What is trauma? I define trauma as anything that has had a significantly negative impact on your life. When something is too big, or it happens too fast for your brain and body to make sense of, it can have a traumatic impact on you. The meaning you give to the traumatic event also determines how significantly it will impact you, which is why two people could experience the same event but have two completely different reactions to it. Let’s consider a car accident, for instance. One person may be comfortable to hop into a car the very next day while another person could develop a phobia of driving.
“Trauma” has become somewhat of a buzz word lately. People have recently paid closer attention to the impact that trauma has on the brain and body. Although this a topic that has been studied for decades, it has become more accepted in recent years, which has allowed people to feel a greater sense of comfort to talk about it. Being able to talk about it is a major step towards healing. However, another major aspect that has been neglected is normalizing how people have been impacted by trauma. Though there is compassion given to those who have experienced trauma e.g. those in the “Me Too” movement, or residential school survivors, there continues to be shame and rejection around how people have learned to cope with their traumas.
What are the impacts of traumas and how have people learned to cope with it?
Pain and suffering. Just as there is physical pain from getting a cut, there can be “psychic pain” from emotional wounds. For instance, if you have had your heart broken, you have experienced psychic pain. You cry, you ache, you feel sick to your stomach and you feel weak while your body recovers from the pain. When the emotional wound is too deep to bear, the natural instinct is look for something to numb or soothe the pain. There are several ways that people soothe their emotional pain. Many of them have the potential to become unhealthy. For instance, substance use, gaming, gambling, sex, or working are all things that people use to distract them from pain. When used in excess, it can turn into addiction, which is often shamed.
Anxiety and/or depression. When something really bad happens to you your brain will naturally try to learn how to prevent it from happening again. Though this mechanism is adaptive and necessary, it can lead to a heightened sense of fear. Anxiety is the manifestation of fear. Depression, on the other hand, is the manifestation of loss and hopelessness. People often experience a loss of control after a traumatic event and that can lead to sense of hopelessness around ever being able to prevent a reoccurrence.
Relationship issues. When the trauma is relational in nature, for instance, infidelity, domestic violence, sexual assault, or parental abuse or neglect, it is common for people to develop a general sense of mistrust towards others. This mistrust can affect friendships, romantic relationships or even professional relationships. In romantic relationships, you may be overly controlling, clingy, or even highly avoidant as you try to protect yourself from being hurt again. In friendships, you may be closed off so as not to get too close, thereby limiting how deep of a connection to build with someone. At work, you may fear rejection by peers or failure to meet expectations.
If you have noticed these reactions after having been through a difficult event in your life, it may be worthwhile to address them so that you can start to heal from the traumatic event itself as well as the secondary reactions that came as a result. As kind humans, if you are aware that someone you know has had difficult moments in their life, consider how they may have been impacted by them and offer them more compassion.
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