Trauma, What Is It?
We at GCCS specialize in trauma treatment and recovery. Utilizing modalities that are proven to bring results in trauma healing we assist clients to move from feeling stuck to more flow in their life, in their body and in their overall well being.
Trauma, also referred to as Accumulated Stress, is often the result of an overwhelming event that exceeds one’s ability to cope or integrate the emotions and sensations involved with that experience. The distressing event is “too much too fast.” In childhood this type of wound can be considered “anything less than nurturing” and even the result of “too little, too long” as in the case of abandonment and neglect. Trauma can involve one experience, or repeating events that due to its overwhelming nature become encapsulated and can have a delayed response by weeks, years, or even decades.
Trauma results from an individual’s perception of danger or threat. Trauma involves a dysregulation of the nervous system. Our instinctual flight and fight mechanisms that were charged up by our sympathetic nervous system during the threat or traumatic event were not able to complete the charge and therefore become thwarted and held up in the nervous system. This often results in feeling stuck in flight, fight or freeze. There are an array of symptoms, patterns, or cycles that continue to repeat themselves within our lives that are trying to complete and discharge. We just have to allow for that time and space to let this occur.
Traumatic events could include relational trauma such as developmental or family of origin trauma, including abuse and neglect, partner deception, abuse and consistent increased difficulties in the relationship, or loss of a loved ones. Trauma could include shock trauma, such as car accidents, natural disasters, witnessing a shooting or a death, falls, medical procedures, drowning, suffocation and others. Trauma can include prolonged exposure to overwhelming events such as in long term difficult illness, war, trafficking, torture and being held against your will.
Acute Stress Disorder, Accumulated Stress, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Shock Trauma, Boundary violations or ruptures and Chronic Complex Trauma are common terms used to describe trauma.
Other professionals in the field of healing have described Trauma as the following:
” Trauma in a Dysfunctional Family system comes in the form of anything less than nurturing on the part of the caregiver.” —-Pia Mellody, RN, LSAC, Senior Clinical Advisor, The Meadows. Internationally recognized authority on trauma, co-dependence, and addiction.
“Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.” -Peter Levine, Ph.D, founder of Somatic Experiencing
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not however have to be a life sentence” -Peter Levine, Ph.D
“Meaning and helplessness play a role in how an event becomes a trauma.” -Robert Scaer, MD
“…Trauma is a state of severe fright…when confronted with a sudden, unexpected potentially life threatening event..to which we are unable to respond effectively…” Flannery
Traumatic events are extraordinary…because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptation to life.” Herman