Psychological Trauma
When Bridges to Recovery refers to trauma in everyday life we usually mean a highly stressful event. Traumatic events overwhelm a person's ability to cope with them. However, trauma and traumatic events do not affect everyone in the same way. A highly stressful event may prove to be very traumatic to one person but lead to adaptation in another. It is a person's subjective experience that determines whether an event is traumatic or not.
A traumatic situation or event creates psychological trauma when it overwhelms the person's coping mechanisms and can leave him or her with feelings of fear of annihilation, psychosis, or even death. The person feels emotionally, cognitively, and physically overwhelmed. Common circumstances that can lead to trauma include major violations of trust, entrapment, helplessness, pain, confusion, and loss.
However, trauma can be caused by any number of situations or events. It may be a response to an accident, natural disaster (such as an earthquake or hurricane), crime, surgery, or death. It can also be caused by repetitive or chronic experiences such as childhood physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse, neglect, deprivation, forced captivity, torture, or battering relationships.
Dr. Jon Allen of the Menninger Clinic describes trauma as follows:
"It is the subjective experience of the objective events that constitutes the trauma.... The more you believe you are endangered, the more traumatized you will be... Psychologically, the bottom line of trauma is overwhelming emotion and a feeling of utter helplessness. There may or may not be bodily injury, but psychological trauma is coupled with physiological upheaval that plays a leading role in the long-range effects" (p.14).
The experience of the survivor is paramount in defining trauma. Two people can undergo the same horrific event, with one traumatized and the other relatively unscathed. The meaning of the event will likely differ depending upon the history of the person. Furthermore, the specific aspects of an event will be experienced differently from one person to the next. Therefore, it is impossible to predict or provide formulas for what is or is not traumatic or how it should be treated. Trauma is experiential and subjective.
Traumatic experiences that result in the most serious mental health problems are prolonged and repeated, sometimes extending over years of one's life. Furthermore, prolonged stressors that are deliberately inflicted by other people (and particularly people upon whom the victim is dependent) create the most serious risks of psychological problems. Examples of such experiences may include child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, criminal violence, human rights abuses (such as torture, kidnapping), and war/political violence.
What are the lasting effects of trauma?
Often, survivors of trauma experience many different kinds of problems. These can include substance dependence and abuse, personality disorders, depression, anxiety, dissociative disorders and eating disorders.