About Trauma

What is Trauma?

Trauma is the lasting emotional, physical, and psychological responses that often result from living through an overwhelming event.

An experience becomes “trauma” when it lives rent-free in our brains and bodies, and contains some kind of negative belief – I’m not safe, I’m not enough, I’m a bad person, I don’t matter. It causes us to adjust how we exist and operate in the world, based on this experience.

According to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. This is equivalent to 223.4 million people. 

About PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder describes these symptoms:

1. Intrusive thoughts or flashbacks of the event.
2. Nightmares or distressing dreams.
3. Physical responses to thoughts of the event, like sweating or heart pounding.
4. Hyper-vigilance – a state of increased alertness and heightened awareness of potential threats or dangers.
5. Feelings of guilt, shame, or fear, sometimes self-blame.
6. Avoiding thoughts, feelings, or talking about the event.
7. Avoiding situations, places, or people that remind you of the event.
8. Trouble concentrating or focusing.

PTSD does not just go away with time.

People often have strong urges to avoid thinking and talking about the trauma. This avoidance is a key symptom of PTSD. The urge to avoid makes it very difficult to seek help. In fact, only a small percentage of people who experience trauma ever have treatment.

Efforts to avoid trauma often lead to developing other problems, like addiction.

But, PTSD is very treatable in the hands of a specially trained licensed therapist.

PTSD is often caused by Acute Trauma

Acute trauma is one event that happens one time, and feels life threatening.

Examples of this are: a car accident or other type of serious accident, a medical procedure, a natural disaster, experiencing violence, or any threat to a person’s life.

Acute Trauma triggers our primal survival responses

When we have an experience that feels overwhelming, our bodies and brains perceive a threat, and our primal survival system takes over.

Our primal survival responses are: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.

Our Fight response is just that – the urge to fight off a threat.

But it’s often not safe to fight. When it’s not safe to fight, another option is to take Flight or run away from the situation. But if we are unable to escape, another option is to Freeze, or to play dead (as wild animals do). Although your heart is racing and adrenaline is pumping through your body, you feel frozen and unable to move or talk.

The fourth survival response is called “Fawning.”

Fawning means you try to appease the threat – to make yourself safe.

About “Little t” Trauma

“Little t” trauma are events or experiences that we wouldn’t necessarily recognize as trauma from the outside, because they are not life-threatening. They are often moments where we feel rejection, and we internalize a negative belief about ourselves. They can happen at home with family, at school with friends or teachers, or anywhere in a child or teen’s life.

What makes these events significant IS that negative belief that gets taken in – “I’m not good enough,” “I’m dumb,” “I don’t belong.” When no adult helps the child or teen understand a bigger picture about these moments (and often doesn’t even know they happened) , the child or teen just adjusts how they live in the world based on this negative belief. Then this unprocessed event gets lost in the past.

You might find yourself as an adult, feeling anxiety during staff meetings or feeling imposter syndrome at your job. Sometimes these negative beliefs show up as fears or phobias, or compulsive behaviors. The person is usually not aware anymore of the events that are driving their problems.

About Complex Trauma

When ongoing trauma happens in the context of relationships when we are children, these survival responses can become habits in our relationships, and continue into adulthood.

Children can’t survive on their own, and they have very few defenses to protect themselves. Children are naturally dependent on the adults in their lives to take care of them, and to keep them safe.

Examples of situations that easily overwhelm a child:

• An angry or raging adult, a violent adult, and/or physical abuse
• Frequent criticism from an adult (rejection), verbal abuse, or withholding praise or affection
• Absence of a significant adult in the child’s life (feels like a rejection or abandonment)
• A helpless adult (a parent that can’t take care of themselves or depends on the child)
• Sexual abuse, exposure to pornography, or exposure to sexual behavior of adults
• An adult who is intoxicated with alcohol or drugs around the child

It’s almost never safe for a child to Fight off a threat, especially from an adult they depend on. Children are usually no match for an adult. You may see a child being defiant with an adult they feel safe with, as part of their Fight response.

Children usually can’t use their Flight response either, they can’t survive on their own, they are usually trapped in situations.

Children sometimes learn to Freeze in response to a threat, then they can’t move or talk.

Children also learn to Fawn in response to the threat, to tell the person what they want to hear or otherwise cooperate, to try to take care of the adult, be what the adult needs.

However, children can’t take care of, or control, an adult. They often internalize a felt sense of being inadequate or a failure.

Children often feel pressure to protect the family image. This is often why children don’t tell about problems going on at home, and it can feel like a betrayal to talk about problems in the family, even once they grow up.

When childhood trauma goes unaddressed, and a felt sense of being unsafe persists into adulthood, and survival responses become habits in relationships, that is called Complex or Developmental trauma.

Understanding Complex Trauma: Causes, Effects, and Healing

Complex trauma refers to a type of psychological trauma that arises from prolonged or repetitive exposure to distressing and emotionally painful experiences that happen during childhood or formative years. Unlike single-event trauma (one bad thing that happens one time), complex trauma involves ongoing or repeated incidents or circumstances, typically in the context of relationships, marked by a lack of safety, stability, or emotional support.

Common Causes of Complex Trauma

Complex trauma often originates in childhood due to:

• Emotional Neglect: A lack of emotional validation, acceptance, or love from caregivers.
• Parental Rejection or Absence: Experiences of rejection, abandonment or unavailability of a primary parental figure. This includes feeling targeted “scapegoated,” or highly criticized by a caregiver.
• Chronic Adversity: Exposure to long-term abuse, neglect, or dysfunctional family dynamics. Some examples of situations that create dysfunctional family dynamics are: alcoholism, substance addiction, behavioral addiction, a parent with an illness or a mental illness, a parent with personality disorder traits such as narcissistic or borderline traits, a parent with rage, a parent that enables the problem behavior of another adult, and domestic violence.

These early experiences can lead to profound psychological effects for children, and form negative core beliefs or ways of behaving that persist into adulthood. As much as we may want to, it’s not possible to just “leave it in the past.”

The Development of a False Self

To survive emotionally distressing environments, people may create a “false self.” This survival mechanism helps them navigate relationships and seek safety but often leads to a fragmented sense of identity. Over time, the false self masks the person’s true emotions and needs, and hinders personal growth and development. The false self is a FAWN response to trauma.

Emotional Neglect and Its Long-Term Effects

One of the hallmarks of complex trauma is internalized shame. Children who experience emotional neglect may come to believe:

• Their feelings and needs are unworthy of attention
• They are fundamentally flawed or inadequate

These deep-seated beliefs often persist into adulthood, manifesting as low self-esteem, poor self-worth, and difficulty maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships.

Healing from Complex Trauma

Recovery from complex trauma involves addressing these emotional wounds and rediscovering the true self. Key components of healing include:

1. Therapeutic Support: Engaging with highly trained trauma-focused therapists to process and heal emotional pain.
2. Rebuilding Identity: Understanding and letting go of the false self and embracing one’s authentic identity.
3. Self-Compassion: Challenging shame-based beliefs and nurturing a sense of self-worth.

By taking these steps, we can overcome the lasting effects of complex trauma and lead more fulfilling lives.