Kevin Faust, LMHC, LPC, NCC

Years ago I noticed that what I see as trauma in my clients’ lives, they may not. Then I realized that I have felt the same when working with my own therapist. I really pushed back when my therapist labeled parts of my past as “trauma.”

What is Trauma?

Psychological trauma can be defined as the result of stress that exceeds one’s ability to cope with that stress. This may seem vague, but for good reason.

Trauma is unique to every individual and is fluid in a way that what may be traumatic at one time, may not be traumatic to the same person or to another person at another time. It is not a single occurrence that is the trauma, but the way an occurrence affects an individual’s mental and emotional health that creates the trauma.

That’s confusing!

Yes! It can be very confusing!

Perhaps what makes this most confusing is that when many of us hear the word “trauma,” we think of a hospital emergency room kind of crisis. But medical trauma and psychological trauma are often very different things.

Physical trauma, such as “blunt force trauma,” is serious physical injury to the body resulting in deep cuts, damaged organs, open wounds, and broken bones. Although these physical traumas can cause psychological traumas, they are not the same thing.

As a licensed mental health therapist, what I call trauma may be the result of something that looks like a simple, everyday occurrence. Depending on your mental state at that moment and what you have been through with other caregivers or authority figures throughout your life, your 8th grade soccer coach giving you a dirty look after you miss a goal could be enough to cause psychological trauma, changing neuropathways and behaviors from that moment on.

Yeah, but my traumas aren’t as bad as others’ traumas.

One thing we learned early on in grad school is to never compare psychological traumas. How one thing affects one person at one time can be the total opposite of how it affects another at another time.

Could you say that someone who was mugged and raped in a dark ally has worse trauma than someone who saw his battle-buddy take a bullet in Iraq? Of course not. But those are some fairly severe and extreme situations.

What each of us have gone through in life has shaped how we view the world in so many ways, some of which we will never be able to fully understand or comprehend. Some of what we have experienced has altered how we think and feel, as well as changed how we behave and how we react in certain situations.

Do you know anyone who has a phobia? If you have an irrational fear of spiders, I’d assume that something resembling a spider once caused trauma for you. It could even be trauma derived from one’s own imagination, a dream, or hearing a story that created enough stress that you could not cope with that stress in that moment.

Trauma is trauma. If you judge someone’s trauma, expressing to them that they are wrong for feeling that way, they may never share it with anyone again, and then never get the help they need to work through it and heal from it. It is important to validate trauma, even your own. Especially your own. Your trauma is valid!

Trauma gets caught in our bodies.

Stressful situations or events often affect the limbic system in our bodies. The limbic system is a system of nerves and networks in the cortex of our brains that regulate the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

The parasympathetic nervous system is the “rest and digest” part of our functioning. It regulates the autonomic nervous system components that help our bodies daily functioning like our immune system and organ functioning.

The sympathetic nervous system is where we see trauma “get stuck.”

Let’s say you are walking through the woods and encounter a mama bear and her cubs. You freeze. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flood your body. Your pupils dilate. Your breathing and your heart rate suddenly increase, pumping more blood to your muscles to prepare to run or to fight. This is the sympathetic nervous system taking over, and it shuts down the parasympathetic nervous system, shifting focus to survival mechanisms.

These systems work great… until they don’t.

As we said previously, psychological traumas occur when a certain stress is greater than our ability to cope with that stress. This is when the “fight or flight” system can get stuck.

If we cannot cope with the stress, it never gets properly processed and stored into long-term memory. Instead, it leaves certain parts of that “fight or flight” system activated, creating issues that look like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), difficulty regulating emotions, trouble in interpersonal relationships, depression, anxiety, and so on.

When we get stuck in certain “fight or flight” systems, this can inhibit the body’s ability to “rest and digest” properly, creating many different medical issues later in life.

If you have any issues that look like the ones just mentioned, you may have what a mental health professional would call psychological trauma, and it’s okay to say it.

The truth is we all have trauma. Some have trauma that has affected them minimally. Others have trauma that has completely destroyed their ability to function in life. And so many are somewhere in between, wondering why they just can’t quite get their act together.

If trauma occurs when our stress is greater than our ability to understand and cope with that stress, imagine what little coping abilities a child has. Children typically have no awareness of healthy coping skills, so all they do is adapt to survive, and how they have to adapt often leads to an inability to thrive. I wonder how you had to adapt as a child.

Children are most often traumatized in life. I have heard clinicians say that the experience of birth is actually our very first trauma. We have no power to control that situation when we are born, it changes everything we previously knew about our lives, and we have absolutely ZERO ability to understand it and cope with it in that moment.

We all have trauma.

Trauma can also be from more covert issues over time. This can result in complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Many of you may know of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but CPTSD can occur from long-term stressors like childhood emotional abuse or neglect, or from being the victim of an abusive relationship or narcissistic abuse.

What can we do about it?

The good news is that there are many ways we can improve our traumatized systems.

Counseling is a good way to work on your past traumas. Everyone has issues… some face their issues and work on them, and some are stuck and unwilling or unable to reach out for help. I am a trained EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapist and often use EMDR to help my clients heal from past traumas.

Self-care – Ask yourself what you really need, then work to get it. Putting yourself first can be difficult, but it is crucial to developing a healthy lifestyle. If you are not taking care of yourself, you are less able to take care of others, and then also not setting an example that others can follow to find their own healing.

Healthy boundaries are a form of self-care. We need to be able to feel safe, to feel loved, and to find contentment.

Support systems are important for healthy growth throughout our lives. We are only as strong and healthy as those with whom we surround ourselves. Healthy relationships with others are super important.

Physical health care is a must! Exercise, fresh air, sunshine, nourishing foods, and keeping up with medical issues are vital to our mental and emotional health.

I would be happy to talk to you about any of these matters. Please visit my website at AkahaiEmotionalWellness.com for more information or to set up a FREE consultation.