Have I Experienced Trauma?

This is a big question and a loaded one.  For some people, it’s meaningful to finally recognize that yes, I fall into this category.  Others hold tight to the idea that everything in their lives has been just fine.  They don’t want the label.

So, what is trauma?

Trauma is an experience of being overwhelmed and unsupported.  We sometimes divided trauma into two groups.  Big T traumas are things like abuse of all kinds, major accidents, large natural disasters.  Little t traumas are the things that are harder to see like emotional neglect, poverty, racist microaggressions.  Calling them “Big” and “Little” doesn’t change their impact, though.  When we call them “Big” and “Little”, we really just mean visible and invisible.  All of it impacts us.

The impact of the trauma is all about just how overwhelmed we were and whether we had enough support.  Let’s use an everyday occurrence of a six-year old falling off her bike for an example.

Emma is riding her new, pink bike without training wheels down the block when she gets distracted and falls.  She skins her knee which shines with fresh blood and makes her believe she’s been badly hurt.  Her bike has a scratch on it now and it feels so, so heavy to pick it up.  She’s scared to get back on her bike and holds back her tears as she limps home.

As she nears home, Emma’s parents notice her and come to her.  They take her bike and pick her up in their arms.  Emma then bursts into tears. Her parents don’t shush her as they let her cry out all her stress.  As she calms, they listen to her tell all the details of the fall, and they tell her she did a great job; falls happen sometimes.  Then they bring her to the bathroom and carefully clean her knee, allowing her to cry again if she needs to.  They distract her by singing or telling a joke.  The next day, they join her as she gets on her bike again.

With support like this, Emma probably won’t remember falling off her bike.  When we get adequate support, the brain integrates the experience and it doesn’t stand out anymore, no matter how big it was.

But suppose Emma fell and knew that when she got home, she’d be unlikely to get support.  She might bite her lip and get back on her bike, pretending like nothing had happened.  Or she might cry all the louder, hoping it would be enough to catch her parent’s attention.  When she got home, someone might blame her for the scratch on her bike or a drop of blood reaching the floor.  When there’s no support or very little, our brains push the trauma into its own compartment where it’s both kind of forgotten by the conscious brain, but also better remembered by the panic part of the brain.  The way it’s remembered is that the brain uses it as a lesson that no one is coming to help.  The brain also takes in any related details to mark as dangerous.  We call these triggers.  Maybe Emma decides bikes are too dangerous and won’t ride anymore, even though the problem wasn’t the bike, it was the lack of support.  It’s quite likely that eventually, Emma will stop expecting support and just do everything herself from now on.

When we start to really simplify what trauma is, we can see that trauma disconnects us from others and it disconnects us from ourselves.  Fundamentally, trauma is caused by a lack of support.  When we get used to people not helping us, we start disconnecting from them.  When we are stuck with our own big emotions that are unsupported, then we start disconnecting from ourselves, too.

Have you experienced trauma?  Another way to ask the question is, are you disconnected from other people?  Are you disconnected from yourself?

When we look at things this simply, this clearly, we can see that the answer to trauma is really quite simple as well.  The resolution of trauma is connection.