Trauma: What is it and where does it come from?
When thinking about the difficulties and struggles of life in your younger years, do you often hear yourself say, “It wasn’t that bad” or “Others had it a lot worse?” The truth is many who are experiencing the effects of addiction or other mental health challenges are dealing with the effects of trauma. Dr. Patrick Carnes, a widely-recognized authority on addiction treatment, reminds us, “Children who are neglected conclude they are not valuable. Abuse and neglect deepen their distrust of others and further distort reality… Children in such situations find ways to deaden the anxiety they inevitably feel, and they do so compulsively.”1 These survival patterns, then, continue into adulthood and begin to negatively impact us.
SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, defines trauma as, “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing.” Notice that the emphasis here is on the experience of the event and the effects of the event more so than the event itself.
One of my teachers Joshua Sylvae, Ph.D., explains that trauma can come from one or more of the following:
Extreme events: car accidents, surgeries, physical/sexual assault or abuse, etc.
Accumulated stress (chronic stress): ongoing accumulation of unprocessed events causes our “reservoir” to overflow.
Developmental trauma: experiences in childhood that result from less than functional parenting, i.e. more “subtle” forms of trauma, such as loss or absence (due to addiction) of a caregiver, betrayal by a caregiver, or neglect.
Social/historical trauma: being born into a body laden with stereotypes, i.e. skin color, gender, or sexual orientation.
Intergenerational trauma: holding something incomplete that has been passed on by one’s forebearers.
As you can see, trauma is complex and unique to each individual. The important piece here is to become aware of the impact trauma may have in your life. Are there habits or patterns that you just can’t seem to shake? Do relationship struggles continually revisit you? If you’re ready to consider the possibility of change, I’d love to explore this with you. The work of change is difficult, and you need an ally. Together we can discover the healing you’ve been looking for.
“If you are experiencing strange symptoms that no one seems to be able to explain, they could be arising from a traumatic reaction to a past event that you may not even remember. You are not alone. You are not crazy. There is a rational explanation for what is happening to you. You have not been irreversibly damaged, and it is possible to diminish or even eliminate your symptoms.” - Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger
Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., Facing the Shadow: Starting Sexual and Relationship Recovery (Gentle Path Press, 2015)
—Brian Klink