What is psychological trauma?

Currently, people have heard about many concepts from the field of psychology and often use them with and without a good reason. The notion of “Psychological trauma” is one such concept.

“We had a fight, and now I have a trauma,” “My boss yelled at me and traumatized me,” “I feel very sad in the evenings – probably, I have some kind of trauma from childhood.”

The above-mentioned cases can be called whatever you like: stress, conflict, apathy, but they are very unlikely to be trauma. Let’s see what psychological trauma really is.

Psychological trauma is a kind of experience in a person’s life that exceeds their ability to process it on their own. As a rule, what happened goes beyond ordinary human experiences and is accompanied by feelings of fear, anxiety, and helplessness. The person may feel powerless to influence the situation.

Psychological trauma is not “one size fits all” – in other words, the experience of the same situation by different people will be different: some are traumatized, and some are not. This is because a lot depends on the person’s psychological characteristics and attitude to what is happening.

Dereck and Ron were attacked by a group of drunken youth when they were returning late from work. They did not get any serious injuries, fortunately: Dereck had a black eye and Ron had a bruised nose. A passerby called the Police and the youth ran away. It has been 6 months since that incident. But Dereck stopped going out late at night. He is not able to sleep well – he has flashbacks and nightmares. He sees that a group of youth with baseball bats are chasing him, he trips and falls, and they pin him down to the ground and start abusing him. But Ron completely forgot about this incident. He had a bruised nose – so what? Things happen! In the end – everyone is safe!

The situation is the same, but the consequences are different. Dereck has post-traumatic stress disorder, while Ron does not.

Not every painful event becomes a trauma. This happens only when this event is subjectively experienced as unbearable, impossible, there is a feeling of helplessness (“I can’t do anything”), and the person is not able to process their pain.

In the blink of an eye, basic illusions are destroyed: the illusion of immortality, the justice of the world, omnipotence… The world ceases to be safe and understandable. The traumatized person ceases to understand how, after this incident, to live in this alien and cruel world. Their life is divided into “before” and “after” the event.

Psychological trauma can be categorized according to the types of unresolved emotional conflicts.

○ Existential trauma – may happen if a person finds themselves in a situation of violence or an accident, experiences a threat to life and/or health (both for themselves or a loved one).

○ The trauma of loss – may happen when a person experiences the loss of a loved one or an important living condition (loss of freedom as a result of imprisonment, the ability to walk/see/hear, etc. as a result of disability, etc.)

○ Relationship trauma – happens if emotional connections were broken: rejection or betrayal. Such trauma can happen at any age. Many carry it throughout their lives from dysfunctional families, where, as children, they were unloved, rejected, or abused.

○ Trauma to systemic relationships. Here we are talking about actions that severely break ethical and moral norms: beatings, murders, or incest.

We will not go into a detailed classification of psychological traumas, but it is enough to say that there are many different types of traumas.

What is important to know is that psychological trauma can be treated. Not quickly. Not right away. But it is treatable. You do not need to carry it all your life. If there have been events in your life that you have not been able to fully cope with, and they still affect your life, you must contact a specialist.

Trauma is not the same thing as stress, burn-out, or a bad mood. It is hard to recover from it on your own. The most important thing is to seek help.