Trauma is caused by events that overwhelm your ability to cope, involving actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, including one-time incidents like accidents, assaults, disasters, or prolonged stress from abuse, war, neglect, or living in unstable environments, leading to intense fear, helplessness, and lasting distress. It can be experienced directly or by witnessing such events happen to others.
A trigger is a situation, memory, object, location, or person that prompts a strong or unexpected emotional reaction or causes someone to experience memories of previous trauma. Anything can be a trauma trigger—a specific sound, song, clothing item, smell, or place can cause a reaction.
The most common events that can lead to PTSD include:
Feeling like the trauma is happening again (flashbacks)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can develop after a very stressful, frightening or distressing event, or after a prolonged traumatic experience.
It won't rid you of PTSD and your fears, but let your tears flow and you'll maybe feel a little better afterwards. 'Crying for long periods of time releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain.
The "8 childhood traumas" often refer to common Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) from the CDC, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, household substance abuse, a household member with mental illness, and parental separation/divorce, though these can be expanded to include things like violence, discrimination, or sudden loss, which profoundly impact a child's development and well-being. These experiences, especially repeated ones (complex trauma), disrupt a child's sense of safety, leading to issues with trust, emotional regulation, and relationships, often manifesting as anxiety, depression, or attachment problems in adulthood.
A trauma trigger is a stimulus that causes memories or reactions to severe or sustained trauma. For example: You get a tight feeling in your chest every time you drive past the place where you had a car accident. Your palms sweat and your cheeks flush when a certain person touches you.
Relationships can trigger trauma due to increased emotional intimacy, unresolved past experiences, and sometimes the reenactment of past traumas. As relationships deepen, vulnerability can bring past traumas to the surface and impact interactions with your partner.
These 4 Cs are: Calm, Contain, Care, and Cope 2 Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care Page 10 34 (Table 2.3). These 4Cs emphasize key concepts in trauma-informed care and can serve as touchstones to guide immediate and sustained behavior change.
Individuals with complex PTSD may experience a range of emotional symptoms, including intense fear, shame, guilt, anger, sadness, and a diminished sense of self-worth. These emotions can arise in response to trigger situations or even seemingly unrelated events, making them difficult to manage.
Types of Triggers and responses to them
The belief is emotions and traumatic experiences can become trapped in the body, and somatic therapy helps release this pent-up tension and emotions. Somatic therapy uses body awareness, breathwork and movement exercises to be more aware of bodily sensations and release stored emotions.
This is especially true for trauma survivors. The wrong words can wound, isolate, and intensify the pain they already carry. Certain language can re-trigger old wounds and reinforce feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy, and mistrust.
Many may often ask themselves, “Will I feel this way forever?” The answer to this is both simple and complex. The effects of trauma that evolve into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will never entirely go away. However, they can be managed with proper treatment to make them less severe to live a normal life.
This is not an exhaustive list, but here are a few common triggers:
But it does provide some rough guidelines as to how soon may be too soon to make long-term commitments and how long may be too long to stick with a relationship. Each of the three numbers—three, six, and nine—stands for the month that a different common stage of a relationship tends to end.
Signs of childhood trauma
The 7 stages of trauma bonding describe a cycle in abusive relationships, typically starting with Love Bombing, followed by Trust & Dependency, then Criticism & Devaluation, leading to Manipulation & Gaslighting, causing the victim to Resign & Give Up, leading to a Loss of Self, and finally resulting in Emotional Addiction to the intermittent rewards of the cycle, keeping the person trapped. This cycle, theorized by Dr. Patrick Carnes, traps victims by making them reliant on the abuser for validation, creating a powerful, albeit destructive, bond.
Emotional Trauma Symptoms
Psychological Concerns: Anxiety and panic attacks, fear, anger, irritability, obsessions and compulsions, shock and disbelief, emotional numbing and detachment, depression, shame and guilt (especially if the person dealing with the trauma survived while others didn't)
Things Never to Say to Trauma Survivors
Can I heal from childhood trauma without therapy? While professional support is recommended, self-healing strategies like mindfulness, journaling, creative expression, and physical practices can support recovery.
Such a child may seem “spacey”, detached, distant, or out of touch with reality. Complexly traumatized children are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as self-harm, unsafe sexual practices, and excessive risk-taking such as operating a vehicle at high speeds.
Psychodynamic trauma therapy is a highly effective treatment that focuses on identifying and addressing the underlying psychological causes of trauma. It works by exploring a patient's past experiences and their impact on their current behaviors and emotions.
Identifying your triggers
To identify your own PTSD or C-PTSD triggers, it can be helpful to keep a diary or journal where you record any experiences that cause you distress. Over time, you may notice patterns or common stimuli that trigger flashbacks.