What the heck is trauma?
“Trauma” is very much in the zeitgeist right now, from conversations with our friends, to social media. For some this is deeply validating. For others, it seems to diminish or even erase how important trauma is. For some, it makes it seem like trauma is an overblown hoax. I believe trauma is real and important, and we all have some. But it must be understood on a spectrum. Some trauma is what we call “Big T trauma.” This is big and more obvious, like sexual abuse, combat, or a severe car crash. What we call “Little t trauma” is more nuanced. It can be the experience of having a sensitive nervous system living in a chaotic household. It can be the day to day scrutiny of a critical parent even when we know they love us. Or the loss of self-esteem
when we grow up with a sibling who dismisses or teases us. Relational trauma, damage to the way we understand and experience relationships, can be even more difficult to heal because it develops over time, through repetition, while our brains are developing and while we are literally dependent on others for survival. It can hide in us in a way that we are unaware we even have trauma to heal. When this is the case and we begin to
tune in, we see how it impacts how we see the world, how we behave in relationships, and many other unseen influences.
Here are some thoughts on trauma I appreciate:
Trauma = breakdown of connection and synchronicity between human beings.
-Bessel Van Der Kolk
Trauma is a speechless experience. Just one ball of emotion, there’s not thinking, when in your trauma. Finding language is helpful in organizing relationship to self. But not enough to heal the trauma. Language is important for defining the experience.
-Bessel Van Der Kolk
Trauma = overwhelm + alone.
– Julianne Taylor Shore
Silence turns trauma into shame.
– Aaron Parnas
What happens to us early in life establishes a certain kind of blueprint as to how the rest of life is going to get experienced. Psychoanalysts [therapists] listen for how the past might be hijacking their [client’s] experience right now.
– Orna Guralnik
There’s no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.
– Maya Angelou
Due to childhood trauma, we get emotionally stuck and we are still in need of basic parenting and processing what happened to us. Getting our adult online, and engaged and awakened, so we begin to reparent ourselves. And we do this to provide self-love and to prevent the inner child from running our lives.
-Patrick Teahan
The only way out is through. Go through it. Understand it. Make peace with it.
– Unknown
More love. Look at your shit. Feel better.
– Mandy Miller