Definition of Trauma
“Trauma is when we have encountered an out of control, frightening experience that has disconnected us from all sense of resourcefulness or safety or coping or love”.
– Tara Brach, 2011
A traumatic event can involve a single experience, or enduring repeated events, that completely overwhelm the individual’s ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved in that experience.
Traumatizing events can take a serious emotional toll on those involved, even if the event did not cause physical damage. This can have a profound impact on the individual’s identity, resulting in negative effects in mind, body, soul and spirit.
Components
Regardless of its source, trauma contains three common elements:
- It was unexpected.
- The person was unprepared.
- There was nothing the person could do to stop it from
happening.
Simply put, traumatic events are beyond a person’s control.
It is not the event that determines whether something is traumatic to someone, but the individual’s experience of the event and the meaning they make of it.
Next: Prevalence of Trauma >