Trauma

Trauma refers to the emotional response to very stressful, frightening or distressing events that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope or are out of our control, often resulting in lasting negative effects on mental and physical health. It can arise from various experiences, including abuse, accidents, natural disasters, or witnessing violence.

Most of us will experience an event in our lives that could be considered traumatic. But we won’t all be affected the same way. Trauma can happen at any age. And it can affect us at any time, including a long time after the event has happened.

The most severe consequences of trauma result from disassociation; splitting the mind and soma (body) is an instinctive response to save the self from suffering, doing a very good job, simultaneously casting a great deal of harm as this ongoing defensive stance leads to physical symptoms.

Symptoms include

There are various types of traumas we can experience or carry, including:

Childhood trauma

You may have experienced trauma during your childhood. These experiences could make you more likely to have mental health problems as an adult if this is unresolved. This is especially if you didn’t have support to manage the trauma. Or if you experienced trauma continuously, over a long period of time.

Collective trauma

Collective trauma is when a traumatic event happens when many people at the same time experiences the trauma. This could be a war or more recently the 2020 pandemic.
This doesn’t mean that everyone who experienced the event feels the same way about it. Or that they all feel it was traumatic for them. Everyone still copes with it in their own way.
Experiencing collective trauma can mean you experience personal symptoms and ‘social symptoms’. Social symptoms can include how society has dealt with or reacted to the trauma. For example:
If it isn’t socially acceptable to talk about the event, or only being able to talk about it in certain ways
If people avoid or discriminate against certain groups that might be unfairly blamed for the trauma
The anniversaries of a collective trauma might lead to events such as memorials and media coverage. You might find these events comforting ways of managing collective trauma. Or you may find them very difficult. How you feel about these anniversaries can also change over time.

Generational trauma

Generational or intergenerational trauma is a type of trauma that’s experienced across generations of a family, culture or group. For example, there’s some evidence that shows children and grandchildren of people who survived the Holocaust experience higher rates of mental health problems.
Trauma that happened in the past has an impact on the mental health of current generations. But it’s not always clear how. Some researchers think trauma may affect our genes. But it’s more likely that trauma affects the environment we grow up in. This can be through things like:
Stories or warnings older generations have passed on about the trauma they experienced. This could make you wary of the world around you.
The legacy of trauma continuing to impact your wellbeing and safety, such as the ongoing effects of colonialism on the health and wellbeing of people of colour.
Trauma affecting how older generations have raised and looked after us. For example, if your parent avoided certain places due to their experience of trauma, you might also feel anxious in those places. This might be more likely to happen if older generations haven’t had support for their traumatic experiences when they needed them.

Moral injury

Moral injury means how you feel when you’re put in a situation that goes against your morals, values or beliefs. It’s often seen in people who have been in situations where they need to make big decisions about other people’s lives.

Moral injury might happen because of:

Lack of resources provided by a workplace, government or ruling body to treat everyone equally
Poor safety practices
Regulations or orders from people in charge that don’t seem to be in people’s best interests
Unsafe or immoral behaviour from others, particularly those in charge
Working in a system you see as failing, but have no power to fix

This kind of trauma can impact your view of the world, your government, or the organisation you work for. Along with other effects of trauma, you might:

Feel a lack of purpose in your personal or professional life
Feel disconnected from people around you
Feel betrayed, alienated or ashamed
Question your moral codes and ethics

If the moral injury happened in the workplace, you might also have difficult feelings about continuing to work there. It can be difficult to seek help in the workplace in these situations. This is because the people running the workplace can be part of the cause of moral injury.

If you need to talk to someone about wrongdoing in your workplace, the charity Protect provides confidential support.

Racial trauma

The impact racism can have on your mind and body is sometimes described as racial trauma.

There’s no universal definition of racial trauma. Some people use it to mean all the effects that encountering racism can have on how we think, feel and behave. Others use it to describe a specific set of symptoms.

Secondary trauma

Secondary trauma is when you witness trauma or you’re closely connected to it. But you don’t experience the trauma directly. It’s sometimes called vicarious trauma.

For example, if you’re a journalist who often reports on traumatic events. Or if you’re a medical professional working in an accident and emergency department.

Effects of secondary trauma are similar to general trauma. But you may find you also begin to feel detached from the trauma. Or treat it as a very separate part of your life.

Experiencing secondary trauma is as valid as any other kind of trauma. It can impact you just as much.

Symptoms

Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive Memories

Flashbacks

Hypervigilance

Hyperarousal

Feeling Unsafe

Trauma differs from PTSD. Only when symptoms of Trauma remain for more than 30 days, you may be suffering from PTSD.