Trauma can be defined as any occurrence(s) that exceeds a systems capacity to cope – physiologically, psychologically, or relationally – and has not been met with the support it needs to be integrated or re-integrated within the system.
We use the the term system as trauma may be individual, familial, intergenerational, cultural, or collective.
Trauma may appear as any form of overwhelm and/or confusion within our felt sense of Self, Other, and the World. This overwhelm and confusion ultimately reflects the impact trauma has on our innate human assumption that the World is a safe, just, predictable place, and/or that we can trust Others to protect us when it is not.
When we speak to trauma, we speak to the reality that there is no longer a felt a sense of safety or security within our very existence.
Incidents may be simple, complex, or within the context of development. However, as above mentioned may simply be best understood as any experience that leaves us disorientated, disconnected, dysregulated, and in a state of dissonance – within and between Self, Other(s), and the World.
Incident(s) of trauma may include:
- Overt or covert abuse & neglect,
- Violence including physical assault or sexual assault,
- Moral or spiritual exploitation,
- Relational betrayal, or
- Adverse childhood experiences.
Trauma is often identified within the medical field as:
- Complex Trauma (C-PTSD),
- Acute Trauma (PTSD),
- Attachment / Developmental Trauma,
- Intergenerational / Collective / Historical Trauma, or
- Vicarious or Secondary Trauma.
As Gabor Mate (2022) eloquently articulates:
Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside of you… It is the constellation of hardships, composed of the wound itself and the residual burdens that our woundedness imposes on our sense of Self: the unresolved emotions that visit upon us; the coping dynamics they dictate; the scripts we unwittingly but inexorably live out; and, not least, the toll these take on our bodies.
