“Trauma” is a commonly used word that people often use to convey their emotional experience of a highly stressful and shocking event.  While traumatic events are incredibly stressful and shocking, they become “trauma” when a person’s ability to cope is compromised.  This often happens in response to events that are perceived as life or body threatening or after witnessing someone else’s life be threatened or taken in a violent or shocking way. Psychological trauma often relies on a person’s subjective experience of an event, and to what extent they believe their life, bodily integrity, or psychological well-being was threatened. People who experience trauma may react with intense fear, horror, numbness, or helplessness.  Reactions to trauma vary greatly, from a mild reaction with only minimal interruptions in one’s daily life, to reactions that are more severe and debilitating.

Jon Allen, a psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas and author of Coping with Trauma: A Guide to Self-Understanding (1995) notes there are two components to a traumatic experience: the objective and the subjective:

“It is the subjective experience of the objective events that constitutes the trauma…The more you believe you are endangered, the more traumatized you will be…Psychologically, the bottom line of trauma is overwhelming emotion and a feeling of utter helplessness. There may or may not be bodily injury, but psychological trauma is coupled with physiological upheaval that plays a leading role in the long-range effects” (p.14).

Common post-traumatic reactions include Acute Stress Disorder, PTSD, Dissociative Disorders, or Unspecified Stressor Disorder (which simply refers to the psychological experience of a person who has experienced trauma but does not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD).  Depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and problems with irritability or anger are all common co-occurring problems.