Have I Experienced Trauma?

When people talk about trauma, we tend to think about it like it is reserved for certain situations:

 People who have experienced war,

Survivors of natural disasters or crises,

Someone who has had it “much worse” than us.

While extreme events can lead to trauma, it has nothing to do with the “mental toughness” of a person. Anyone can experience trauma, at varying levels, over their life. And in essence, a trauma response is the body trying to protect itself from danger. If we are unable to process that the danger has passed, we can stay in our fight-flight-freeze-fawn response.

We also know that our body holds trauma, and our muscles and bodily responses can communicate a trauma response to us years after an event has happened. When unresolved, this can lead to PTSD.

The thing about trauma, is that even when we process it, it can still leave scars.

That means some people are high functioning, but will occasionally be triggered and they won’t know why. For instance, hearing a story on the news similar to our own trauma story might make us feel very overwhelmed.  Or perhaps we jump when we hear a loud noise.

Maybe we enter relationships with trepidation or our body tenses up and we can’t figure out why. All of these could be the ongoing effects of trauma in our life. They don’t necessarily impede on our overall functioning, but they do impact us.

If that’s the case, why is it important to identify our trauma?

Because it gives us permission to heal - even more than we already have.

Identifying that we have experienced some form of trauma isn’t about labelling ourselves or playing victim. Instead, when we do this in a healthy, safe way, we experience freedom.

Our trauma may come from a specific event (e.g. death, natural disaster, accident, violence) or it could also be a result of the environments we have been in where we have experienced different forms of harm (racism, harmful religious beliefs, neglect, bullying, abuse)

Dr Bessel Vanderkolk is one of the world's most trusted experts on trauma. We use his book “The Body Keeps Score” frequently in our practice.

Here are some signs he shares that may indicate you are experiencing trauma:

• You feel chronically unsafe and in danger

• You struggle to have comfortable reciprocal relationships with others

• You are frazzled, unfocused, and tend to repeat the same nonproductive behaviour patterns, with the same miserable results

• You are vulnerable to a host of medical illnesses and chronic pain

• You may experience things like insomnia, drug and alcohol addiction, depression, obesity, and / or other issues

• You struggle to regulate your emotions and behaviours, and care for you self.

Do you resonate with any of these?

Maybe you need a safe space to talk about a relationship or some events that happened in the past. Or perhaps you feel trapped, and want freedom from things that happened long ago?

You’re not broken - your body  and brain is just trying to keep you safe, and with therapy you can find ways to process your trauma, and learn healthy coping techniques to move forward in your life.