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Anjenita Hugo, Psychologist
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What is Trauma

Trauma is not the event. It is the experience and reaction to an event which is unique to each person

Every experience in life has different levels to it. There is the sensory level (what I see, hear, feel, smell, taste and how it feels in my body), the emotional and the mental or logical level. There is also a spiritual or “what it means to me” level. An everyday experience, like lunch with your best friend will have all of these elements. There may be the image of your friend, the smell of the food, the sound of the music. There may be happiness and the love you feel for your friend. The thought may be “I have an awesome friend” and on a spiritual level one may feel blessed. This experience can be processed, made sense of and can integrate and be stored in our memory bank. The memory can be recalled at will to reflect on, but the overall sense is that it is in the past.

An experience that is traumatic also has all these levels of information – the sensory, emotional, mental and meaning. The difference is that a traumatic experience is overwhelming and the information on these levels is too much and possibly happening too fast for us to make sense of and to process. Take for an example a car accident – there may be the sudden image of a car in front of us, the sound of the tyres and the impact, the smell of the airbag, the disorientation regarding the environment, the confusion as to what happened, the fear, the thought I am going to die and maybe a sense of regret about unfinished business. The information on all or some of the levels is overwhelming. When there is a sense of overwhelm, it is not possible for one’s brain to process all of the experience and the information cannot be stored as a memory in the past / as a processed memory.

Traumatic experiences and memories are stored in different parts of the brain than normal memories. When we are exposed to something that reminds us of these memories, often unbeknown to us, the memory gets triggered, and we “relive” the old experience as if it is happening again. For example, the same time of the car accident, the sound of screeching tyres. Trauma is often referred to as the “past that is in the present”. Reliving can be on a sensory level – a smell, image, sound. Relieving an emotion – fear, shock. A thought – I am going to die.

These intrusive, relived, imprinted memories cannot be corrected by only a mere intellectual or talk therapy approach, because they have little to do with the logic of the present. Retelling one’s story is often not enough and can be re-traumatizing. Also… people would often say “What I know to be true and how I feel are different”. Therefor therapeutic approaches that address these specific dynamics of the memories of traumatic experiences is needed. Unprocessed traumatic experiences have the potential to silently impact in ways known and more often unknown to us. Trauma does not only refer to PTSD. It also refers to adverse childhood experiences, it can be secondary exposure like hearing the stories of others. It can be a single event like a car accident or it can be ongoing exposure to events like abuse or the nature of one’s work. Trauma can be expressed in different ways that may not be as clear as PTSD. Unresolved traumas are remembered by our bodies, our emotions, the mind and the psyche. It uninvitedly shows up in our relationships – with ourselves, with others, with the world we live in. Unresolved trauma is NOT because you are weak. It is NOT because you cannot get your head around it and get on with life. It is NOT because you are silly, stupid, dumb. It is Not because you are not intelligent. It is NOT only your imagination. It is NOT inability to get over yourself. Exposure to traumatic events is NOT something to ignore, put in a box, to forget – it is not possible, because it is stored in your memory system and it affects you every day of your life, wether you are aware of it or not. Trauma is something that can be resolved and that can be the source of one’s greatest growth.