What is trauma?

One of the most helpful metaphors for understanding how trauma can affect the mind and body is this: you’re driving down the road on a cold wintery day and without realizing you hit a patch of black ice, your wheels are spinning but the car isn’t moving forward.

Similarly, when we experience trauma our mind becomes highly alert to potential danger and it triggers a set of emotional, physiological, and behavioural responses, which often causes us to feel stuck.

A common misperception that people have is that they feel their brain isn’t working, while others might say things like “I feel broken”, “I’m not who I used to be”, “I feel stuck”, and so on. If we circle back to the black ice metaphor, we can rest assured that the car (just like our brain), in fact, is NOT broken but trauma does have a way of making us feel stuck in time.

The Crisis Prevention Institute defines trauma as the following, “An event or series of events, an experience or prolonged experiences, and/or a threat or perceived threats to a person’s well-being. The individual’s daily coping mechanisms can be negatively impacted by trauma. Subsequent behavioural responses to daily life may be filtered through this perspective.”

More simply put,

trauma is any negative or distressing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope.

Karen Onderko, Director of Research and Education, states that trauma can cause feelings of helplessness, diminish our sense of self and our ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. Often times, our sense of safety is compromised and our nervous system responds accordingly (this is where we enter into fight, flight, or freeze responses). For example, we feel irritable, on edge, emotional outbursts, have difficulty sleeping, nightmares, anxious, or depressed.

“Trauma can serve as a filter, or lens, through which a person views the world. Think of sunglasses: You put them on and everything is shaded differently. Trauma can have that type of effect on how a person perceives their world.” The Crisis Prevention Institute

Types of Trauma

There are different types of trauma, such as PTSD, Acute Stress Disorder, Vicarious Trauma, and Complex Trauma to name a few. Another way to categorize trauma is viewing it as either a ‘little t trauma’ or a ‘big T trauma’. Little t traumas are circumstances where the body’s sense of safety has not been threatened or entirely compromised, however symptoms of trauma (as stated above) are still present. Some examples include life stressors like financial troubles, legal battles, divorce, infidelity, or upsetting personal conflict, and so on. Big T traumas are circumstances that cause the individual severe distress and a sense of helplessness. Karen Onderko states that big T traumas can result from a one-time event or from prolonged stressors like war, child abuse, neglect or violence.

What is ‘trauma-informed’?

You might have already seen the term “trauma-informed therapist” amongst a list of counsellors or heard another professional refer someone to meet with one, but has anyone taken the time to explain what it really means and why it might be important?

According to the Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute (CTRI), a trauma-informed approach possesses the following principles: 

SAFETY & TRUST, CHOICE & VOICE, STRENGTHS & RESILIENCE.

Safety and stabilization are built throughout the entirety of the therapeutic relationship and is emphasized at the beginning. On a practical level, because a client’s emotional and psychological safety is a priority, the counsellor will support the client in gaining tools and helpful coping skills. On a relational level, it is important that the counsellor displays appropriate body language that communicates respect and unconditional acceptance of the client’s circumstances, and will ask questions like “How could this behaviour make sense as a reaction to a past trauma?”.

Choice and voice means that the therapist takes on a client-centred approach where the individual has the ability to choose their pacing and is well-informed before making any decisions.

Lastly, strengths and resilience are all about recognizing the human resiliency within each individual. The fight, flight, and freeze responses are primal responses to perceived threat and/or danger, and it is fitting that your brain and nervous system are working together to try and protect you.  

“A trauma-informed perspective asks “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?” The Crisis Prevention Institute

When you start to understand that some of your experiences in your life could be defined as traumatic events you may feel a bit overwhelmed or have a sense of “but I’m not a victim”.  The positive side about knowing that you have experienced trauma is that you have a starting point as you begin to seek out help for getting healing and becoming the person that you want to be. 

If you have found that the definition of trauma in this article fits with what you have experienced, please reach out to us by emailing us.  We have a number of trauma-informed therapists that work out of our offices.

Katarina McCurdy, RCC, is the therapist that wrote this article and is a trauma-informed therapist.  You can learn more about her by clicking here.