Trauma isn’t just what happened to you. It’s what happened inside you because of it
The Word We Overuse and Undervalue
The word trauma gets thrown around easily now — “traumatised” by a film, “triggered” by a queue, “scarred” by a breakup. While humour or exaggeration can soften the edges, it also blurs understanding. True trauma reshapes the nervous system; it’s not an attitude, it’s physiology.
When threat becomes too much for too long, the body goes from alert to survival mode. The fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses are the nervous system’s emergency toolkit. In the moment, they keep you alive. But when they never switch off, they start defining how you live.
At a glance
- Trauma is the body and mind’s response to threat, not just the event itself.
- It can be sudden (acute) or prolonged (chronic or complex).
- You don’t need to “remember” trauma for it to affect you — the body often remembers first.
- Healing means safety, connection, and integration — not erasing the past
Trauma Isn’t a Hierarchy
Comparing pain is one of the quickest ways to invalidate yourself. People often say, “Others had it worse,” or “It wasn’t that bad.” But trauma isn’t ranked; it’s measured by impact, not incident.
A car crash and years of emotional neglect can both create the same imprint — a nervous system that learned, the world isn’t safe. The brain doesn’t distinguish between physical and emotional threat; it cares only about survival.
Trauma doesn’t ask what happened — it asks what remains.
If someone puts their hand near my face you see i flinch – it’s not saying you’re going to hurt me, but it says i’ve been hurt before, and it’s an automatic reaction from then.
Why Two People Can Experience the Same Event Differently
Two people can live through the same event and come away with very different scars. The difference isn’t about willpower or resilience — it’s about how each nervous system, history, and support network responds.
Some bodies react more intensely because they’re already on high alert. Past stress or trauma can prime the system to treat new threat as proof the world isn’t safe. Others might have steadier baselines, or access to support that helps them process shock before it embeds.
What happens after the event often matters as much as the event itself. Feeling believed, cared for, or protected tells the body it can release the tension. Being ignored, blamed, or left alone tells it the danger never ended.
Meaning also shapes recovery. When we can form a coherent story — even a rough one — the experience can be filed as “over.” When we can’t, it keeps replaying, waiting for understanding.
Trauma isn’t about what happened. It’s about what remained in the body and mind when the world moved on.
How the Body Keeps the Score (And Why It’s Right)
Your body is both historian and alarm system. Even when your mind wants to move on, your body can still flinch at tone, smell, or silence. This is implicit memory — the kind that sits beneath words.
Trauma can show up as hypervigilance, chronic pain, exhaustion, digestive problems, or disconnection. These aren’t “all in your head.” They’re survival responses doing their job a little too well. Therapy often helps by giving the body permission to stand down, slowly convincing it that the war has ended.
The Many Faces of Trauma
There’s no single picture of a traumatised person. Some become numb, others hyperactive; some withdraw, others over-perform. We tend to imagine trauma as brokenness, but often it’s over-functioning — the person who copes brilliantly until they can’t.
Therapists often describe three broad types:
- Acute trauma — from a single event like an accident or attack.
- Chronic trauma — from ongoing stress, abuse, or instability.
- Complex trauma — often starting in childhood, when the people meant to protect you were the ones who hurt you or couldn’t meet your needs.
None of these categories define you; they’re shorthand for patterns in the nervous system.
Survival Isn’t the Same as Living
For a while, surviving feels powerful. You get through days that might have broken others. But survival mode has no end date built in. It keeps scanning for danger even when life has changed. The same instincts that once saved you can later keep you trapped — distrust, control, perfectionism, emotional distance.
Therapy helps translate survival back into safety. It’s less about reliving the past and more about teaching your body and mind that it’s over.
Why “Getting Over It” Misses the Point
People sometimes ask why trauma clients can’t “just move on.” It’s because trauma changes the system that moves you on. The stress response doesn’t reset easily; it’s designed for short bursts, not long sieges.
Healing isn’t forgetting — it’s integration. You can’t erase the story, but you can stop it hijacking the present. Integration means the memory becomes a chapter, not the whole book.
Healing doesn’t delete the past — it lets it take its rightful place behind you.
Once you understand what happened and how your body reacts, you can meet it with awareness instead of re-enacting it.
Reclaiming Safety
The first task in trauma therapy isn’t talking about the event — it’s creating safety in the present. Until your body feels safe, your mind can’t explore. This is why grounding techniques, breathing work, and gentle boundaries matter. They teach the body that it no longer needs to brace.
Only once safety is consistent does exploration make sense. Without that foundation, revisiting memories risks retraumatising rather than releasing.
The Myth of “Too Small to Matter”
Every person who says “it wasn’t that bad” is describing how they minimised to survive. Dismissing pain was a defence then, but it becomes a barrier now. Therapy invites curiosity instead of judgement — what if it did matter, and that’s why you still feel it?
Validation doesn’t make you weak; it lets healing start. Denial keeps the wound invisible but active. Recognition, however painful, begins to neutralise it.
Integration Is Slow, But Real
Progress in trauma work isn’t linear. You might feel worse before you feel stable, because the body is learning to feel again. Setbacks aren’t failure; they’re recalibration.
Healing becomes visible in the small things: a slower heartbeat during conflict, laughter that feels spontaneous, sleep that’s deep instead of defensive. These are the quiet victories of integration.
What classes as Trauma
If you’ve ever wondered whether your experiences “count” as trauma, the answer lies in how your body and emotions have carried them. It’s not about deserving support — it’s about acknowledging impact.
Therapy doesn’t erase the past or label you broken. It helps restore movement where things froze. The story stays, but its grip loosens. Over time, that’s what freedom feels like — remembering without reliving.
