Understanding Trauma & Turning Pain Into Power

I have been working with trauma survivors for the last eight years. As a trauma therapist, I assess my clients through a trauma informed lens; I assume that they have experienced some form of trauma with the intention of not triggering them indirectly. For this reason, all of my clients have a customized treatment plan.

Trauma is a psychological and emotional response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event or experience. It can be caused by a wide range of events, including natural disasters, physical or sexual assault, domestic violence, accidents, or the death of a loved one. Traumatic experiences can be acute (a single event) or chronic (ongoing experiences such as abuse or neglect). Trauma is not limited to a solely individual experience. People can share in trauma through intergenerational experiences as well as through systemic trauma, which is caused by structural and institutional factors such as racism, sexism, and poverty.

The impact of trauma includes emotional, physical, and behavioral responses. Anxiety, depression, dissociation, hyperarousal, hypervigilance, flashbacks, nightmares, substance abuse, eating disorders, and paranoia are some of the most symptoms of trauma. Some symptoms of trauma, such as nightmares, may be inconsistent and occur in irregular or unpredictable patterns. Other symptoms, however, can be delayed. Flashbacks can occur unexpectedly and may be triggered months or years after the traumatic event itself.

When we experience a trauma, our body prepares to respond to danger in one of several ways: fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Fight is the aggressive way our body responds to trauma. A tight jaw, grinding your teeth, the urge to push someone, crying in anger, and a burning sensation in your stomach typically accompany the fight response to trauma. The inverse of the fight response, the flight response urges the body to run from the danger. While an individual who has a flight response to trauma may not actually run away from the traumatic event, they may respond to the trauma by exercising excessively, feeling tense, fidgety, restless, or having numb sensation permeate through the body. In contrast to the fight and flight responses, the freeze response is a passive reaction to trauma, typically characterized by the inability to speak or run away from danger. Individuals who respond to trauma in this way may look stiff, experience a heavy sensation in their body, feel cold and numb, have a sense of dread, or have a racing heart. Finally, the fawn response is one of the more confusing responses; symptoms include extreme guilt and a strong desire to soothe one’s abuser. By trying to please their abuser, an individual who fawns seeks to totally avoid the conflict. Typically learned as a result of childhood trauma, symptoms of the fawn response include becoming highly agreeable to the person who is abusing you as a way to avoid the conflict or danger in general.

Trauma is fluid; two people can experience the exact same distressing event, and their bodies can be impacted differently. Although one individual may not find an experience traumatic, that does not invalidate another individual finding that same event traumatizing. You are the only person who gets to decide if an event is traumatizing.

A major concept in trauma treatment is the importance of assessing your own physical and internal safety within your body. You do this by completing a body scan, observing how each part of your body feels and noticing any sensations, positive or negative, that you may be experiencing. By connecting with our body and labeling the sensations, we can ground ourselves in concrete terminology and begin to feel a sense of control over our feelings. Our bodies internalize the trauma, which is why incorporating mindful attention to our body is a critical component of trauma therapy.

Acknowledging the pain can be an empowering aspect of the healing process.

I believe that we are all capable of working through trauma. We are all born with a natural resilience - we just need to harness the belief that healing is possible and not lose hope. With hope, healing is possible. I encourage you to find a trauma therapist so you may begin your journey of working through your trauma, healing, and living the life you deserve.