On Trauma

There is a ton of amazing work on trauma already, and rather than try to stand on the shoulders of people like Bessel van der Kolk, Resmaa Menakem, and Gabor Maté and rehash it, I'm going to go in a different direction. If you want to do a deep dive on trauma, check the reading list on this site, there is enough to get you started.

Instead, I am going to offer my own user-friendly definition of trauma, which I have cobbled together from many hours exploring the topic in both an academic and experiential way:

Trauma is any negative experience that leaves a permanent mark on your psyche.

That is it. That's the whole story of what trauma actually is, but it's worth expanding on because as a society we have a very narrow concept of what traumatic events look like.

There are two primary categories of experience that can cause us trauma. The first is well known, and the second…not so much.

The first:

Trauma happens when something terrible happens to us that shouldn't have happened.

The second:

Trauma also happens when something we needed to happen, never happened.

So violence can be trauma. Neglect can be trauma. Abandonment can be trauma.

We understand this pretty well as a society.

But also:

Your parent's love was conditional.

Being told your needs are too much.

Comfort that never arrived.

Having to regulate your parent's anger.

These things are also trauma.

If any of this resonated with you, therapy is an excellent place to safely start exploring this.