What Is a Traumatic Experience?
You’ve probably heard the word(s) trauma or traumatic experience. Perhaps you’ve noticed hearing or seeing the words more in recent years. A decade or two ago, the word trauma was used much less often. It used to be more assumed that only really big, overwhelming events were traumatic. The word represented an experience that war veterans experienced, for example. It might have also been connected to individuals who had experienced deeply difficult and abusive upbringings or similar experiences. It was sometimes misunderstood as being about the event itself. Rather, we now know the individuals witnessing or involved in the event should be considered at the heart of it all.
A trauma isn’t about the event or experience witnessed on it’s own.
You and I might be involved in or witness the same event and interpret it very differently. (Covid serves as a good example.) While you may be able to make sense of it and understand it in a way that allows you to interpret some meaning, I may not. You might be able to integrate what you witnessed into your world view and what counsellors call a schema. (This is just a pattern of thinking.) While it could have been hard to witness or experience, it didn’t leave you feeling alarmingly uncomfortable. Yet, perhaps, based on my life experiences, I would be unable to do the same. My life experience may have been such that my nervous system was overwhelmed and felt helpless.
Gabor Mate explains it like this: A trauma isn’t what happens to you. Rather, it is what happens inside of you, because of what happened to you.
A traumatic event is something that causes you to feel harm. This could be mental, emotional, physical or spiritual. You may not visually see this harm but that does not minimize how it affects you.
You might have felt out of control, powerless, overwhelmed, anxious and many other emotions during the experience. (It’s possible you still feel them all.) A traumatic experience leaves a person feeling alone.
If this sounds like an experience you’ve had, I am so sorry this happened to you.
A traumatic experience is not your fault.
Going back to the (false) idea of a traumatic experience having to be big, like something from a war story for example. While trauma is absolutely something of that nature, smaller seemingly less significant events or experiences also leave you feeling alone, afraid, and unable to know how to make sense of happenings. These feelings and experiences can result in a sense of disconnection or even fragmentation within you.
It could be that you saw a car accident happen as you were driving home one day. Now whenever you drive through that intersection, you notice your body tense, your palms begin to sweat and by the time you’re home, you have a horrific headache because you have been so tense. Perhaps the experience (watching the accident) reminded you of something that happened to you earlier in life…a difficult memory. If you didn’t have anyone with you to tell you it would be okay and process through it, you might notice similar feelings.
How do you know if your experience was traumatic?
You might experience flashbacks. It’s also possible your anxiety might sky rocket and feel like it’s constantly high. Maybe you notice that sounds or sights that didn’t used to, cause you to jump or react in a way that’s very uncomfortable and unfamiliar to you. You might find your heart races or your hands shake when you even just think back to the experience. It’s common that your body will react in various ways…this is often the emotion from the traumatic experience. You feel and can process emotion somatically or, within your body. It feels so uncomfortable and it’s very real. It’s not uncommon that your physical body will respond to emotion. You feel your emotions in your body.
A key reminder is that a traumatic experience is never your fault. This is something I find so important and powerful in the healing process. When you can begin to explore the event with another person (a counsellor or a very trusted friend), you can begin to undo some of the aloneness you experience. You can begin to create meaning, understand, reconnect with yourself and heal. You can release and find freedom from any sort of sense of responsibility.
I believe that humans are wired for healing.
Often it feels like the hardest thing to do is talk about it. And yet, talking about it – letting the information, the feelings, the experiences on the inside, out. This disempowers them. This frees you from carrying the weight of them. And, this can begin to journey of healing.
If you resonate with some of the information above, or perhaps you’re beginning to wonder whether the experience you’ve coped with really has left you feeling alone and you’d like to explore that, please reach out! I work through a trauma-informed approach. This means that I believe your past informs your present. I invite you to share your story in a way you feel safe and comfortable. Together, we can begin to explore what healing and wellness looks like.
