Defining Trauma

One important thing I have learned going to therapy is we all have ‘trauma’, including me. But this was hard for me to understand at first. 

I defined personal trauma as something physical (abuse, violence, natural disaster, car accident, etc.) happening to a person.  Based on my definition nothing 'traumatic' had happened to me, only 'life' had happened to me. And in life… Everyone loses a parent eventually. Everyone fails a test. Women struggle to become a mother. As life happened to me I believed I should be able to process it on my own because every other human does it (so I perceived). But I wasn't. This left me feeling broken inside. Why was my brain failing me? It became isolating, frustrating, confusing. I now know I was doing the worse thing I could do, I let my trauma define me for years and let is screw with me – causing so much uncertainty, pain, anxiety and disappointment. 

After my first couple of therapy sessions, I felt like the therapist knew everything there was to know in my 27 years of life (no one else knew the things I shared with her except Eric). I felt like there "wasn't anything there" for her to work with, I thought "sure I have had some issues but good luck connecting it all and fixing me". But she looked at her notes, then looked at me and said, "So A happened as a teenager, then B suddenly happened and was not discussed, then C happened while still ignoring B, then D happened multiple times shortly after trying to figure out C, THEN E happened as you were figuring out C and D and ignoring B?" I replied "yep...". She said “I don’t care what anyone tells you, that IS traumatic". And I appreciated someone saying that more than anything.

                                                                                                                                                            

I learned the concept that there are two main categories to trauma. Big "T" trauma (life threatening) and little "t" trauma (non-life threatening). The key to understanding little “t” trauma is to examine how it affects the individual rather than focusing on the event itself. I now define trauma as an unwelcome event that causes severe stress. Trauma is subjective. Trauma is a normal response to an abnormally overwhelming event. Those 'events' had been a part of me for a long time and brought a lot of unresolved emotions and I had no idea. Trauma lives in the body. I now fully understand that statement as I felt it physically making me sick, controlling me and causing me to not enjoy day to day life. 

As humans we put extraordinary pressure on ourselves to move past our mistakes, pain, loss. We put pressure on ourselves to react and behave a certain way that we believe is expected of us.  We all have unique capacities to handle stress and often pride ourselves in how resilient we can be. It is just as important to acknowledge little "t" trauma and big "T" trauma. Repeated exposure to little “t” traumas can cause more emotional harm than exposure to a single big “T” traumatic event. Empathy and acceptance for the impact of little “t” traumas can be harder to garner because of the common misconception that these events are less significant than life-threatening emergencies. Minimizing the impact of these little “t” incidents can create adverse coping behaviors such as bottling up emotions or attempting to manage symptoms without support. Failing to address the emotional suffering of any traumatic event may lead to cumulative damage over time. So whether you have trauma with a big ‘T’ or a little ‘t’,  know that there is amazing professional help and tools out there!