What IS Trauma?
The word ‘trauma’ gets thrown around quite a bit in casual conversations with friends or family and on social media. Just for fun I just searched #trauma on Instagram and can see there are over 5 million posts containing this hashtag. I briefly scrolled through a few posts with this hashtag and noticed there are posts in different languages, ones about narcissism, perfectionism and meditation. It’s as if the word trauma is a vague construct that can take on many shapes and forms.
But is it?
According to Dan Siegel, the leading researcher (and professor, psychiatrist) on mindfulness and interpersonal neurobiology, trauma is:
“Trauma is an experience we have that overwhelms our capacity to cope.”
Dr. Siegel’s definition helps us to understand that not every bad experience we have is a ‘trauma’ because if we have the capacity to cope with something crappy that happened, the experience won’t encode into our body and mind as a trauma. However, Merriam-Webster Dictionary has several definitions of trauma and one of them could easy be applied to an event that was horrific to experience even if we could cope with it. According to the dictionary assigning the trauma label to a disappointing exchange you had at a coffee shop this morning could be an appropriate use of the word; however, if we use the word ‘trauma’ loosely and frequently, won’t that diminish the seriousness of an actually traumatizing experience that stays with us (and not in a good way) for a long time?
From my perspective as a trauma-informed therapist, trauma can show up on people in many different ways and in varying degrees of intensity. Often a traumatic experience from a long time ago can show up in the here-and-now and most people won’t be aware that their response to something in the present moment has roots in something from years ago. For instance someone could have an exchange with their boss and their nervous system could go into a shutdown response. Their shutdown might not be 100% due to what the boss said but that exchange could have woken up a familiar and painful exchange with a parent decades ago.
Trauma and it’s relationship to the nervous system
Back to Dr. Siegel’s definition of trauma — an experience that overwhelms our capacity to cope. To understand what ‘capacity to cope’ means, let’s explore Polyvagal Theory by Dr. Stephen Porges. According to polyvagal theory, humans are wired for social engagement, which means connecting and being in relationship with others. This engagement grounds the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and allows the body to go into parasympathetic nervous system… the facet of the ANS where we connect, create, make love, enjoy food and sex, sleep ….. When we are in attuned connection with others our bodies engage in a ‘neuroception of safety’, an unconscious signal within our neural circuits that inhibits the body’s defensive state of fight or flight. For example: If an infant or young child is with a person that is present, protective and attuned to the child, especially if the person is a parent / caretaker, and a disturbing event happens, the child may not experience it as a ‘trauma’ because their nervous could bounce back from fight or flight if the parent/caretaker protected and comforted the child. The child’s nervous system may have even engaged in fight or flight (the sympathetic nervous system) but the presence, comfort and nurturing from a parent can help the young nervous system put the brakes on and return to parasympathetic shortly after the event. This can be referred to as resilience, meaning the child (and their nervous system) can bounce back from an event that felt dangerous or threatening.
Many of us, including me, have had experiences when we were young when an parent / caretaker / adult was present but not nurturing, comforting or attuned when we were terrified, frightened, hurt or scared resulting in a felt sense of being alone and helpless. Sometimes when an infant or child experiences a felt sense of being alone when something threatening is happening, or is perceived to maybe happen, puts the child into fight or flight (sympathetic nervous system) and it becomes difficult for the child to put the brakes on, to sense everything is OK and to disengage from fight or flight. Staying in fight or flight for more than a few moments can make it nearly impossible to shake off feeling overwhelmed or stop catastrophic thoughts keep recycling, leading us to believe real danger is coming at any moment (even though in reality that is not true).
Or a young child, who is either alone or present with an adult that is not nurturing, when something scary is happening, can engage in a dorsal vagal response which means the nervous system shuts off feelings. This can be called dissociation, shock or avoidance; they all refer to the way the body has decided there is zero capacity to deal with the pain or terror that is occurring. This shut down is meant to be protective - protecting the human from feeling something too big for them to handle all on their own.
These two types of different responses to a scary or dangerous event involve two different autonomic nervous system states: sympathetic nervous system (overwhelmed) and parasympathetic dorsal vagal pathways (shutdown). When you are younger and your body has learned to go into sympathetic (overwhelm) or dorsal vagal (shutdown) when something feels too big to cope with on your own, your nervous will continue to engage this way as you get older even if, rationally, you know the terrifying event is perceived and not actually happening. Your physiological state of overwhelm or shutdown is overriding critical, rational thoughts and this will not change if people around you tell you to stop it or chill out; feeling helpless and powerless will not stop happening by drinking copious amounts of alcohol or ingesting substances
Resolving trauma through psychotherapy
If someone is having challenges in their relationships with significant others, family or work due to chronic overwhelm. or shutdown, working with a trauma-informed therapist can provide a space to talk and work through previous (or recent) traumatic experiences. Even though treating trauma through psychotherapy takes time, compassion, and patience, the therapeutic relationship provides a safety net for people to explore their painful explicit or implicit memories (i.e. cannot remember them but there is an internal knowing that something happened) with someone who is empathetic and non-judgmental.
While some can find a way through trauma by doing work on their own without a therapist, we recommend working with an experienced trauma-informed therapist so the past experiences can be integrated within the person’s whole experience of who they are. The integration work is key to resolve the pain, shame or loss that is deeply embedded in the body from earlier trauma. This doesn’t mean the past experience is ‘let go’ - it is hard and uncomfortable to be with and integrate painful experiences but once the hard work is done, most people find a peaceful ease comes into their daily lives.
We have several therapists at Flourish! with years of experience and training in different modalities that are trauma-informed such as EMDR, attachment theory, psychedelic-assisted therapy and interpersonal neurobiology. Reach out to us today to setup a free 15-minute consultation to see if we are the right fit for you to start your journey.