The Top 5 Most Asked Questions About Trauma
How do I know if I have trauma? How do I heal from trauma? Is trauma only from my childhood?
We get dozens of questions a week about trauma and toxic stress, so today, I thought we would address the top 5 most asked questions we receive about trauma.
As always, you can take our quiz to determine if you are suffering from trauma or toxic stress symptoms here.
What exactly is trauma?
There are a lot of definitions floating around out there. Basically, trauma is having an experience that overwhelms your nervous system, but it's also having an experience or a set of experiences that alter your sense of the world and your sense of yourself. It has to do with feeling a sense of safety and has to do with feeling worthy of love or worthy of attention.
We've heard a lot of terms about trauma. There's childhood trauma, there's complex trauma, and there's PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
What are the differences between the different types of traumas?
Childhood Trauma refers to things that have happened in our childhood that are traumatic. It can be a one-time event, or it can be something that has shown up in the relationship with our caregivers. It affects the way that we form attachments and then informs the way we connect with others throughout the rest of our life.
Complex trauma occurs in childhood as well, and it references the idea that somebody has had a series of events happen over and over again or a set of ongoing events that happens, which doesn't allow the nervous system to recalibrate afterwards.
PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder and comes out of post-war research, initially pioneered by Dr. Bessel Vander Kolk.
Nothing bad happened to me in childhood. Can I still have trauma?
We encounter this question a lot in our program, The Whole Health Lab. Some of our members have talked about how they can't recall any significant trauma in childhood, but then when we start doing the work, they will start recognizing that a set of interchanges with a caregiver or a belief system that got establish because of the behavior of a caregiver has caused symptoms of trauma or toxic stress, such as altering the way they view themselves and the world. All of those things can contribute to a sense that the world is not a safe place, and “I am not okay,” or “I am not worthy, or lovable.”
As we continue to educate people, I think more and more people will realize that we've all had some kind of trauma.
How do I heal my trauma?
My sister and I have invested over two decades exploring this concept. When we're talking about healing from trauma, we MUST involve the body! There's been a lot of emphasis in past decades on learning to think about the event differently (cognitive behavioral therapy). And while that is part of healing, it does not allow the experience to be processed through the body, which is critical to healing. What we know now from research is that trauma healing requires your body, your emotions, and your thoughts. But we have to include the body.
What is the difference between toxic stress and trauma?
Largely, it's a difference in terms and research projects that examined different aspects of trauma. Dr. van der Kolk and his colleagues originally looked at post-war and focused largely on men’s experiences after war. This led to the term and DSM-5 diagnosis of “PTSD.” This work has now opened the door to the general study of trauma.
The Kaiser Permanente and NIH study of men and women who had experienced adverse childhood events, also known as the ACES research, coined the term “toxic stress” to describe the physical and biological consequences that are linked to unresolved childhood traumatic events, such as heart problems, stroke, and autoimmune disorders.
An easy way to think about it is they are often used somewhat interchangeably. Trauma causes toxic stress and without doing any sort of healing, the emotions and the residual effects of that trauma get stored in the body. This has the effect of causing overwhelming toxic stress on the body, which leads to heart problems, stroke, and autoimmune, etc.
How does trauma and toxic stress show up in relationships?
I love this question. When we've had traumatic experiences or we've had a situation that has contributed to toxic stress, we have less capacity to handle differences, handle misunderstandings, and engage in healthy connections. If we don't understand that, then we miss the fact that what has happened to us in the past, regardless of the exact event, has created a shift in our belief about ourselves or the world. This shift absolutely will show up in our relationships as maladaptive behaviors and difficulty with authentic connection.
Many times, depending on how our early childhood connections were formed, we end up accidentally repeating this dynamic without any conscious will or choice. People will oftentimes say, “I can't figure out why I keep ending up with these guys that behave a certain way, or I can't figure out why I'm ending up with women who show up this way.” And when we understand that is a subconscious process where our connection and our drive for connection and our drive for safety have been mixed up, then we don't actually have enough awareness to recognize what's happening and we have a really hard time breaking that cycle.
We love when you ask us questions on Instagram or submit them to us on our website. Please continue sending them in!
I would like to invite you to book a 15 minute call with me. Let’s chat! I want to get to know how you believe trauma is affecting you and your life and see what we can do to reduce the symptoms.
