WHAT IS TRAUMA?

Trauma happens to all of us, our friends and our families. No one is exempt to experiencing some trauma - to what degree trauma has affected you varies from mild to severe.

Examples of experiences that may cause trauma in the mind & body are:  Sexual abuse, growing up in a family where there was alcoholism, violence, verbal abuse emotional abuse, attachment bonding disorders, generational trauma, external events, medical procedures, unnecessary intrusive birthing procedures, and so on.

Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences.

The best predictor of something becoming traumatic seems to be a situation in which you can no longer imagine a way out, when fighting and fleeing is no longer an option and you feel overpowered and helpless. This often happens in childhood when you are literally powerless and vulnerable, but also as an adult in accidents and overwhelming experiences, or too much happening too fast for your physiology to bounce back from.

Trauma is not about the experience that happens to us; it is what our mind does with it. It has a profound and potentially long-lasting effect on the mind-body connection, and many people who have been traumatised report unregulated body experiences like intense pain, uncontrollable emotions and physical sensations and often chronic dis-ease.