Unpacking: Trauma

What experience have many of us had, but very few of us talked about or truly understood? In the U.S., 70% of adults have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their life. Trauma is a fairly common shared experience, but no two cases are alike. One thing is for sure: traumatic events can have significant impacts and leave us struggling with many adverse physical and mental health side effects. You may ask, what is trauma exactly? The word trauma originates from the Greek word for wound. We define trauma as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. In this week's post, and the third installment of our unpacking series, we will discuss trauma, what it is, how it feels, how it affects us, and how we can heal.

If you suspect you’ve undergone a traumatic event, it might be severely disorienting and profoundly upsetting. There’s an extensive range of ways that people react to traumatic events. It’s normal to feel scared, confused, and angry immediately after. However, over time, the initial shock may turn into depression, anxiety, or numbness. It may disrupt your daily life and cause you to take on hypervigilant tendencies or spend your days in defense mode. Your amygdala causes this. When you experience a traumatic event, the part of the brain that regulates fear and stress activates and floods your body with hormones that make you feel on edge. The amygdala is also partially responsible for controlling your endocrine system and can throw off your natural emotional balance. This chemical disruption also means that your natural sleep patterns, energy levels, or even your emotional response can change due to a traumatic event.

Traumatic events might even change your decision-making and leave you with a feeling of low self-esteem that can lead to self-destructive behaviors. In a study conducted by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, adults who had suffered traumatic events in their childhood were polled and showed a significantly higher rate of self-destructive behaviors. They were two times as likely to smoke, seven times more likely to abuse alcohol, and two-and-a-half times more likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors, resulting in the contraction of an STI. Trauma can take many forms, with a wide variety of origins, and is such a broad topic that has been organized into different types. When classifying what kind of trauma a patient is experiencing, a psychologist might take into account how often the traumatic event happened, what point in your life it happened, and how severe your reaction and symptoms are following the incident.

The three major types of trauma often discussed by professionals are acute (or type one), chronic, and complex (or type two). Acute trauma originates from one-time events and usually has the quickest recovery time. Some examples of acute traumatic experiences might be the death of a family member, a natural disaster, or a car accident. Chronic trauma occurs when a traumatic situation recurs multiple times or is ongoing. Chronic trauma is similar to complex trauma in that it’s also recurring; however, the main difference between the two is that complex trauma usually happens during developmental years. Complex trauma also takes a long time to recover from, as it often is deeply internalized by the child and, therefore, can be more challenging to address at the root. Examples of chronic traumatic experiences would be religious restrictions, domestic abuse, and bullying. Examples of complex traumatic experiences would be abusive upbringing, growing up in foster care, or profound neglect from caregivers. Complex trauma primarily begins in childhood, and there’s a reason this difficult-to-deal-with trauma is so intense. The overproduction of those fear hormones I mentioned earlier can affect a child's development in more extreme ways.

Another landmark study conducted by Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda raised awareness for this issue and also brought forward a new way of looking at childhood trauma. They introduced the term Adverse Childhood Experience or ACE. They used the number of ACEs a person had in their childhood as a way to predetermine overall health factors such as substance abuse, mental health issues, and poor cardiac health. Examples of ACEs would be sexual, physical, or emotional abuse, living with a mentally or physically unwell parent, or seeing instances of domestic violence in the home and divorce. Most of the latent side effects of trauma do dissipate with time and support. However, there is a one in three chance that the victim develops PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a mental health condition that arises as a result of a terrifying event, either witnessing it or experiencing it. It can involve flashbacks, involuntary thoughts or obsession with the event, nightmares, and severe anxiety. The condition can be challenging to manage as it disrupts daily functioning and the ability to socialize. A person who has PTSD may view the world with fear and avoid places or circumstances that remind them of their trauma. Being exposed to a trigger forces them to relive their experience mentally or emotionally, and it can be extremely overwhelming. This pressure may cause them to lash out or become more reclusive. Their experiences and lack of control over their mind may also lead to negative feelings about themselves. Hopelessness, negativity, lack of interest in things they once enjoyed, and numbness are all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Lack of control tends to be a sizeable mental factor in why people struggle after trauma. Being traumatized can often feel random or just highly unlucky and may lead us to seek out control in unattainable ways. In the example of a car accident, we may be anxious upon getting behind the wheel again, causing us to drive highly defensively or try only to drive when there’s less traffic. We categorize these behaviors under the umbrella of hypervigilance. It’s our brain's way of forcing us to take control of something uncontrollable to keep us safe. Being harmed or seeing the world's cruelty can complicate letting your guard down. Some believe that they can prevent tragedy through their efforts, but the problem with this mentality is it plays into something more profound and more damaging: the fact that the victim of trauma believes the incident is their fault.  The idea that a victim is at fault for traumatic events that occur to them is something known formally as survivor’s guilt. When we survive a tragic event, we might tell ourselves we didn't deserve to. We find ways to rationalize and put a cause to the havoc the event wrought on our lives and the lives of others. This mindset can be profoundly damaging and often prevent our healing. The unfortunate nature of trauma is it can happen to anyone at any time. Certain predetermined factors make you more likely to be in traumatic scenarios, but it is in no way a cosmic symbol that you deserve punishment. Letting go of the mentality that you deserved what happened or could have prevented it will free you up to process what happened healthily.

As we mentioned before, most symptoms of trauma dissipate over time. However, if your feelings of fear, anxiety, numbness, or hypervigilance continue longer than a month or two, it is wise to seek out the help of a licensed therapist. Cognitive behavioral therapy might be an excellent place to start, as it links our behaviors to our cognitions and can help us adjust to align with a healthier lifestyle. They will likely be able to help with survivor guilt and even administer exposure therapy for patients with PTSD. Some people need medication to manage their symptoms, while others might not. Otherwise, some specific counselors deal with grief and trauma, which you can seek out. Besides focusing on therapy, there are personal efforts you can take to help ease the effect of trauma on your life. We recommend avoiding drugs, alcohol, and other substances, as well as maintaining a healthy schedule that lets you eat, sleep, and exercise at regular intervals. It also might benefit you to find a social network in your family, friends, or with other trauma survivors in a support group setting and spend as much time with them as you can. Some also find that maintaining mindfulness practices, such as journaling, or stress reduction practices, such as meditation or guided breathing, is helpful in their recovery. Most importantly, looking for a path forward that allows you to leave the trauma you experienced in the past that you will walk at your own pace and in your own time. The most important takeaway that I hope any of you who are suffering can learn from this is that your trauma does not define you. You are not at fault, cosmically cursed, or unworthy of living a better life going forward. Be proactive in managing your symptoms, ask for help when needed, and try to maintain hope when all else fails.

If you or someone you know has undergone a traumatic event, these crises hotlines may be of help to you: