Trauma and the whole concept are sometimes so overwhelmingly controversial and usually misunderstood.
According to a peer-reviewed study on trauma and public mental health, approximately 70 000 adults from 24 countries with a range of economic statuses, from poor to high, participated in the Global Mental Health Surveys of adults.
According to the findings, 70.4% of the respondents had at least one form of traumatic event happen to them at some point in their lives. 14% had experienced intimate partner or sexual violence, 34.3% had accidents or injuries, and 22.9% experienced physical violence.
What exactly is trauma?
Trauma is defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as an experience that you perceive as detrimental or life-threatening. It has long-lasting, negative impacts on your mental, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual well-being.
In his book, ‘The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture’, Gabor Mate writes that every individual has their own interpretation of trauma. Often people say they are traumatised by simply going through a difficult experience.
Like going on a picnic and it starts to rain, he says you cannot brand that as a traumatic experience. That's just a disappointing experience.
“Not every painful or upsetting experience should be categorised as traumatic. Traumatic experiences are stressful, but not every stressful experience is traumatic,” he said during an episode of the everyday wellness with Cynthia Thurlow podcast.
He unpacks and explains trauma as an emotional response to a terrible event that results from exposure to an incident or series of events that are emotionally disturbing or life-threatening with lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning, mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being, such as an accident, rape, or natural disaster.
What are the mental and physical effects of trauma?
Trauma is not the experience of what happened to you externally but what happened to you as a result. The biggest impact of trauma, both from the physical and psychological standpoint, is the disconnect from yourself as a manner to cope.
This can result in physical illness or psychological illnesses like mental illness and behaviours, or have a negative effect on emotional, social, and physical well-being like having strained relationships or addictions.
Typical symptoms that follow trauma include:
Intrusive thoughts, such as nightmares or flashbacks, hyper-vigilance or being very aware of danger.
Mate claimed that, frequently, the only way for individuals to endure or get through harm, especially to children, is to disengage from their physical and emotional pain. In essence, trauma is really a loss of one’s self.
While an overview of trauma-informed care in behavioural health services states that trauma can be subtle, insidious, or outright destructive. It further states that a person's reaction to an event is influenced by a variety of factors, including the person's personality, the nature and specifics of the event or events, developmental processes, and the significance of the trauma.
Individuals respond differently to trauma. And addiction is the most common manifestation of behaviour. People in such situations often crave temporary relief and pleasure, but they suffer negative consequences as a result and cannot give up despite the consequences. This could be anything from eating, gambling, smoking, social media pornography, relationships, anything.
As reported by the Psych Hub, people who have gone through traumatic experiences are frequently hyper-vigilant, reclusive, and anxious. Further, how trauma occurs or is effectively addressed depends in part on how abundant or scarce social support is.
Although reactions range in severity, even the most acute responses are natural responses to manage trauma— they are not a sign of psychopathology.
How can you recover from trauma?
Different coping methods include being action-oriented, introspective, and either emotionally expressive or reserved.
Clinically, the type of response is less significant than the extent to which coping strategies successfully enable one to carry on with necessary tasks, control emotions, retain self-esteem, and maintain and enjoy interpersonal relationships, according to the entry in Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioural Health Services.
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