It mainly results from a single distressing event, such as an accident, rape, assault, or natural disaster. The event is extreme enough to threaten the person's emotional or physical security.
Kinds of Traumatic Events
Natural disasters, such as a tornado, hurricane, fire, or flood. Sexual assault. Physical assault. Witnessing shooting or stabbing of a person.
Psychological, or emotional trauma, is damage or injury to the psyche after living through an extremely frightening or distressing event and may result in challenges in functioning or coping normally after the event.
Negative thoughts and feelings, such as hopelessness, guilt, and self-blame. Changes in your physical and emotional reactions, such as not being able to sleep, being easily startled, or struggling to manage surges of sadness or anger.
Level I Trauma Center
Level 1 is the highest or most comprehensive care center for trauma, capable of providing total care for every aspect of injury – from prevention through rehabilitation.
Part 1: Five B's of Child Physical Abuse: Bruises, Burns, Bones, Bellies, and Brains (Webinar)
If you often feel as though your life has become unmanageable, this could be a sign that you have some unresolved emotional trauma. Emotional overreactions are a common symptom of trauma. A victim of trauma might redirect their overwhelming emotions towards others, such as family and friends.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.
We often will feel sad and cry after a highly traumatic event. The crying can be a way for the nervous system to come down from the fight-or-flight response, since crying is associated with the parasympathetic nervous system which calms the mind and body.
Suffering from severe fear, anxiety, or depression. Unable to form close, satisfying relationships. Experiencing terrifying memories, nightmares, or flashbacks. Avoiding more and more anything that reminds you of the trauma.
vivid flashbacks (feeling like the trauma is happening right now) intrusive thoughts or images. nightmares. intense distress at real or symbolic reminders of the trauma.
Any situation that a person finds traumatic can cause PTSD. These can include: serious road accidents. violent personal assaults, such as sexual assault, mugging or robbery.
“According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event. Trauma can occur once, or on multiple occasions and an individual can experience more than one type of trauma.” PTSD is the mental health disorder that is associated when someone experiences or witnesses a trauma.
A feeling of shame; an innate feeling that they are bad, worthless, or without importance. Suffering from chronic or ongoing depression. Practicing avoidance of people, places, or things that may be related to the traumatic event; this also can include an avoidance of unpleasant emotions.
Smiling when discussing trauma is a way to minimize the traumatic experience. It communicates the notion that what happened “wasn't so bad.” This is a common strategy that trauma survivors use in an attempt to maintain a connection to caretakers who were their perpetrators.
People who go through a traumatic experience go through a lot of mental and physical stress that can make it hard for them to recover without professional help. Drama on the other hand consists of our personal reaction to things and the way that we interpret events that aren't objectively painful.
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)
way that allows for safe and repetitive experiences that lead to change. (Perry, 2015). The framework of therapeutic interventions with the NMT involves the 6 Rs as Key Elements of Positive Developmental and Educational Settings: relevant, rhythmic, repetitive, relational, rewarding, and respectful (Perry, 2015).
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
Young Children and Trauma. Children can experience trauma as early as infancy. In fact, young children between the ages of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are still in the early formative years.
70% of adults in the U.S. have experienced some type of traumatic event at least once in their lives.
The typical onset age for PTSD is in young and middle adulthood. The NCS-R reported a median onset age of 23 (interquartile range: ages 15-39) among adults (Kessler et al., 2005).