Unpacking Trauma

Course Cut-OutMoving Through Trauma
Written By Austin Cavaliere

If you need help seeing Jesus in the middle of your struggle, or just feel like you are stuck, ready to move into growth and healing, connect with a Christian coach.

Excerpt: Unpacking Trauma - Session 2

Course: Moving Through Trauma

Speakers: Matthias Barker, Cathy Loerzel

Understanding Trauma: It's More Than Just the Event

When we hear the word "trauma," many different images and ideas might come to mind. Some might think of war veterans, survivors of violence, or those who've faced natural disasters or near-death experiences. While these are undoubtedly traumatic experiences, it's important to understand that trauma exists on a spectrum. It's not solely defined by the severity of the event itself.

The Spectrum of Trauma and Context

Think about something like bullying. Where does that fit on the trauma spectrum? For one person, being bullied might be a difficult experience they navigate with the support of friends, eventually moving past it without lasting severe impact. But for another, the same experience of bullying can deeply affect their ability to connect with others, leading to significant social anxiety.

This highlights a crucial point: trauma isn't just about the intensity of the event; it's also about the context in which it occurred and who you were as an individual at that time. Your personal history, your support systems, and your individual makeup all play a role in how an event will affect you.

Consider two people involved in the same car accident. One might walk away shaken but ultimately okay, while the other develops PTSD, experiencing flashbacks and a deep fear of cars. What accounts for this difference? Often, it involves factors like your prior expectations about safety, the element of surprise inherent in trauma, and whether the event fundamentally shook your view of the world.

The Impact of Past Experiences

Studies on first responders after 9/11 further illustrate this. Some developed PTSD, while others, despite witnessing the same horrific events, did not sustain long-term effects. A key differentiator was their prior exposure to traumatic events. This suggests that experiences from childhood, both "Big T" trauma and "little t" trauma, can predispose us to being more or less vulnerable to traumatic events later in life. It's not just the severity of a single event, but the accumulation and constellation of past experiences that matter.

Ultimately, what we're talking about when we discuss trauma is often an event that shook up your view of the world, particularly how you see yourself or how you perceive the safety and predictability of the world around you.

Complex Trauma and Relational Wounds

Another significant form of trauma is complex trauma, which occurs within the context of relationships, often involving primary caregivers like parents or other significant figures. This relates to the concept of attachment and explores events within your family that may have been traumatic. These are the experiences where you might have felt unsafe, lacking in emotional warmth, nurture, approval, encouragement, or the fundamental sense of safety every child needs. These relational experiences deeply contribute to your sense of self and your understanding of the world.

Emotional Wounds and Shaken Foundations

To summarize, we're exploring emotional wounds – experiences that disrupted our sense of safety and altered how we view ourselves and the world. While some experiences can lead to diagnosable psychological disorders like PTSD or personality disorders, others, though not reaching that clinical threshold, can still be intensely impactful, profoundly shaping our perceptions and behaviors.

Let's delve deeper into this together. Let's examine the events and the patterns of relationships within your family that either fostered a sense of safety, belonging, and nurture, or perhaps created a different narrative – one where the world felt unsafe or where you felt incapable of staying safe. Understanding the nuances beneath the surface is key when we talk about trauma as the domain that shaped how you view yourself and the world around you.

Validating Your Story: Eden and the World We Inhabit

Often, we minimize our own experiences of hurt when we hear about the significant suffering of others. We might think, "My story isn't as bad as those stories." But here's an important truth: we are created for Eden, for perfect relationship with God, ourselves, others, and the earth. This inherent longing for perfect connection and safety is written into our very being, into our body's memory.

We are born into a world that is "east of Eden," and often, we don't fully recognize the impact of our own experiences because we dismiss them. There are two aspects of trauma we're addressing: "Big T" trauma, where you can clearly identify significant events of abuse or degradation, and "little t" trauma, which can be more subtle, eroding your sense of well-being and life over time. Our goal is to help you understand both and to bridge the gap between the body's memory of Eden and the imperfect world we inhabit. This gap often creates a way of being where we struggle to reconcile what we inherently long for with the realities we face.

The Body's Capacity and Embedded Trauma

The remarkable thing is that we possess a degree of capacity to process and handle trauma. Dr. Dan Siegel speaks of embedded trauma versus a traumatic event. His idea is that as potentially traumatic experiences occur, our bodies can often move through them, allowing them to become a "traumatic event" that we can process and integrate. However, if these experiences are not handled well by our bodies, our support systems, or our families, they can become embedded trauma, residing within us and impacting us long-term.

In this series, we're focusing on those places in your own body and your own story where you might have embedded trauma.

Understanding the Difference: An Example

Consider the story of five-year-old Sam who is in a car accident with his beloved nanny, Sally. He wakes up to see Sally bleeding and is taken to the hospital, where his mom arrives.

In one scenario, Sam's attuned mother arrives, offering immediate comfort and reassurance. She acknowledges his fear, gently walks him through what happened, takes him to see Sally to ensure he knows she's okay, stays with him through the night, and continues to talk about the event in the following days. This attuned care helps Sam process a difficult event without it becoming deeply embedded trauma.

In another scenario, Sam's mother arrives feeling guilty and ambivalent about the nanny. She reacts with frantic energy, yelling at doctors and showering Sam with gifts while dismissing the nanny and his potential feelings. This response inadvertently teaches Sam to prioritize his mother's emotions over his own, preventing him from fully processing his fear and potentially leading to embedded trauma.

Healing is Possible: Reaching Those Unmet Needs

It's crucial to distinguish between a traumatic event and embedded trauma. Often, we underestimate our capacity to work through difficult experiences. Even if past hurts weren't handled well when we were children, as adults, with support from therapy and resources like this course, we can learn to go back to those younger parts of ourselves that didn't receive the care they needed. We can still offer them the connection and care they longed for but never received.

 

If you like the content, you can continue in a few different ways…

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Moving Through Trauma

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Moving Through Trauma 〰️

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Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

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Session 7

Session 8

 

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Austin Cavaliere
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