Skip to main content

What Is Trauma?

Trauma is often misunderstood. Many people think of trauma only as major catastrophic events: war, serious accidents, assault. While these certainly can cause trauma, this narrow definition misses much of what trauma actually is.

A Broader Definition​

Trauma is the lasting impact on your nervous system and psyche of experiences that overwhelmed your capacity to cope. Trauma occurs when:

  • Something happens that is too much, too fast, or too intense for your system to process
  • Your survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, collapse) are activated but cannot complete
  • You are left in a state of ongoing nervous system dysregulation
  • The experience remains "undigested" in your body and nervous system

Key point: Trauma is not defined by the event itself, but by the impact on your system. The same event might be traumatic for one person and not for another, depending on many factors including resilience, support, previous experiences, and nervous system capacity.

Types of Trauma​

Acute Trauma (Single-Incident Trauma)​

Trauma resulting from a single distressing event, such as a car accident, natural disaster, single assault, medical emergency, or sudden loss.

Characteristics: Discrete beginning and end; often has clear memory of the event; symptoms may emerge immediately or be delayed; can often be processed relatively directly with appropriate support.

Chronic Trauma (Repeated Trauma)​

Trauma from repeated or prolonged exposure to distressing events, such as ongoing domestic violence, war or conflict zone living, repeated medical procedures, bullying over extended period, or chronic neglect.

Characteristics: Accumulates over time; may create pervasive nervous system changes; can lead to expectation of future threat; often requires extended healing process.

Complex Trauma (Developmental Trauma)​

Trauma that occurs during critical developmental periods, particularly childhood, often in relationships with caregivers. Examples include childhood abuse (physical, sexual, emotional), neglect, growing up with severely mentally ill or addicted caregivers, witnessing domestic violence, or repeated abandonments.

Characteristics: Affects core sense of self and relationships; shapes how the nervous system develops; may not have discrete traumatic memories; often involves both what happened (abuse) and what didn't happen (lack of attunement); typically requires long-term, relationship-based healing.

When complex trauma leads to specific symptom patterns, it may be diagnosed as Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), which includes not only PTSD symptoms but also difficulties with emotion regulation, self-concept, and relationships.

Collective and Historical Trauma​

Trauma experienced by groups, communities, or across generations, such as genocide, slavery and its aftermath, colonisation, war affecting entire populations, or natural disasters affecting communities.

Intergenerational transmission: Trauma can be passed through generations via parenting patterns, family beliefs, and possibly epigenetic mechanisms. Children of trauma survivors may carry impacts even without direct exposure.

Vicarious or Secondary Trauma​

Trauma resulting from witnessing or learning about traumatic events happening to others. This affects healthcare workers, first responders, therapists working with trauma, journalists covering traumatic events, and family members of trauma survivors.

Medical Trauma​

Trauma resulting from medical experiences such as painful or frightening procedures (especially in childhood), life-threatening illness, surgery (especially emergency surgery), birth trauma, or being restrained for medical procedures.

Medical settings often involve loss of control, pain without ability to escape, being held down (activating survival responses), and violation of body boundaries. These can all create trauma, even when medically necessary.

"Small-t" vs. "Big-T" Trauma​

Some practitioners distinguish between:

Big-T trauma: Events that most people would recognise as traumatic (assault, accidents, etc.)

Small-t trauma: Events that might not be recognised as traumatic but still overwhelm capacity: humiliation experiences, ruptures in important relationships, being chronically misunderstood or unseen, microaggressions and discrimination, or seemingly minor but repeated stressors.

Both matter: Small-t traumas, especially when repeated, can have significant impacts. The nervous system doesn't distinguish based on whether others would validate the experience as traumatic.