the psychology of trauma
what is trauma?
Many people view trauma as sudden, shocking experiences such as car accidents, burglaries, sexual assault, abortions, the sudden loss of a loved one, physical abuse, etc. Sudden-shock trauma is referred to as acute trauma. However, research has found that trauma can result from any experience where a person feels a sense of powerlessness to act in the face of a threatening or overwhelming situation. This means that trauma can also result from more subtle frequent stressful situations that cause us to feel overwhelmed and/or powerless.
what happens when we experience a traumatic situation?
When we experience a threatening situation, an automatic fight-or-flight response is activated in order to prepare our body for emergency response. If we manage to successfully deal with the difficult event, the fight or flight response is deactivated and the memory regarding the event is stored in long-term memory stores. When information is stored in long term memory, we can remember the event but are not triggered emotionally. However, if we experience a sense of powerlessness in the face of a challenging situation, our bodily system is unable to complete the fight-or-flight response and the memory remains trapped in unconscious memory stores. This means that the fight- or-flight response that is still on-hold then becomes part of our unconscious material. This creates an unconscious state of hyper-vigilance. As we continue through life this unconscious trauma is triggered by external reminders that are often out of our awareness, which leads to chronic emotional, behavioural and psychological symptoms.
Developmental (Childhood) trauma
When the overwhelming situation happened during our youth we speak of developmental trauma, which would include things such as birth trauma, incubator-related experiences, divorce, poor parenting, conflict, conditional love and acceptance, neglect, abandonment, sexual molestation, intimidation by school peers or authority figures, or any uncomfortable incidents experienced “at the expense of self”.
Acute trauma & PTSD
Trauma experienced during adulthood, such as armed robberies, accidents, loss of loved ones, severe relational problems, etc, is referred to as acute or Post Traumatic Stress Dirsorder (PTSD). This is similar to the effects of developmental trauma in that the experience could not complete its natural fight or flight response, leaving us with problems in general flow and connecting comfortably to life (living our sweet spot).
what happens to incomplete trauma?
Unresolved trauma can lead to chronic emotional discomfort (anxiety, depression, extreme stress, angry outbursts, panic attacks etc), behavioural problems and/or physical discomfort (migraine, ulcers, chronic fatigue, immunological sensitivity, burnout and a variety of other physical dis-eases).
There is also the tendency to repeat our childhood relationship trauma by choosing particular partners with whom we play out our early relationship dynamics and eventually end up with the exact feelings that we have not resolved during childhood. We usually keep on repeating this tendency until such time that we resolve our internal trauma.
healing unresolved trauma & symptoms
The focus during the psychotherapy that I practice is to dislodge the internal stuck trauma material and facilitate its natural progression so that it can complete the initial fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous response) that was inhibited from completing during the original trauma event. Once the internal trauma and the associated stuck fight-or-flight responses complete successfully, the trauma memory is able to store correctly and the associated trauma symptoms and discomfort cease to exist. These chronic symptoms are replaced by a renewed sense of meaning, connection and wholeness.
For further information on this form of psychotherapy please click on the following link: www.ship.org.za