What Is Trauma?

Trauma is often defined as ‘the event’, however, it is always subjective. We all have our own ways of responding to any event.

It is often hard for people to understand that everyone responds differently.

For example, some of us are extremely frightened by turbulence on a plane, while others can feel these things intensely but are able to bring that arousal within a liveable window of tolerance.

When we perceive a threat to safety (or life) this stimulates the nervous system. Nervous system arousal might shoot up causing muscles to tense, the heart beats faster, in order to mobilise our instinctive responses of fight, flight or cry for help (what we see in babies).

If that doesn’t work, this arousal will plummet. We will freeze and shut down and perhaps feign death (playing possum) in order to survive. e.g. becoming dreamy, quiet and disconnected.

This slowing-down response is something that we all have, but it is commonly misinterpreted, judged or misunderstood. e.g. Why didn’t they fight back?

If you have a history of continued or complex trauma (such as bullying or an alcoholic parent) you are much more likely to experience difficult events in a much stronger way. Our inner threat detection dial is always turned up.

This is what is challenging about healing from complex trauma such as childhood or emotional abuse, it’s all ongoing, it doesn’t stop, it’s never-ending and our system responds to that to keep us safe.

When traumatised in this way we often don’t recover fully (the dial is set too high) and the trauma responses live on in the body.