Emotional Trauma

What is Trauma?

Trauma is a person’s emotional response to a distressing experience. Few people can go through life without encountering some kind of trauma. Unlike ordinary hardships, traumatic events tend to be sudden and unpredictable, involve a serious threat to life — like bodily injury or death — and feel beyond a person’s control. Most importantly, events are traumatic to the degree that they undermine a person’s sense of safety in the world and create a sense that catastrophe could strike at any time. Parental loss in childhood, auto accidents, physical violence, sexual assault, military combat experiences and the unexpected loss of a loved one are common traumatic events.

Types of Trauma

• Acute trauma reflects intense distress in the immediate aftermath of a one-time event and the reaction is of short duration. Common examples include a car crash, physical or sexual assault, or the sudden death of a loved one.
• Chronic trauma can arise from harmful events that are repeated or prolonged. It can develop in response to persistent bullying, neglect, abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual), and domestic violence.
• Complex trauma can arise from experiencing repeated or multiple traumatic events from which there is no possibility of escape. The sense of being trapped is a feature of the experience. Like other types of trauma, it can undermine a sense of safety in the world and beget hypervigilance and constant (and exhausting) monitoring of the environment for the possibility of threat.
• Secondary or vicarious trauma arises from exposure to other people’s suffering and can strike those in professions that are called on to respond to injury and mayhem, notably front-line medical staff, first responders, and law enforcement. Over time, such individuals are at risk for compassion fatigue, whereby they avoid investing emotionally in other people in an attempt to protect themselves from experiencing distress.

Effects of Trauma

Disturbing events activate the amygdala, a structure in the brain responsible for detecting threats. It responds by sending out an alarm to multiple body systems to prepare for defense. The sympathetic nervous system jumps into action, stimulating the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline and stress hormones that prepare the body for a fight-flight-or-freeze response. Short-term fear, anxiety, shock, anger and aggression are all normal responses to trauma.

Such negative feelings dissipate as the crisis abates and the experience fades from memory, but for some people the distressing feelings can linger, interfering with day-to-day life.

Sufferers of long-term trauma may develop emotional disturbances, such as extreme anxiety, anger, sadness, survivor’s guilt, disassociation, the inability to feel pleasure (anhedonia), or PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The amygdala becomes hyperactive, and its overreaction to minor events leads to an outpouring of stress hormones. When living in defense mode, and ever vigilant to the possibility of threat, people may experience ongoing problems with sleep or physical pain, encounter turbulence in their personal and professional relationships, and feel a diminished sense of self-worth.

Positive psychological changes after trauma are also possible when people acknowledge their difficulties and see themselves as survivors rather than victims of an unfortunate experience.

Tools to implement positive psychological changes include building resilience, the development of effective coping skills, and the development of a sense of self-efficacy. Some people may undergo post-traumatic growth, forge stronger relationships, redefine their relationship with new meaning and/or spiritual purpose, and gain a deeper appreciation for life. It may sound contradictory, but post-traumatic growth can exist alongside PTSD.

Additional Resources

More in-depth information on trauma can be found on the Psychology Today Canada website:

• Intergenerational Trauma
• Recovering from Trauma
• Workplace Trauma and Trauma-Informed Leadership