Types of Trauma
Let's start from the beginning.
What is trauma?
How do you know if you are experiencing the impacts of trauma?
To sum up all definitions, we can say that trauma is what happens to our brain and body after an experience that overwhelms our ability to cope in the absence of caring support.
Many types of experiences can be overwhelming.
Big T Trauma, or shock trauma, is an event that people usually associate with the word, "trauma," such as war trauma, an assault, a car accident, a medical procedure, or witnessing a death.
You may not realize it, but for a child, neglect is also a big T trauma, and it's really difficult to identify if it happened to you when you were pre-verbal.
Small t trauma refers to events that in and of themselves may or may not not cause trauma, but if many of them build up over time, they can overwhelm your nervous system. This is how chronic stress can become traumatic.
Small t events are tricky - they may be traumatic but we brush them off because they seem less significant than they are. THIS is one of the factors that makes us question whether we have had trauma.
Developmental Trauma. How old you were when the trauma happened is really important.
Trauma that happens early in life without the buffering of a protective, stable parent or other caregiver is called developmental trauma. It changes the way our brains develop and is the source of some of the most vexing problems we can face as adults, sometimes because we don't even remember specific incidents, or because we cannot remember anything that happened during certain periods of time. Developmental trauma includes physical and emotional abuse as well as neglect and abandonment.
Attachment trauma is a type of developmental trauma. It refers to a severe disruption in the bond between a primary caregiver and their child. This disruption result from abuse or neglect, lack of affection or response from the caregiver, or the absence of healthy amounts of nurture, care, and reliable caregiving.
It is not limited to obvious forms of abuse or neglect but can also include more subtle forms of trauma, such as Inconsistent or unpredictable caregiving; emotional unavailability or lack of emotional responsiveness; failure to provide basic needs, like food, shelter, or safety.
This trauma can affect an individual’s ability to form and maintain healthy relationships throughout their life, leading to difficulties with emotional regulation, trust and intimacy, self-esteem and identity, coping with stress and adversity
Racism trauma
As a society, the U.S. is just beginning to acknowledge how physically and emotionally damaging racism is. It not only occurs in big T, forms, but can take the form of small daily insults or instances of discrimination or passive aggression that cause stress on the body, mind and spirit. Direct threat or being socially excluded compromises a person's ability to feel safe and welcomed, which the body feels. We can see evidence of this insidious form of traumatic stress in statistics like the high maternal and infant mortality rate for African American women, which occurs independently of socioeconomic status (education and wealth).
Historical and Generational Trauma
Trauma can be passed down in families, either due to a traumatic incident that happened to a family member, or because the family experienced destruction by the society. Some examples of groups in U.S. society that have experienced historical trauma include Native Americans, African Americans, and Holocaust survivors.
Generational trauma is trauma that is passed down by your relatives to you. For example, Holocaust survivors' grandchildren may display symptoms of PTSD even when they have not personally experienced trauma in this lifetime.
Ancestral trauma is ubiquitous. We all have ancestors who have had traumatic experiences. Thanks to the field of epigenetics, we now know that trauma can be passed down. It can surface as symptoms that don't have any obvious connection to your life, or in ways you talk about your thoughts. For example, research has shown that the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors can experience PTSD and have thoughts about annihilation even though they have not experienced severe trauma in their own lifetimes.
Impacts of Trauma
Dr. Gabor Mate tells us that "trauma isn't what happened to you, it's about what happens inside you, the wound that you sustained, the meaning you made of it, the way you came to believe certain things about yourself, or the world or other people."
Dr. Mate also provides hope - "if trauma is that disconnection from your authentic self....well guess what, that can be restored at any moment!"
The message is that traumatic experiences do not have to define us or how we see the world, our life possibilities, or even spiritual transformation capacities (watch Dr. Mate talk about this here).
You can see that what happened to us is not actually the trauma. Trauma is the wound. We can heal our wounds. We may not be able to undo the experiences we have had in life, but we can repair their impact on us!
This is not Dr. Mate's philosophy; it is backed by the science on traumatic stress and healing.
Traumatic experiences, then, are experiences that are likely to leave us wounded, even though this is highly individual.
How do you know if you are suffering the effects of trauma?
So many people don't identify their anxiety, depression and other things that make us miserable as originating in trauma. Others have such trouble that they know they have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I was one of those people who didn't define my problems as connected to many little t traumas along with some big T traumas. I knew something was wrong but I didn't have the vocabulary for why I was unhappy. Like me, you may feel depressed, lonely and isolated, or simply frozen. Or, maybe you have a short fuse and lash out at people easily, and then hate yourself for it. You might feel supremely uncomfortable in your body, and not know why, except that you self soothe through addictions.
You may have trouble at work, in relationships, or your finances are a mess. You may just be feeling like you can't get your life together and that you can't move on from the past. Or you have trouble enjoying the present moment.
These are all signs of emotional and neurological damage from trauma. I've been there! My purpose is to help you self-heal so you can live the full and happy life you deserve, and not take as long as I did to heal!
I see you, I hear you, you matter.