Trauma
What is trauma?
Trauma is a reaction to situations and events that are distressing, frightening, or difficult to control. Trauma can result from single or repeated events, from being injured or witnessing someone else being injured, from living in a traumatic environment, or from trauma within the family or community.
Trauma can happen to anyone at any stage of life. Experiencing trauma in childhood can lead to long-term consequences, such as feelings of fear, lack of safety and trust, and a sense of helplessness that carries over into adulthood.
Childhood trauma can result from anything that disrupts a child’s sense of security, such as:
- Separation from a parent
- Humiliation
- Unstable, frightening, or unsafe environment
- Feelings not being taken seriously
- Severe illness
- Intrusive medical procedures
- Sexual, physical, emotional, or verbal abuse
- Domestic violence
- Neglect
How does trauma affect the brain and nervous system?
Trauma is not just a distressing experience resulting in depression, anxiety, or numbness. Neuroscientific studies show that trauma can profoundly affect brain function. Stress impacts areas of the brain such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.
The amygdala is the part of the brain involved in processing emotions. It can shape emotions and behavior, and its most crucial role is in processing fear. The hippocampus shapes memory and also regulates functions related to learning, motivation, and emotions. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for more complex cognitive behaviors, including sensory perception, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Trauma also affects neurochemical systems. When the body is overwhelmed by stress, it releases excessive amounts of cortisol and norepinephrine. Over time, these hormones can lead to physical problems such as high blood pressure, headaches, and fatigue.
Traumatic experiences and events can include situations where we feel:
- frightened
- threatened
- humiliated
- rejected
- abandoned
- worthless
- unsafe
- unsupported
- trapped
- ashamed
- powerless
The body responds to threatening situations automatically with a freeze or fight-or-flight reaction. The purpose of the fight-or-flight response is to protect and detect potential dangers in time. This mechanism cannot be turned off; it is a part of us. Evolutionarily, in earlier life forms, the stress response was responsible for survival in nature: during escape or attack, both the released hormones and energy were used up. However, modern stressors are mostly psychological—emotional and mental—and do not involve physical activity. Since these events happen within us, there is nowhere to run or fight back, making the ancient fight-or-flight reflex impractical, even harmful, in daily life.
It is very likely that some parts of our body still retain freeze responses, which may have arisen from difficult births, anesthesia-related surgeries, or experiences of violence when we felt resistance was futile—animals in this situation drop to the ground as if dead. Underneath the freeze response, there is always a fight-or-flight reaction—some part of us still wanted to run away or fight, the command to act was given, but it could not be carried out. A frozen prey animal forgotten by a predator will first twitch and shake itself before starting to run, shaking off all the stress. Unfortunately, humans do not instinctively know how to do this.
Types of Trauma:
- Acute trauma reflects intense stress immediately following a single event, and the reaction is short-term. Common examples include a car accident, physical or sexual assault, or the sudden death of a loved one.
- Chronic trauma can result from repeated or long-term harmful events. It may develop in response to persistent bullying, neglect, abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual), and domestic violence.
- Complex trauma can arise from experiencing repeated or multiple traumatic events from which escape is impossible. The feeling of being trapped is a hallmark of this experience. Like other types of trauma, it can undermine a sense of safety in the world and create hypervigilance, constant (and exhausting!) monitoring of the environment for potential danger.
- Secondary or vicarious trauma occurs from exposure to others’ suffering and can affect professionals obligated to respond to injury and chaos, particularly doctors, first responders, and law enforcement officers. Over time, such individuals are at risk of compassion fatigue, leading them to avoid emotionally investing in others to protect themselves from stress.
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) involve many challenging situations that children either face directly or witness as they grow up before they have developed effective coping skills. ACEs can disrupt normal development, and the emotional injury may last long into adulthood. Common types of adverse childhood experiences include the loss of a parent, neglect, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and divorce.
What is post-traumatic stress disorder?
Types of trauma that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are severe enough to be life-threatening. Such traumatic events include being in combat or a war zone, an earthquake, a concentration camp, or a serious accident. Another possible type of traumatic event is witnessing another person’s death or injury during such episodes. However, a lifetime accumulation of smaller traumatic events can also lead to PTSD.
Main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder:
- Persistent dreams and nightmares about traumatic events that recall the original trauma.
- Strong emotional reactions to stress that somehow resemble the original trauma.
- Avoidance of places and people for fear that contact with them might rekindle bad memories.
- A sense of hopelessness about one’s personal future, such as believing that marriage, children, and a career will never happen.
- Difficulty remembering the actual events of the original traumatic episodes.
- Trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.
- Irritability and anger.
- Difficulty concentrating.
- An extremely startling reaction.
These symptoms disrupt the ability to function at work or in personal life.
A perfect childhood:
People who experience smaller but recurring distressing events tend to dismiss their impact. One of the warning signs of potential trauma is the phrase “ideal or perfect childhood.” Often, those who were abused in childhood are their parents’ biggest defenders. During therapy, as layers of memory emerge, people can better acknowledge that they experienced childhood trauma.
Besides abuse, many different shocking events happen to people in childhood and later life. Examples include the death of one or both parents, the death of a sibling, parental divorce, poverty, parental alcoholism and drug abuse, constant verbal and physical arguments between parents, and being a victim of criminals are some of the traumas that affect children.
Physical impact:
Although we may not remember much about what happened in childhood, our bodies remember everything. The limbic system, or the primitive part of the brain, has stored all shocks, traumas, distressing events, and horrors that may have occurred while growing up. Have you ever wondered why you react very emotionally to something that shouldn’t bother you at all? The reason is that a present-day event has triggered memories of something distressing from the distant past that you cannot put into words. The trigger could be a movie or TV show. A recent event, movie, or conversation stored in the limbic system triggers emotions related to that distant event.
In fact, the emotional reaction to an event may be “fight or flight,” so adrenaline flows, making you emotional and alert. If this happens frequently, it affects the body and health.
Sources
psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/trauma
mentalhelp.net/blogs/what-is-trauma/
