Trauma takes many forms, but it’s important to understand. When we have a grasp on what trauma is and how it affects people, we can do better about caring for ourselves and the people in our lives after traumatic events. We can also better identify when trauma has left someone in a state where they would benefit from additional help, like seeing a therapist.
Because trauma can look different and have different impacts, though, it can be hard to get a feel for what classifies as trauma. Still, though, we can put some rough outlines around it.
Before we go further here, we need to issue a trigger warning. Thinking about trauma can be difficult, painful, and unsettling if you’re living with the effects of a traumatic incident that you’ve experienced. Check in with yourself before you keep reading. If you’re already feeling stressed or sad, skip this article and get in touch with our team instead. We can help you develop self-soothing and coping tools.
Identifying traumatic events
Trauma is any event or experience that leaves the person with a lasting negative emotional response. This could be anything from a car accident to an act of violence committed against you. It could be losing a loved one, a job, or a friendship. Trauma can also come from something that affects only you, like a serious illness, or something that impacts your whole community, like a natural disaster. We saw trauma in a lot of people after the Thomas Fire, for example.
The reason that traumatic experiences have lasting impacts comes from their unpredictable nature. Usually, the event was unexpected and that unwelcome surprise can leave you feeling imbalanced and afraid. A lot of people report losing their sense of safety and having it replaced with worry that something bad will happen again.
This happens because the traumatic incident activates the threat-detection center of your brain: the amygdala. In response, it alerts multiple body systems to go on the defense. As your sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive, your body gets flooded with adrenaline and stress hormones.
In some people, the body and the mind regulate over time. But for a lot of people, experiencing something traumatic leaves a lasting impact.
The trauma recovery journey
At first, most people respond to trauma with shock. You might try to mentally distance yourself from the experience or even deny that it happened. Over time, the emotional imbalance the event created can leave you with lasting symptoms. You might have mental symptoms like flashbacks or a roller coaster of emotions or physical symptoms like headaches and nausea. You might also have trouble sleeping or start to isolate yourself from others.
A traumatic experience can also leave you with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by intrusive thoughts (flashbacks), avoidance of things that remind you of the trauma, changes in your thinking and mood, and heightened reactivity.
However the traumatic experience is negatively impacting you, it’s important that you know that you don’t have to live this way. With therapy, you can learn tools to help yourself cope and to move along your trauma recovery journey. With a trauma-informed care approach, our therapists can come alongside you. We help you move forward into a life where you have fewer effects from the traumatic experience or better control over the effects that persist.
For some people, the negative effects of the traumatic experience crop back up on the anniversary of the event. If you’ve noticed that you have an anniversary reaction but do okay through the rest of the year, you might still benefit from therapy.
If you think trauma is affecting you, we’re here. Our team of caring therapists can help you through your trauma recovery process. We have therapists on staff who specialize in trauma-informed care, too. For the support you need to minimize the negative impacts of trauma in your life, contact us.
