Understanding the Legacy of Trauma
If you’ve scrolled through mental health TikTok or followed any wellness influencers across other social media platforms, you’ve probably seen some over-generalized content about one of popular psychology’s current favourite buzzwords – trauma. Maybe you’ve watched basic human behaviours get explained away as “trauma responses” or seen folks gatekeeping the traumatic descriptor for only the most extreme cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as experienced by war veterans or survivors of abuse. When clinical terms like “triggered,” “toxic,” and “traumatized” leak into the everyday language of popular culture, their true meaning and impact can be easily diluted and misunderstood. While it’s great that so many of us are talking about and normalizing trauma, in the age of misinformation, it’s easy to get lost in all the noise when trying to learn and get help navigating life’s difficulties. If you’ve ever wondered if a painful experience was traumatic or told yourself, “Maybe it wasn’t so bad; some people have it way worse,” this blog should help clarify things for you. So, let’s get into it.
What is Trauma?
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), trauma refers to the emotional aftermath of experiencing a horrible event such as accidents, assaults, or natural disasters. Common short-term responses to traumatic events might include shock, numbness, and denial. In the long term, however, traumatized individuals might experience intense mood swings, flashbacks, relational conflict, nightmares, and physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, sweating, digestive upset, and muscle tension (APA, 2022). However, many practitioners have adopted a more humanistic perspective on traumatic experiences prioritizing a holistic view of the whole person rather than focusing primarily on diagnosis and symptoms. Don’t get me wrong; diagnostic labels can be tremendously beneficial for providing people with a language to describe their experiences and an avenue for receiving adequate medical support. That said, trauma encompasses more than just a few select experiences, symptoms, and diagnoses.
Can You Experience Trauma Without PTSD?
So, what qualifies as a “legitimate” trauma? Who gets to decide? And who gets left behind when treatment providers exclude presentations that don’t perfectly fit the narrow scope of a PTSD diagnosis? It’s often said that treating trauma, or any other mental health concern, is a blend of science and art. While many therapists hold different opinions aboutthe ideal balance of the two, most agree that therapy is a very human, relational process. To us, it’s clear that quantifiable data and diagnoses can’t neatly capture the entirety of the human experience. It may be helpful to look at it this way – trauma is less about what happened to you and more about how your nervous system responded to the experience. After all, two people can experience the same tragic event yet have wildly different reactions. How someone processes traumatic events often depends on factors like overall health, cultural background, psychiatric history, personality, financial status, and access to support, among others.
Is Trauma Physical or Psychological?
Like most mental health issues, trauma can have physiological and psychological impacts. Without getting too scientific here, traumatic experiences can change the brain's physical structures. Such changes at the cellular and chemical level can compromise the healthy functioning of the nervous system, which is responsible for regulating the infamous fight, flight,freeze, and fawn stress responses. If an event gets encoded in the brain as threatening enough to activate a severe stress response, the nervous systemcan become over- or under-reactive to perceived dangers. On the over-reactive side, often called "hyperactivation" or "hyperarousal," you may notice chronic fight-or-flight responses like irritability, rage, aggression, or avoidance. On the under-reactive side, or "hypoactivation" or "hypoarousal", you may see freeze and fawn responses like dissociation, depression, shut down, severe people-pleasing, or feelings of numbness. When we experience trauma, the nervous system jumps into action to keep us safe, which is entirely normal and primarily adaptive. However, without adequate support or treatment, the legacy of trauma can wreak havoc on our emotions, hormones, sleep, and overall optimal functioning.
How Is Trauma Treated?
Another advantage of the increased attention trauma has received over the last ten years is that, through research, we now know much more about the brain-body connection and its implications for treatment. As a concern with mental and physical factors, it’s important to address trauma holistically – meaning that the best treatment options integrate healing methods from multiple disciplines. For example, the first-line treatment for PTSD often combines medication protocols from a physician or psychiatrist and trauma counselling from a specialized psychotherapist or social worker. Many different types of psychotherapies address trauma, but they tend to fallunder two main categories: top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top-down therapies refer to those which prioritize cognitive processing to heal trauma, such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT). Alternatively, bottom-up approaches begin with processing trauma on a somatic or body-based level before moving into the cognitive aspect, such assensorimotor psychotherapy. Since there is growing evidence supporting the effectiveness of both types, it often comes down to client preference and the strength of the client-therapist relationship.
When it comes to understanding and treating trauma, you need safe, knowledgeable people you can trust to help you heal at your own pace and on your own terms. So if you’re looking to add a therapist to your support system, you’re in the right place! Check out our team page to connect with acounsellor today – we can’t wait to hear from you