If you’ve been alive in the U.S. during the last year, there is one word that you’ve probably heard more than you have at any other time in your life.
That word is trauma.
Whether referring to the health, psychological or social impact of the coronavirus, the implications of children being out of school for months at a time, economic devastation to millions, the spike in mental health crises or the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6th, trauma is being talked, written and heard about more than ever.
But what exactly is trauma and what can we do about it?
In this blog post, part of a 3-part series which follows up on Understanding the Mind and Brain (Part I) we’ll explore what trauma is, why animals don’t experience trauma, what happens in humans, and what makes the difference in our ability to cope with and heal from trauma.
What is trauma?
The word trauma comes from the Greek word for wound.
In many ways, our psychic wounds are similar to physical wounds, according to Dr. Gabor Mate, author of When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection.
When a physical wound is open, it is raw and extremely sensitive. If you touch it even slightly, you experience intense pain. We’ve all had this experience of being tender and exceptionally vulnerable in this way. Even the smallest contact with this wound is practically unbearable.
When a physical wound heals, scar tissue forms. That tissue is hard and rigid. It is inflexible. It allows nothing to permeate it.
Our psychic wounds are much the same.
When we experience trauma, we are extremely sensitive to even a feather’s touch of an experience like the one that hurt us. We cannot bear the agony of even the smallest bit of contact. We become easily triggered by anything even remotely related to the original incident.
In other places, we become rigid and hard.
We become inflexible, unreachable even. We let nothing new in, not even resources that might be helpful in some way. So firm and inflexible is our defensiveness.
In other words, in one way, our psyche lacks balance and moderation. Addicts all recognize this dynamic. And if we’ve experienced trauma, chances are that we are addicts. If addiction is defined as any behavior - shopping, scrolling social media, drinking, overworking, eating, whatever we do to temporarily numb the pain - that persists despite repeated adverse consequences, you can see how most of us are addicts of one sort or another.
And what is the remedy for addiction? It’s not abstinence. It’s connection.
Furthermore, trauma isn’t just what happens. It’s also the absence of what should have happened.
But there is a way in which our physical wounds and our psychic wounds differ broadly. Our psychic wounds can fully heal. They can be gently, patiently, compassionately healed.
The medicine? Connection.
Connection with the self and compassionate witnesses, nature, spirit, creativity, art and more.
It is the drive for connection that is the wisdom of trauma. The most important connection being the one with ourselves.
Trauma is also anything that overwhelms our capacity to cope and leaves us feeling helpless, hopeless or unable to respond. Importantly, trauma lies in the person, and not in the event. Its effects are cumulative.
There are several types of trauma.
Shock trauma is things like natural disasters, war zone experiences, man made disasters, sexual assaults, acts of terrorism, acts of violence (including school shootings), child abuse, death of loved ones, major car accidents, and physical trauma. We often hear these referred to as “Big T” traumas. This is what returning veterans have to contend with for years after returning from combat, for example.
There is also what is often called “little t” trauma which includes relational and developmental trauma, such as lack of parental attunement in childhood, betrayal, sexual harassment and divorce. This category also includes things like dog bites, dental procedures, routine surgeries, falls, minor car accidents.
Finally there is systemic trauma, such as racism, sexism, homelessness, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and other forms of oppression.
To reiterate, once again the effects of trauma are cumulative.
Let’s see how this shows up.
For example, when I witnessed a man being killed by a terrible car bombing when I worked in the Balkans the impact on me was significant. Most people would acknowledge this as a serious shock trauma. But what ultimately determined the impact of that shock trauma in my life for many years wasn’t the bombing. It was the cumulative effect of the developmental and systemic trauma I had experienced as a child that combined with the shock trauma which was so devastating.
Because in the car with me the night of that bombing in Belgrade was another diplomat, my friend Irini. While she was shaken up a bit by the event, she was able to get back to work and business as usual almost immediately. What had been a limit event for my nervous system, which had already been severely taxed in childhood, for her was just an unfortunate but ultimately minor event in her life.
This, too, is an extremely important point to keep in mind.
You might have had a breakup or divorce which devastated you for years, for example, while your best friend from college got divorced and was dating again in a matter of weeks. To reiterate, because trauma is in the person and not the event, however, we might see perhaps that your traumatic breakup took place shortly after your father died, your dog got sick and you lost your job, already placing enormous demands on your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual resources.
Why animals don’t experience trauma
To understand how trauma is experienced by humans, it’s helpful to look at what happens in animals in the wild. Despite going through the harrowing experiences we’ve all seen on the Nature channel, why is it that animals in the wild can be chased, hunted, attacked, and threatened without becoming traumatized?
My teacher Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing and author of Waking the Tiger, offers some important clues.
Imagine a small deer in a sunny meadow. The deer is peacefully munching on grass when it hears a noise. The deer instinctively lifts its head up, perks up its ears and orients to the sound. Its neck, face and eyes turn toward the disturbance while its heart begins to pump faster, flooding its arms and legs with blood preparing it to fight off a predator or flee if necessary. Its sympathetic (alert) nervous system has been activated. Based on millions of years of evolution that have honed its instincts, the animal quickly discerns that the sound was benign - maybe that of a twig snapping - and without missing a beat, goes back to grazing. Within moments, its heart rate goes back to normal and blood leaves the large muscle groups of the legs and arms and moves once again to the digestive system and central organs. The parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) system of the body is activated once again and all is well.
But let’s say the deer turns and hears that the noise in the bushes maybe isn’t benign but is presenting a threat.
What happens next?
In this case, once again the deer orients to the sound and its sympathetic nervous system becomes activated. It senses that maybe there is a threat. Immediately the deer’s instinctual response system assesses whether the sound is more like that of a small gopher, which it can easily fight off if necessary, or if it is a more fierce and faster predator, perhaps a cheetah. If it’s a smaller animal, the deer will fight it off and survive. It will use its life-saving capacity for healthy aggression and will actually feel more vital, energized and alive by protecting itself with the fight response.
Once again, no trauma results here.
But what if the deer senses that a cheetah caused the disturbance? An animal that is a natural predator and is both larger and faster than the small buck? What happens next?
In this case, the deer will instinctively begin to flee the scene and a chase sequence begins. The buck will run and run as quickly as it can to get away from the deadly and ferocious predator. It runs as fast as it can, but there is no way it can escape the feline. The cheetah gets closer and closer as they run, literally, for life or death across the savannah.
As the deer continues to lose its lead on the great cat, it becomes clear that its strategy of fleeing and running away will not save him. He cannot outrun the cheetah and knows that, unless something extraordinary happens, it will almost certainly soon feel the steely jaws of the cheetah ripping into its flesh.
Instinctively the deer once again changes its survival strategy. It could not fight the bigger cat and it can’t flee from it. So the deer takes one more shot at survival and employs its final strategy.
Let’s see what happens.
As the cheetah gets closer and closer, suddenly the deer stops running and abruptly falls over as if dead on the plain. The deer knows that freezing in this way (playing possum, as it were) offers two potential life-affirming benefits.
First, by freezing, the deer’s physiology shuts down and produces powerful pain-relieving hormones, literally the same substances as opioids. In the event the cheetah does catch up to him and its powerful jaws clamp the prey’s flesh, the pain will be dulled. Secondly, because cheetah and other predators aren’t scavengers and won’t eat animals they haven’t killed, the feline might see the deer lying down and think it’s dead. With some luck, what might even happen is that the cheetah sniffs around at the deer, determines it’s dead and decides to walk away and leave the scene. At that point, once the coast is clear, the deer will get up, unscathed from the encounter.
The most interesting thing you'll see though is what happens after the deer gets up.
Once it’s determined it is in a safe enough place, the deer will begin to shake, tremble and take some deep spontaneous breaths. Remember before the deer stopped racing it was going incredibly fast, perhaps speeds of more than 30 miles per hour. An enormous amount of life force energy was moving through its body, as if the gas pedal was to the metal. Going into a sudden freeze response in this way is akin to slamming on the breaks. Imagine how much energy would be spent in your car if both the gas and the brakes were slammed down at the same time. There would be a huge expenditure of energy, or revving, but zero forward or backward movement. By getting up and spontaneously shaking, trembling and breathing deeply, the deer’s nervous system is reset and it goes back to doing its deer-thing. No trauma results.
What happens in humans
Obviously in more ways than we commonly acknowledge, we are much like animals in the wild, especially when it comes to our survival strategies. You might recall using some or all of these strategies yourself.
So what is it that animals are doing differently that we aren’t? And why is that?
Like animals, we, too, have the natural impulse to discharge overwhelming experiences. But in humans, our egos often get in the way. We don’t want to look weird shaking in the middle of the grocery store when our kid is acting wild. We don’t want to allow ourselves to tremble and cry at work when we get a call that our mom’s diagnosis isn’t good. After all, we don’t want people to think we’re unprofessional or called hysterical, a judgment that often gets hurled at anyone expressing even the slightest hint of emotional energy in corporate work environments. And especially if we are from marginalized and oppressed communities that are already considered threatening in certain shame-based environments in dominant culture, we certainly don’t want to express ourselves for fear of further alienation, ridicule, job losses and even death.
So instead what do we do?
In what leading trauma-expert Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, calls “the post-alcoholic culture” of modern America, we drink, drug, eat, obsess, shop, overwork, have compulsive sex and do whatever else we can to cope with that unprocessed energy.
What makes the difference? Education and Resources.
What, then, is the path to preventing or healing from trauma? Is that even possible?
The answer is a resounding yes.
It is possible to prevent symptoms associated with trauma such as anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and others from developing by endeavoring to give ourselves the time, space and permission to discharge these powerful life force energies. Understanding how your body and trauma work is an incredibly important part of the process and one of the most important resources to have in your toolkit. Knowing this about how we work can help not only you, but your children, spouse, friends and colleagues to prevent post traumatic stress from happening. The cliche “knowledge is power” really does sum it up.
But that’s not all.
Our access to resources is one of the biggest determinants of whether and how we will experience trauma in our lives.
This is a key point to consider.
Resources are both internal and external. An internal resource might be knowing you have overcome similarly challenging experiences in your life and have survived. It could be your faith. It could be a yoga, prayer or meditation practice. It could be an image or memory of a loving pet or grandparent that loved you unconditionally.
Inner resources are incredibly powerful as they can never be taken from you. They are also widely available to marginalized and oppressed communities that may also be suffering from a lack of external resources.
For most people, external resources are also necessary to help us cope with and resolve trauma once difficult events occur. External resources could be compassionate friends, family, therapists, coaches, healers, nature, plant medicines, financial resources to help pay for therapy, a 12-step community, yoga class or teacher, a pet that gives you unconditional love and affection, art, music, even essential oils and certain smells. Almost anything life-affirming can be an external resource.
Trauma is a Fact of Life, But it Doesn’t Have to Be A Life Sentence
While trauma is a fact of life, as Dr. Levine says, it doesn't have to be a life sentence.
In an upcoming blog post, I’ll share with you specific simple practices you can do to begin the process of feeling more self-regulated and resilient to trauma.
Mastering resilience to stress, anxiety and trauma to have a more meaningful impact in the world is possible and more necessary than ever. Understanding how your body and trauma work can be hugely helpful on your path to doing so.
Want to create your most resilient and intentional year yet in 2021? Get the motivation, accountability and support you need. Check out the Mastering Resilience Small Group Coaching Program with social justice pricing. Applications are now being accepted.