If you’ve been on the internet at all or have talked to anyone who’s into wellness and unpacking their ish, you’ve probably come across the concept of trauma many a time. Whether it’s through comments about trauma dumping, trauma stored in the hips, or trauma as the origin story of why they act like that, the term gets thrown around a lot. But you’re forgiven if you don’t fully understand what it all means, if trauma is an actual diagnosis, or if any awful moments from your past mean you’re clinically scarred for life.
As a licensed mental health counselor who wrote a whole book about the topic, let me give you a crash course on trauma, how to know if you’ve experienced it, and how to start working through your past.
What counts as trauma?
What causes trauma and how it presents itself can look and feel different for everyone. I always like to start by reminding people that these wounds are deeply personal and contextual; two people can survive the same thing and have wildly different psychological experiences and outcomes. Trauma is less about specific incidents that you experience or witness and more about how your mind and body respond to them.
It’s possible you’ve heard colloquial terms like “Big T trauma” and “little t trauma,” implying that some traumas should be taken more seriously than others, but that’s not quite it. Really, trauma is trauma. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt and it doesn’t matter if the thing that hurt you was “big” or “small.”
In fact, being exposed to any distressing conditions that exceed our ability to cope can have emotional repercussions. I often view trauma as getting “too much, too soon” (like surviving a jarring car accident) or “too little, too late” (like being neglected as a kid). If you want an official definition, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says, “Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
Trauma also helps explain how your past wounds color how you show up and perceive life today. That can look like experiencing heightened anxiety or fear, having flashbacks, struggling to connect with others, displaying anger and aggression, or feeling disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, identity, and/or memory.
That experience can be true whether we know what caused the trauma or not. While we need more research to explain the phenomena, it’s also widely accepted that trauma can be passed down through generations and tear through communities—a concept known as intergenerational trauma. For instance, if your parents or ancestors endured something horrific (like slavery or genocide) and developed unhealthy coping mechanisms, like substance misuse or living in survival mode, that can impact how they raise you and how you live your life. So, yeah, healing from these emotional burdens can help you and so many other people too.
Can trauma be diagnosed?
While there's no specific diagnostic criteria for "trauma" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5-TR), there’s an entire section dedicated to “trauma- and stressor-related disorders,” which are conditions that require trauma or a stressful situation to be present to meet a diagnosis. One of the most well-known diagnoses in that group is, of course, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which someone over six years old has been exposed to death, threatened death, serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence. Among other criteria, this diagnosis also requires you to continually re-experience the traumatic event in at least one way, via things like upsetting memories, nightmares, or flashbacks.
Another diagnosis stemming from trauma is complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). Though it’s not recognized in the DSM-5-TR, it is recognized in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Basically, that condition stems from trauma that goes on for a long time and feels inescapable, like living in a dangerous neighborhood. For people with C-PTSD, they can deal with things like low self-worth, trouble managing their emotions, and feeling defeated.
There are plenty of others—again, the DSM-5-TR has a whole section full of them—but the thing they all have in common is that traumatic experiences from the past impact the way people function in their current day-to-day lives.
Do I have trauma, and how do I get help?
If you’re currently wondering if your pain counts as trauma, I’d invite you to mull over these questions:
- Is there any past moment (or moments) that might still negatively affect me?
- Does it impair my ability to connect with others or do daily tasks?
- Does it impact how I see myself?
If you answered “yes” to any of those, you might have some unresolved pain and could benefit from speaking to a mental health professional.
Still not sure about an experience’s effect on you? That’s more than understandable, so here are some signs you may be dealing with trauma and hints that you should reach out to a mental health pro for more help:
- Recurring nightmares related to the event(s)
- Unsettling memories of situations you previously forgot about
- Constantly feeling on guard and on the lookout
- Sudden withdrawal from friends and family
- Persistent irritability
- Constant sadness, anger, or anxiety
- Trouble remembering things or having or gaps in your memory
- Fixation on past painful memories
- Self-destructive behaviors, like substance misuse, risky sexual behavior, and self-harm
- Exaggerated reflexes when startled
- A steady stream of negative thoughts about yourself
You could also take the adverse childhood experiences assessment, which poses questions like, “Did anyone in your household ever commit a serious crime?” and “Did you ever run away from home for more than one day?” Reading through this can give you a sense of what types of events might’ve led to your trauma, but it’s not a sub for a therapist. An expert who specializes in trauma-informed care can give you an assessment, and, if necessary, a treatment plan and tools to help you identify, process, and heal from trauma’s effect on you.
In addition to trauma-informed talk therapy, there are plenty of therapeutic approaches that can help you unpack and learn to cope with whatever happened to you. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), for instance, is a type of trauma therapy where an expert has a client move their eyes in a certain way to help them deal with unpleasant memories and confront unhelpful thought patterns. Brainspotting is another option, helping you tap into your long-term memory and process negative incidents.
Other methods that you can try with a therapist include neurofeedback (using brain wave measurements to help you cope with triggers), psychodrama (acting out past events to reflect on your feelings and help you feel more empowered today), and experiential modalities (think: activity-based therapy, like art therapy or animal care, that helps you increase your daily functioning and ability to deal with unpleasant memories).
Ultimately, so many of us have experienced trauma, and it can be difficult to know how it impacts you. But when you do the work to dig into your mental health and, ideally, speak with a professional that you can lean on, you can find the healing you deserve.
Wondermind does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a replacement for medical advice. Always consult a qualified health or mental health professional with any questions or concerns about your mental health.
