For so long, the term “trauma” was scary to the masses.
I remember my doc saying to me – “wow the trauma you’ve faced as a child over all those yrs was massive.” I thought she was being hyperbolic. Wasn’t trauma reserved for things like being at the scene of a bombing? Had I really been thru “trauma”?
The more I looked into it…& saw definitions like: “Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope”…it started to become clearer.
I began to understand why there were terms like “trauma informed care” or “trauma informed schools.”
I was then introduced to ACE scores. If you’re reading this, you’re a MH fan in some way, & so you’ve likely heard of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” & how they’re measured
Answering questions abt your childhood – any physical/emotional/verbal/sexual abuse that happened to you, divorce/separation of parents, domestic violence, alcoholism, “mental illness” in the fam, anyone who went to prison in the fam, etc. – gives you your ACE score. Basically “what you’ve been thru.”
But here’s the issue – if trauma is anything that overwhelms our ability to cope, SO much more than these “major events” alone…& more than your ACE score, can be seen as…the trauma that dysregulates the CNS.
You go on an airplane at 5yrs old & experience TERRIBLE turbulence. You’re afraid this big vehicle in the sky may crash to the ground…but no adult flinches. So…you hold onto that fear & think it’s not ok to ask abt it bc no one else seems concerned. Now, for the next 30yrs, your palms get sweaty & heart races any time you see a plane or have a trip upcoming.
Maybe you were in religious school & you had existential thoughts/questions abt the beginning of time – Adam/Eve or the Big Bang Theory. But what came before that? And before that? A lifetime of “whats” that cause tremendous panic, that can’t be explained, that we feel weird asking abt.
Those are just 2 examples, but there are thousands. And they all accumulate & shift us, over time, as they are unresolved & not worked on. We need to widen our understanding of what gravely impacts our MH.