Dealing With Trauma
Published September 29, 2011 | 
Trauma is any event that causes us to feel helpless and terrified. Trauma can be physical and/or emotional. Physical traumacauses an injury to the body like a broken bone. Emotional trauma is an injury to your thoughts and feelings. Sometimes a physical trauma causes emotional trauma; sometimes it doesn’t. For example, someone could be attacked and hurt physically but not emotionally. Or someone could be hurt emotionally but not physically.
Trauma can come from many sources:
Car accidents Death of loved ones
Witnessing or experiencing injuries War experiences
Natural Disasters Domestic violence
Abuse, rape or assault Gang violence
Illness and disease Any other emotional or physical pain
Trauma can be primary or secondary.
Primary trauma is when the traumatic event happens to you personally, like if you are in an accident.
Secondary trauma is when the traumatic event happens to someone else and it affects you too, like if you see someone in an accident.
Both kinds of traumatic events can cause emotional symptoms.
A symptom is something you can see or feel that tells you something may not be right with the person. It is the body’s way of telling us something needs to be taken care of.
There are three different kinds of symptoms:
1. Symptoms that intrude or interrupt daily events;
2. Symptoms that make us avoid certain places, people or things; and
3. Anxious Symptoms.
The important thing to remember is that these symptoms are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation!
1. Intruding Symptoms:
- Nightmares, Images of the traumatic event that invade the mind, Reliving the event, Seeing things or triggers that remind you of the bad thing that happened and being affected by it.
2. Avoiding Symptoms:
- Losing interests, Avoiding thoughts, people and situations, Feeling separate from people, Feeling numb,
3. Anxious symptoms:
- Feeling jumpy and on edge, Problems sleeping, Tense muscles, Hard to concentrate, Easily angered, Nervous
about people/places
There are four main parts that make up a person: Behavior, Feelings, Senses, and Thinking.
They must work together to have a whole person.
Often, when there is Emotional Trauma these four main parts become separated and do not work together.
With trauma the chemicals in the brain actually change, making us more sensitive to the world around us.
Trauma symptoms can be easily triggered by anything that reminds us of the traumatic event.
Some examples of things that trigger us may be— noises, smells, or contact with others; certain times of the day, certain activities; movies; feeling pressured; feeling unsafe; anniversaries —anything that reminds us of the trauma.
When we are triggered, an alarm sends messages through the body to go into a survival mode—fight or flight (run).
In survival mode, there are many changes in the body like the stomach shuts down, blood pressure goes up, and the lower or survival brain becomes more active. Our thinking brain doesn’t work as well when this happens.
How do I recover from Trauma?
There are 3 stages of healing:
1. Safety
2. Trauma Release
3. Re-Connection
1. Safety: Before the trauma can be released, we must be safe, both outside and inside.
A. Outside Safety -Are you safe from people who could hurt you?
Can you be assertive and protect yourself from harm?
B. Inside Safety
We can learn skills that help us control our feelings and actions so we don’t feel controlled by them.
We can also learn how to say what we feel so our feelings don’t get as bottled up.
2. Trauma Release: This means the emotional pain is released from the trauma memory. When this happens a lot of the trauma symptoms decrease.
There are many ways to release trauma. Here are some of the ways:
A. Writing in a Journal —This helps get the trauma on paper where you can better face and understand it.
B. Trauma-focused therapies that remove the pain from the memory. This is usually done by a trauma specialist.
C. Expressive therapies that make it possible for the trauma to be put in a form that allows us to let it go. These could include drawing, painting and other artistic creations.
3. Re-connection: When we have been through trauma we can become emotionally separated from people and the world around us. The final stage of healing is to re-connect with them.
Here are some ways to re-connect:
Sensing-Playing with Animals, Nature, Gardening, Candles, Music. . . Use all five senses.
Doing-Making or Fixing things with our hands, Sports, Activities with Others. . .
Friends-Accepting love and support from them helps us heal.
Exercise-Cleans out the chemicals made by Stress & adds positive chemicals that help us relax.
Reading-Books that capture our imagination or stimulate our feelings help us re-connect.
Listen-Follow your heart and do what helps you feel more whole.
As we heal and become whole our Behavior, Feelings, Senses and Thinking work together.
We feel connected inside and are able to respond to others and the world around us.
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