Their bodies act as if they are in a constant state of alarm. They spend a lot of their energy scanning their environment for threat. They stop trusting and believing in others.Įven after the stressful or traumatic situation has passed, children’s brains and bodies continue to react as if the stress is continuing. They stop relying on relationships around them to protect them. They do anything to survive, not because they want to but because they need to. In these circumstances, children are overwhelmed with the internal reactions that race through their brains and bodies. In ‘Making Space for Learning’ (found here) we described how experiences of elevated, prolonged stress or trauma rock the very core of children and young people. It is more accurate to describe how individuals adapt in a protective way to the impact of trauma in their lives. If our brain and our body are overwhelmed, a host of subconscious responses are enacted as a direct consequence of that overwhelm. Since trauma is overwhelming by its nature, we cannot be resilient to it. This helps us to understand some of the differences in the way individuals respond to similar levels of trauma or similar traumatising events in different ways. That same capacity is influenced by hundreds of personal variables. Traumatic experiences overwhelm your capacity to cope. Trauma is the emotional, psychological and physiological residue left over from heightened stress that accompanies experiences of threat, violence, and life-challenging events. Your own capacity might be influenced by your family of origin, genetics and epigenetics, training, experience, support networks and much more.
Your ‘capacity to cope’ is interesting too… each individual will have a differing capacity to cope. If we all think back to psychology class at school we might remember learning about the stress bell curve, and the knowledge that some stress can be good for us, too much can be bad. Stress is something that challenges your capacity to cope. So… I thought this might be a good spot to have a conversation around what we mean when we use the word ‘trauma’ and how it is connected to ‘stress’ But I am still left with the sense that it is important that we all know what we are on about. Is it simple or complex? Developmental, relational or attachment oriented? Within the field of childhood trauma, we have a multitude of definitions and sub categories that can be quite confusing for practitioners.Įven in our own materials, we have noticed a shift in the way the Foundation describes trauma of late and I’m guessing this is due to the ever evolving nature of our field.
#Trauma meaning professional
Program Manager, Professional Community Engagementĭepending on who or what you read, trauma will be defined in a variety of ways. The emotional trauma caused her to be briefly hospitalized.This article was authored by Lauren Thomas,.Considering the possibility of emotional trauma resulting from such a programme is crucial.Interestingly, only one of the nine families with an affected child had an above average level of emotional trauma.So your Higher Self lovingly sends you an emotional trauma, in the hope that this might release the blocked-up emotions.The trauma of the tragedy is leading people to jump to a lot of conclusions that may prove unwarranted.
June never recovered from the trauma of her husband's violent death.The Fairley family considered that they dealt with their tragedy very well, because both children afterwards showed no signs of trauma.Eileen suffered a similarly induced trauma.Second, defendants might defend cases more vigorously, causing greater trauma to child witnesses, if substantial imprisonment is probable.Children experience trauma differently according to developmental level.Accounts abound of the distress, trauma and injury involved.Multiple-personality disorder is usually caused by early childhood trauma.A trauma such as a fire can upset a child for months.○○ noun 1 EXPERIENCE an unpleasant and upsetting experience that affects you for a long time traumas such as death or divorce 2 MP SHOCK a mental state of extreme shock caused by a very frightening or unpleasant experience trauma of the trauma of being a young refugee the emotional trauma of rape 3 technical MI an injury the hospital’s trauma unit Examples from the Corpus trauma.From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Related topics: Psychology, psychiatry, Illness & disability trauma trau‧ma / ˈtrɔːmə, ˈtraʊmə $ ˈtraʊmə, ˈtrɒː- /