What is Trauma?
Trauma isn’t just one thing, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. Depending on the lens we use, trauma can be understood in slightly different but complementary ways. Below are a few key perspectives that help explain trauma and how it impacts our mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Psychological Perspective
From a psychological viewpoint, trauma is an emotional and cognitive response to an overwhelming event or series of events that exceeds a person’s ability to cope. When something feels life-threatening — physically or emotionally — and we don’t have the tools or support to process it, it can leave us feeling helpless, fearful, and fragmented.
Psychological trauma can show up as:
Panic attacks, flashbacks, or nightmares
Intrusive thoughts or obsessive worry
Avoidance of people, places, or emotions
Feeling emotionally out of control or chronically numb
Importantly, trauma is subjective — what overwhelms one person might not affect another the same way. The impact often depends on our history, support system, and internal resources at the time of the event.
Somatic (Body-Based) Perspective
In somatic therapies like Somatic Experiencing, trauma is understood as a physiological response that remains incomplete. When a threat occurs and we aren’t able to fight, flee, or seek help, our bodies may move into a freeze or collapse state to survive.
If that survival energy isn’t discharged (through movement, breath, or emotional release), it gets "stuck" in the nervous system. We may walk through life carrying tension, chronic pain, or numbness without realizing it’s rooted in a past experience that our body never got to resolve.
Somatic symptoms of trauma may include:
Chronic tightness, fatigue, or restlessness
Digestive issues or shallow breathing
Disconnection from body sensations
Feeling constantly "on edge" or suddenly frozen
Somatic healing focuses not on retelling the story, but on helping the body complete what it never got to finish — gradually restoring a sense of regulation, safety, and internal flow.
Neurological Perspective
From a neuroscience lens, trauma reshapes the way our brain and nervous system function. When the brain perceives a threat, it activates the amygdala (our internal alarm system), suppresses the prefrontal cortex (our logical thinking), and alters the hippocampus (which manages memory and time perception).
This means trauma can make the past feel like it’s still happening now. Our nervous system keeps sounding the alarm, even in objectively safe moments.
Neurologically, trauma may look like:
Difficulty focusing or making decisions
Flashbacks, time distortion, or memory gaps
Reacting intensely to small triggers
Trouble distinguishing present from past
Healing from this perspective involves helping the brain relearn safety through practices that bring together body awareness, emotional regulation, and relationship.
Attachment & Developmental Perspective
From an attachment standpoint, trauma doesn’t just come from what happened — it also comes from what was missing. Developmental trauma refers to chronic misattunement, neglect, or inconsistency in childhood, particularly when primary caregivers were unable to provide safety, soothing, or emotional presence.
This form of trauma doesn’t always register as a “big event,” but it can profoundly shape how we view ourselves, others, and relationships. It often results in survival patterns like people-pleasing, avoidance, hyper-independence, or fear of closeness.
Signs of attachment-related trauma may include:
Chronic self-doubt or feeling unworthy of love
Difficulty trusting others or setting boundaries
Anxious or avoidant patterns in relationships
A deep fear of rejection or abandonment
Therapeutic work here often focuses on creating a new relational experience, one where the nervous system learns it’s safe to be seen, supported, and emotionally connected.
Evolutionary Perspective
From an evolutionary lens, trauma is the nervous system’s adaptive response to perceived danger. Our survival depends on detecting and responding to threats, which is why trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn exist in the first place.
In today’s world, many of our "threats" aren’t physical predators — they’re emotional, social, or systemic. But our nervous system responds as if they’re just as dangerous. When those survival states become chronic, they take a toll on our physical health, emotional well-being, and relationships.
From this lens, trauma is:
An adaptive process, not a pathology
A signal that the body is still protecting itself
Something that can be renegotiated through a slow, safe connection
Healing from trauma in this view is about restoring flexibility — helping the nervous system return to flow, rather than staying stuck in a single survival mode.
Putting It All Together
Across all these perspectives, one thing remains clear: trauma is not a personal weakness; it’s an adaptive response to overwhelming experience. And with the right support, your body and nervous system can begin to unwind these patterns and move toward healing, safety, and connection.
Different Types of Trauma
Trauma is often misunderstood as something that only happens during extreme or life-threatening events, but it’s more nuanced than that. Trauma isn’t just about what happened — it’s about how it was experienced, whether your system felt overwhelmed, and if you had the support and safety you needed at the time.
Trauma can be loud or silent. Obvious or invisible. Big, dramatic events or slow, subtle erosions of safety over time. Each person’s response is valid, and no form of trauma is “too small” to matter.
Here are some of the main types of trauma, each with unique impacts on the mind, body, and nervous system:
Acute Trauma
This refers to a single overwhelming event that leaves the nervous system flooded, shocked, or disoriented. Examples include a car accident, physical assault, sudden loss, natural disaster, or medical emergency.
After an acute trauma, people may experience flashbacks, panic, hypervigilance, or difficulty feeling safe even in familiar environments. The body may stay on high alert or struggle to relax, long after the danger has passed.
Chronic Trauma
Chronic trauma results from repeated or prolonged exposure to distress, especially when there is no clear escape or support. This might involve ongoing emotional abuse, neglect, domestic violence, bullying, or experiences of systemic oppression or racism.
Over time, chronic trauma can erode a person’s sense of worth, safety, and trust. It often leads to long-standing patterns of anxiety, disconnection, or hyper-independence, as the nervous system learns to brace for threat as a baseline.
Developmental Trauma
Developmental trauma occurs during the early years of life, when a child’s nervous system and identity are still forming. It often stems from relational wounding: emotional neglect, misattunement, abandonment, inconsistency, or lack of secure attachment.
Even without obvious abuse, a child who doesn’t feel seen, soothed, or safe can grow up feeling fundamentally unsafe in their body or relationships. This type of trauma can deeply impact emotional regulation, sense of self, and one’s ability to connect with others in adulthood.
Complex Trauma
Complex trauma involves multiple, layered, and often relational traumas over time, especially in environments where betrayal, powerlessness, or lack of escape are central. Examples include growing up in a household with emotional volatility, long-term abuse, or multiple losses.
This type of trauma often leaves a person with a deep sense of distrust, confusion about their identity, difficulty feeling safe in connection, and a nervous system that is constantly toggling between hyperarousal and collapse.
Vicarious or Secondary Trauma
You don’t have to experience trauma directly to be affected by it. Vicarious trauma occurs when you are repeatedly exposed to the pain or trauma of others, common among therapists, nurses, doctors, first responders, caregivers, and even those supporting loved ones through hardship.
Over time, witnessing others’ suffering can lead to emotional exhaustion, numbness, hopelessness, or symptoms that mirror trauma itself. Without adequate support and boundaries, vicarious trauma can quietly build up and affect your capacity to stay present or regulated.
A Note on Trauma That Doesn’t “Look Like Trauma”
Some trauma doesn’t come from chaos, it comes from silence, absence, or emotional invisibility. Not being comforted when you were scared. Being told you were “too much” or “not enough.” Being praised for perfection, but never held for your mess. These experiences matter too.
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Understanding the many faces of trauma is often the first step in healing. It helps to validate what your body and emotions already know: something was hard and deserves care. Schedule a Consultation or Contact Me for more information.