Trauma is Not in the Event

For those of us on a healing journey, in recovery or more generally interested in personal development, we know that somehow “dealing with” our trauma is part of “doing the work”. It can be overwhelming at times to approach how to do that, and what it really means. The truth is that it’s different for everyone. I want to share some clarifications that may help along your journey.

No such thing as big or little “T” trauma

You’ll hear people making distinctions between “big T” or “little t” trauma in your travels. The “big T” are the events or occurrences that could have been life threatening or horrific in nature. And the “little t” are the ones that, well, would not be considered on the same level of intensity or severity. I posit that these distinctions are not helpful. They contain judgements and assessments that one is worse than the other, and I believe leads to people minimizing their “little t” experiences. 

Trauma as stored survival stress

Another confusion that we come up against is around the use of the word trauma. Generally it is used to describe an experience or event. An event can be described as “traumatic” however it is the symptoms that manifest as a result of the event(s) that is the trauma. I love the definition of trauma from one of my teachers, Irene Lyon, that trauma is stored survival stress which impacts the ability for our autonomic nervous system to function properly. Trauma is not in the event, it’s how it ends up in the system –– how the individual acts, responds, feels and processes the thing that happened, and then whether or not it gets stuck and embedded in the system. How each individual’s nervous system reacts to these event(s) is determined by how their nervous system was originally wired since even before birth.

“Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time” –– so says Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, a therapeutic modality that aims to treat trauma. When we are faced with a threat, which can be a threat to our physical, mental or emotional safety –– a threat which is completely subjective to our own experience –– and if we’re unable to complete the appropriate actions that our fight or flight system is programmed to do, “we fail to discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations.” This energy becomes fixed in specific patterns of readiness and the nervous system is stuck in an activated state. 

“Long after the actual event has passed, the brain may keep sending signals to the body to escape a threat that no longer exists.” Bessel van der Kolk

Trauma is cumulative

How each person feels about events that resulted in trauma is highly subjective, but there are some commonalities:

  • They feel powerless to control the circumstance or event
  • The circumstance/event is either frightening or perceived as a moral injury
  • The circumstance/event changes their beliefs about themselves, the world and their interactions with the world

Repeated exposure to these circumstances does add up. There’s a concept in the nervous system healing world called the “window of tolerance”. Each person’s “window” has a different capacity for handling stressful situations, and that capacity is largely based on prior exposure to stressful or traumatic experiences –– coupled with any effort to process, heal and release that stress. A large part of “doing the work” really comes down to widening the window of tolerance, therefore reducing our reactivity and being more in flow with the normal ups and downs of life.