What is Trauma?
Trauma can be defined as an experience or ongoing life circumstance where the person’s emotional center of the mind is unable to cope and make sense of the experience. It can also be any situation or event in which the person’s nervous system perceives a potential risk of death.
Trauma can be separated into various categories:
Single incident or Big “T” trauma is an unexpected and overwhelming event like an accident, natural disaster, a single episode of abuse or assault, sudden loss, or witnessing violence.
Repetitive or Complex trauma is related to ongoing abuse, domestic violence, war, ongoing betrayal, being a first responder and often involves being trapped emotionally and/or physically.
Relational or Developmental trauma results from attachment wounding in childhood and can involve neglect, abandonment, physical abuse or assault, sexual abuse or assault, emotional abuse, and/or coercion or betrayal. This typically happens in the family and with the primary caregivers.
Intergenerational trauma describes the psychological or emotional effects that can be experienced by people whose parents, caregivers, or close family members are trauma survivors. Unhealthy coping skills and maladaptive behaviors developed in response to trauma can be passed from one generation to the next.
Historical trauma is a cumulative psychological wounding across generations from massive group trauma. These collective traumas are inflicted by a dominant population. Examples of historical trauma include genocide, colonialism, slavery and war. Intergenerational trauma is an aspect of historical trauma.
Vicarious Trauma is being affected by hearing about or witnessing other people’s trauma. This can occur in childhood as in the case of a sibling witnessing or hearing about the trauma of their sibling or jobs where the worker is frequently exposed to the trauma of their clients. This is influenced by the amount of traumatic information a practitioner is exposed to, the degree of support in the workplace, personal life support, and personal experiences of trauma.
Small “t” traumas can be historical, intergenerational, or relational and can cause or contribute to mental health challenges but typically do not cause ptsd.
What Are The Possible Symptoms of Trauma?
Trauma can cause a wide range of physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. Some Physical effects include fatigue, headaches, physical tension or pain, insomnia or sleep disturbances, elevated and irregular heart rate, tightness of chest, gastrointestinal issues, changes in appetite, and exacerbation of existing health issues. Emotional effects may include anxiety, fear, panic, depression, hyperarousal (easily triggered or startled), flashbacks and intrusive memories, avoidance, emotional dysregulation, nightmares, and feelings of helplessness. Mental effects can include brain fog, trouble concentrating, difficulty remembering parts or all of the trauma, difficulty with memory in general, and difficulty with focus.
Does Trauma Cause PTSD?
Not all trauma causes PTSD. PTSD is a mental health condition that is diagnosed by a mental health professional when a person who has been through trauma displays certain characteristics including reliving the experience, hyper vigilance, severe anxiety, reactivity, and avoidance. The symptoms have to last for at least a month to be considered PTSD. If you would like to be assessed for PTSD, one of our experienced clinicians can provide this as part of your treatment plan.
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How Can Trauma Affect Relationships?
Trauma often affects the survivor’s relationships, often for many years if not their lifetime if they don’t get help. The affected relationships can include those between a parent and child, romantic relationships, friendships, and familial relationships. Here are some ways trauma can affect relationships:
Self Esteem: A person’s trauma can affect their self-esteem and self-worth, which in turn can influence their behaviors.
Avoidance: The person may avoid discussing or dealing with difficult topics, which can impact their child’s emotional development and cause relational challenges with loved ones.
Attachment Issues: Unresolved trauma may affect a person’s ability to form secure attachments and therefore, struggle to feel close, secure, and trusting of a relationship.
Hyper-Vigilance: Trauma survivors may be hyper-vigilant or constantly worried about safety, which can lead to trouble trusting, overprotectiveness, rigidness, and other behaviors which affect their relationships.
Parenting Style: Trauma can influence one’s parenting style. Some may become overly protective, while others might struggle with being too permissive.
Emotional Regulation: Trauma can affect a person’s ability to regulate their emotions, which can lead to outbursts or difficulties in responding calmly and constructively to challenges or disagreements.
How Do People Heal From Trauma? What Are The Treatments For Trauma?
Some people seek non-clinical ways of healing their traumas such as 12 step meetings or other support groups, meditation, religion or spirituality, self help books, holistic approaches, and other healers. While these can provide relief, we have found that clinical interventions are also needed to get the deeper level shifts and healing to occur.
Not all psychotherapy or mental health treatment is created equal. It is important to find a well trained and experienced provider in order to get effective treatment. Although CBT is often referred to as the gold standard of care, we have found that additional interventions and modalities are required in order to see deeper level shifts and healing. At Butterfly Counseling, we offer groundbreaking modalities such as EMDR and Rapid Resolution therapy that have shown dramatic improvements for our clients.
What is The Benefit of Addressing My Childhood Traumas?
Many people don’t want to look back their pains from childhood, and try to leave “the past in the past” but this unintentionally keeps them stuck in unhealthy patterns.
Often when someone experiences trauma, a subconscious negative belief gets attached such as the world is unsafe or I’m not good enough. These beliefs impact the way we behave in the world and our relationships. A big part of healing and breaking toxic generational patterns is reflecting back on the past, challenging the negative beliefs, and making a healthy meaning of it.
A study found that the best predictor of how a child does in terms of their attachment is how their parent made sense of their life, not necessarily what happened to the parent. At least 3 other studies (PMID: 19680481) have shown that the parent’s role as an attachment figure is one of the most important in predicting the child’s later social and emotional outcome.
Therefore, we can safely say that if we want to have healthy future generations and improve our current realtionships with those we love, we need to reflect upon, create an adaptive meaning of, and heal our past wounds.
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