What is Trauma Series: What is Trauma and What Impacts Trauma Reactions?
What is Trauma Series: Trauma and EMDR Therapist in Chicago Discusses Trauma & Why the Effects of Trauma Are Not the Same for Everyone
To kick off the What is Trauma Series, it is important to acknowledge that trauma is a complex concept. Additionally, the understanding of what constitutes trauma and the immediate and long-term impacts of trauma continues to evolve as the research community explores and learns more over time. In order to engage in an informative discussion, let’s first dive into what trauma means within the context of the What is Trauma Series.
What Is Trauma?
For many, the idea of trauma evokes images of war, assault, life-threatening accidents, or injury, but there is no true singular definition for trauma or example of what may be held as trauma within an individual. In order to have a clearer concept of trauma; what trauma looks like to the body; and why some experiences appear to have a more significant or lasting impact than others, it is helpful to understand the basic role of our nervous system as it relates to responding to perceived threats and to holding onto trauma.
Trauma and the Nervous System
Broadly speaking, our nervous system has two sub-systems: our sympathetic nervous system and our parasympathetic nervous system. It can be useful to think of the sympathetic nervous system as the body’s alarm system. It is aware of our surroundings and alerts us when it senses threat.
Once the alarm is sounded, our sympathetic nervous system floods our body with the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, to set off a chain of events. These body system changes help us mobilize for action to survive, either by fighting against the threat, or by getting away from it. In some cases the body may even respond to threat by freezing, numbing, or shutting down; or by trying to neutralize the threat.
Our parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, is what gives our body the “all clear” once it senses that the threat has passed. This signals a return to a state of feeling safe and calm and allows our system to rest and relax.
How to Regulate Nervous System
The capacity of our nervous system to effectively flow between these active and resting states, and to clearly understand when threat is present and when threat is absent, can be impacted by many factors. Although not an exhaustive list, these may include the age and life experiences of the individual at the time of the perceived threat; the predictability of the environment; one’s ability to exert control over their environment or circumstance; perceived levels of, and access to, support; the degree of experience with safe and with threatening events; and the perceived danger or intensity of the threat.
Trauma Trapped in the Nervous System
If an event occurs that exceeds the nervous system’s capacity to detect, understand, or manage threat in an adaptive way, the flow between a sense of threat and a sense of safety can be impaired. Our brain and body get confused. It becomes hard for the nervous system to clearly determine signs of threat versus safety, and to understand when the threat is gone and when we are safe.
It can also become difficult to get the system to switch from one state (mobilize for action) to the other (calm down and regulate,) even when the system is pretty sure that safety is present. This lingering body and brain confusion about safety versus threat in the present moment based on a past experience is what many consider to be trauma.
Why Do Some People Experience Trauma in Situations and Others Don’t?
Going back to the list of factors above, we can gain a better appreciation for why some events may be traumatic and others not, or why an event may be traumatic to one individual when it does not appear to be traumatic to someone else.
Examples of Trauma Reactions
Let’s consider the following example, which has been selected to reduce the likelihood of activating trauma in any readers due to its low level of actual threat. Nevertheless, this example may activate trauma in people who have had traumatic experiences involving smoke, fire, children in distress, or sensory overload. These readers are advised to check in with their nervous system and determine if they would be better served by skipping the example:
Arturo and his partner Caitlin recently moved into a new home with their 4-year-old daughter, Esmé.
Arturo is settling into the new kitchen by making pancakes for Esmé, as he has done every Saturday morning for as long as Esmé can remember. Caitlin is upstairs unpacking moving boxes in the bedroom. Esmé is sitting at the kitchen table coloring on some paper as she awaits her pancakes. She is enjoying the warm, buttery smell that fills the kitchen as the pancakes begin to sizzle away in the pan.
As Esmé carefully selects her crayons, she is unfazed by the hazy smoke that begins to slowly permeate the room. The smoke floats up to the second floor. Caitlin barely registers an awareness of the scent, but briefly thinks that Arturo should turn down the stove or he’s going to burn the pancakes.
Arturo notices the smoke rising from the pan as the pancakes start to burn. He lowers the heat, making a mental note that this stove must run hotter than the one in the old kitchen. He begins to search for the switch to the exhaust fan, but before he can locate it, a blaring sound rips through the kitchen, and assaults their senses, as smoke alarms throughout the house begin to echo the piercing cry in a chain reaction.
Esmé immediately starts to scream and clutches her ears to block out the overwhelming noise. In a flurry of motion, Arturo rushes away from Esmé in an effort to locate the smoke detector and disable it, as he yells up to Caitlin, “Where is the smoke alarm?!?”
Caitlin, alerted by the alarm and the screams from her family feels her heart start to pound and an intense feeling of electricity rushes through her. She runs downstairs and towards her red-faced, hysterical daughter just as Arturo successfully disables the smoke detector and the alarms silence throughout the house. Arturo starts to open the windows and Caitlin grabs Esmé and scoops her onto her lap, rocking Esmé until Caitlin’s racing heart starts to regulate and Esmé begins to settle down.
Arturo returns to making pancakes, taking care to lower the setting on the stovetop. When he presents Esmé with her plate of golden pancakes, she shakes her head and says that her tummy hurts. She nuzzles into Caitlin’s shoulder.
What is Trauma? Same Event, Different Trauma Reactions
Esmé: In the days and weeks that follow, Esmé is clingier than usual; reluctant to leave Caitlin’s side. She wakes during the night with bad dreams that the house is screaming at her, and she complains of stomach aches. She refuses to be in the kitchen alone, even for a moment. She stares up at the ceilings as she walks through the house and hovers her hands close to her ears when she walks near, or under, any of the smoke detectors in the home. She insists on sitting on Caitlin’s lap during all meals and snack times in the kitchen, and she tells Arturo not to make her pancakes anymore. When Arturo attempts to make pancakes the following week to show her that it will be okay, Esmé runs to her room and hides under the covers the moment she smells the buttery scent of the pancakes cooking.
Caitlin: Caitlin is also struggling. She knows logically that the event was just about burning pancakes and a sensitive smoke alarm, but she is still feeling anxious whenever Esmé is not directly in her sight or is on a different floor of the house, even when she knows that Esmé is with Arturo. Some nights she wakes up sweating and with her heart racing. She has started to have nightmares about the fire that woke her from a sound sleep and forced her to flee her apartment building shortly after college. She keeps flashing back to the sounds of the alarms, the rush of people, and the faces of scared children crying. Caitlin remembers how helpless she felt the next day as she was escorted into the building to salvage some of her belongings, and swears that she catches whiffs of the acrid smell of smoke even when nobody is cooking.
Now, after settling Esmé to sleep at night she spends hours online researching home fire safety plans. She strains for sounds of distress from Esmé’s room and avoids going to bed in hopes of staving off the nightmares. She orders window escape ladders for every room on the second floor, and places a firefighter alert sticker in every door and window in the house.
Arturo: Arturo wishes that the pancake incident had not happened. He is concerned about the changes that he is seeing in Caitlin and Esmé, but he does not share their reactions following the event.
Nervous System Overload and Trauma
Esmé: In the case of Esmé, the smoke alarm going off while her dad made pancakes was overwhelming to her nervous system. At the time of the event, she had been happily coloring and unaware that the smoke slowly floating around her could trigger such a startling alarm. She was surprised by the piercing sound that had engulfed her, seemingly without warning. She experienced the rush of adrenaline and cortisol as her sympathetic nervous system was activated.
Esmé had always been sensitive to loud noises like the vacuum cleaner running, balloons popping, or sirens passing by, but had not experienced such a loud sound so close to her ever before. She had never heard a smoke alarm previously. She had no idea what the sound was when she heard it; what it meant; how to get away from the sound; or how to make it stop. At the time of the event, her mother was far from her, and despite his good reasons for doing so, her father ran away from her, leaving her alone. Her nervous system was flooded by sensory input and big feelings. She could not make sense of it all, and did not know what to do. Although the adults in her environment both took quick action to solve the problem; in the most intense moments of her feelings of confusion, fear, and helplessness, she also felt all alone.
Esmé’s actions following the event suggest that she experienced trauma. Even though the event was brief and in the past, her nervous system was still struggling to sense and understand signals of danger versus safety in her present moment. This was especially intense when something in her environment, an emotion, or a feeling in her body reminded her of the event, such as when she was in the kitchen, when she smelled pancakes cooking, when she was near a smoke detector, or when her mother was not nearby.
Highly Reactive Nervous System and Trauma
Caitlin: Caitlin had a different level of understanding about smoke detectors and false alarms. She had noted the smell of smoke as the pancakes cooked. She had a fleeting thought about the connection between the smell of smoke and the pancakes burning, shortly before the alarm sounded. She had a greater context for why the alarm sounded, what it likely meant in the moment, and how to make it stop. She was also aware at some level that the alarm could not be shut off quickly because they were unfamiliar with the home and how to locate and disable the alarms.
When the smoke detector went off, she experienced a significant rush of adrenaline and cortisol as her sympathetic nervous system was activated. Her pounding heart and the intense electric feeling were greater than what she might have expected in the context of the present situation and were likely highly reactive due to unresolved trauma from her previous experience with a fire. Her stress response was intensified by the screams from her family, and she was immediately concerned about her daughter’s distress. Many aspects of the event including the sound of the alarm, the flurry of activity, the rush of adrenaline, the smell of smoke, running downstairs, and the look of distress on her child’s face stirred up thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations related to her previous experience with a fire that had never been fully processed.
Caitlin began to experience some of the anxiety, hypervigilance, sleep difficulties, and physical symptoms that she had following the apartment fire years ago, suggesting that she had unresolved trauma related to the incident that had been reactivated by the pancake event. Her previous experience with a fire, and the related thoughts, emotions, and body reactions flooded her system when the alarm sounded. The combination of what her nervous system was responding to in the moment during the pancake incident, in addition to the old information being pulled in from her past experience with a fire, was confusing and overwhelming to her nervous system. This overwhelm reactivated old trauma symptoms that lingered even after the event ended; suggesting that old trauma intensified her response in the moment, and that the new experience reactivated old trauma.
Regulated Nervous System and Trauma
Arturo: Arturo had a different experience while making pancakes that day. He noticed the smoke rising from the pan and took steps to address the situation, including adjusting the heat on the stove and attempting to turn on the exhaust fan. He knew as soon as the alarm sounded that it was because of the smoke and that there was no actual fire. He had a sense of where his family members were, and that they were safe. He understood immediately that the sound was coming from the smoke alarms and that if he could disable them, the loud noise would stop. He had a more modest stress response, and his actions were mobilized in the direction of locating and disabling the alarm. Arturo had never experienced a house fire before, but he had several previous experiences with smoke detectors sounding after burning popcorn in the microwave and when cheese dripping from a frozen pizza scorched on the bottom of the oven. He took action to stop the alarms in the moment, and he was successful in disabling the alarm quickly once he located the one closest to the stove.
He did not experience feelings of confusion or fear in the moment, and any feelings of shock or helplessness were quickly resolved through his ability to take effective action. His parasympathetic nervous system readily detected safety after he turned off the alarm, and helped his body to re-establish a state of calm. He was able to return to making pancakes in the hope of comforting his child, whose needs for support were being addressed by Caitlin.
Although Arturo wished that the pancake incident had not happened and was and was sad that it seemed to have a lasting impact on his family, his nervous system was able to regulate itself throughout the activation and resolution of the experience. He did not experience trauma following the event.
Noticing and Responding to Signs of Trauma
The above examples serve as an illustration of how an extreme experience can manifest itself differently in people, and why some experiences, large or seemingly small, may be traumatic to some but not to others.
The important takeaway is to notice times when the body or mind have reactions in the present moment that are out of proportion or don’t seem to be related to what is happening in the here and now. This indicates that the nervous system has struggled to fully make sense of, and process the experience. If the nervous system becomes overwhelmed when trying to make sense of an experience, it can continue to have a hard time sorting out when you are safe and when there is a threat, especially when it is reminded of the event in some way. This suggests that there is trauma.
Symptoms of Trauma and Do I Have Trauma?
It can be difficult to definitively self-identify if symptoms that you are having represent trauma, but you might notice the signs of trauma in yourself or others through a persistent or reactive feeling of anxiety, heightened alertness, or irritability; feeling shut down, disconnected, or having difficulty focusing or motivating yourself to do things; flashbacks, nightmares, or sleep difficulties; intense emotions, physical symptoms, or behavioral reactions that seem like overreactions; gastrointestinal upset; panic attacks; avoidance of people, places, or thoughts that cause you distress that you identify as related to a trauma, or that you do not fully understand, but you just know that they make you feel uncomfortable.
If you notice a number of these symptoms, you might want to speak with a licensed psychologist, therapist, or counselor to discuss the possibility of trauma and trauma treatment.
How to Regulate the Nervous System with Trauma Therapy and Trauma Therapy Online
The good news is that trauma is treatable. Evidence-based treatments like EMDR therapy that help the body and brain fully process traumatic experiences, can support the recalibration of the nervous system. By making it clear to the nervous system that the threat has passed and that you are no longer experiencing the threat that was present at that moment from the position of power and understanding that you were in at that moment, the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system can return to supporting a healthy flow between activation and rest. Past traumas cannot be erased, but their detrimental impact in the present can be lessened or eliminated.
Healing the Nervous System with Online Trauma Therapy and Virtual EMDR Therapy Chicago and Across the U.S.
If you are looking for help in getting past traumatic experiences so that they do not limit you in the present, I may be able to help. I treat trauma and PTSD in Chicago, along the North Shore, and across Illinois using evidence-based treatments such as EMDR therapy. I am also a PSYPACT psychologist, who is licensed to provide virtual trauma treatment and EMDR therapy online to people in most states across the United States, including affirming trauma therapy for experiences of marginalization within the LGBT community and for neurodivergent folx; and to treat burnout for struggling parents and parents of children with special needs and high needs. You can read more about how I can help here.
Contact me for a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn about how EMDR and other trauma treatment approaches can help you live a calmer, more connected, and more satisfying life.
