or socially. I think this happens a lot in the field and in society as a whole, which is unfortunate.
Neglect and abandonment, in my experience as a trauma therapist and as a clinician, may often be even more difficult to heal from than active traumas. Therefore, I would want to incorporate them into my definition of the term “trauma.”
The word “trauma” may be traced back to its origin in the Greek language, where it was originally used and meant “wound”. When people in the field of medicine talk about trauma, they are referring to the actual wound, the physical wound. However, when people in the field of social sciences and pop culture talk about trauma, they are typically using that word to describe the experience of being in the world.
I believe it would be beneficial to rethink the way we are currently use the term “trauma.” And we do so in a variety of very particular ways.
There are several distinct kinds of traumatic experiences. There are several types of trauma, including shock trauma, single-incident trauma, complex trauma, and recurrent trauma.
There is something known as relational trauma, which refers to the kind of trauma that occurs within the framework of relationships. There is a phenomenon known as collective trauma, which occurs when an entire group of individuals goes through a terrible event for no other reason than because of their group identity, or because of their collective history or experience. There is, without a doubt, racial trauma, in addition to socioeconomic stress, and even ancestral trauma. Therefore, there is a great deal of distinct classifications and varieties of traumatic experiences.
It is essential to keep in mind that the method by which we make sense of the world, together with our belief systems, culture, and the context in which we encounter traumatic events, are all interconnected. Therefore, I believe this to be one of the reasons why two people can experience the same event. And it’s possible that one of them may view it as a horrific experience. Whereas it’s possible that for another person, it wouldn’t be a painful experience at all. Our cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds, and racial backgrounds, which are all the various belief systems that we hold, and that we use to interface with the world, are significantly related to the way that we perceive the world, the way that we make sense of the world, and the way that we integrate and process our experiences. All of these factors have a significant impact on how we view the world, how we make sense of the world, and how we integrate and process our experiences.
Therefore, while we are dealing with traumatic experiences, it is essential to take into consideration the many cultural elements. When you work with trauma, one of the things you’ll notice is that many individuals don’t want to talk about their own experiences with trauma. It is difficult to talk about it since it causes a lot of anguish.
When someone is asked to recall a traumatic incident, the left hemisphere of the brain is activated. This is the part of the brain that, in broad terms, is responsible for more rational thought, language, and verbal decision-making. Some study in neuroscience even indicates this to be the case. The left hemisphere of the brain is mostly inactive, whereas the right hemisphere of the brain is operating at an excessively high level.
This includes the part of the brain known as Broca’s region, which is located in the left hemisphere and is responsible for speech and language. Therefore, there is less activity in the speech and language area of the brain when we ask someone to remember or to talk about a traumatic incident. This kind of validates what we already know, see, and feel, which is that it is difficult to talk about trauma. Sometimes we find that we are unable to find the words to adequately convey either our experience or our sentiments over the traumatic event.
These findings present a challenge for those of us working in the field of trauma therapy, prompting us to consider some alternatives to talk therapy, to incorporate the body into treatment, to take into consideration the significance of relationships and healing, and to offer more holistic approaches rather than focusing on talking or thinking or cognition.
While it’s possible that some clients won’t discuss their traumatic experiences, it’s also possible that others have had upsetting events but don’t consider them to be trauma because they don’t identify them as such. It is fairly typical for people to have no conscious remembrance of a traumatic encounter since their painful memories have been suppressed; nonetheless, some customers may not remember the horrific experiences that they have had throughout their lives.
This is especially typical when the traumatic event takes place within the first few years of a person’s existence. The hippocampus is the region of the brain that is responsible for holding and storing memories, and it doesn’t finish developing completely until a person is between the ages of two and three. Therefore, if a person has undergone traumatic events before the age of two or three, it is quite unlikely that they will retain any recall of those events.
Similarly, when we faced a traumatic situation that was overpowering. When we are under excessive amounts of stress, the hormone cortisol has the potential to have an effect on our hippocampus, which is responsible for our capacity to remember memories. This includes the times when we are going through an extreme amount of traumatic stress. There are many instances in which a person either does not remember a traumatic event that they went through or remembers bits and pieces of it but is unable to recollect the complete memory of the event. It’s not uncommon for traumatic memories to be quite jumbled, nonsensical, and disorganized, and for them to have a very hazy quality to them.
And for traumatic memories to surface at different points in a person’s life, they might not remember a traumatic experience right now, but later on, once they feel safer in their life, safer in their relationships, and safer in their therapeutic relationship, traumatic memories might start to resurface. This can happen even if they do not remember the experience at all right now. It’s possible that they’ll start remembering things that they had previously blocked out.
Consequently, it is essential to take all of this into mind when we are working with traumatic experiences.