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Trauma is a very strong experience, comparable to extreme stress. It can have long-lasting effects that are hard to reverse. The symptoms of trauma include mental numbness and shock. The actions of a person involved in a traumatic event are conscious, but in many cases - quickly erased from memory. Often the most difficult and lengthy process is to recover. It happens that a complete return to the state from before the trauma is not possible.

What is trauma?

Trauma, or a certain type of psychological trauma, is a condition caused by a sudden factor that threatens life or he alth. Usually, it leads to serious changes that hinder the daily functioning of a human being, and consequently, it perpetuates the difficulties that make it impossible to return to the original state. Often these difficulties form a configuration of symptoms that can create medical entities, such as acute stress reaction or post-traumatic stress disorder.

What causes the trauma?

The concept of trauma is usually associated with emergencies such as:

  • traffic accident,
  • robbery,
  • battery,
  • death of a loved one,
  • rape

Traumatic factors can be both single events with an extremely negative emotional charge and repeated slightly milder stimuli that occur frequently enough that, as a consequence, they also lead to, among others, for periodic depressed mood, reduced activity, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, etc.

An example of a long-lasting or repetitive situation leading to an injury may be the experience of domestic violence, bullying at work, bullying at school, etc.

Consequences of traumatic experiences

The impact of a trauma event causing a trauma on a given person largely depends on the resources of the specific person. It is factors such as biological conditioning, social support, the state in which the person was at the time of the event, etc., that influence the level of consequences that will be triggered in a given person.

Specialists working in the field of crisis intervention, describing the state after the experience of trauma, used to say that it is"a normal reaction of the body to an abnormal situation" .

Traumatic situations during lifeat least a few of them can occur, and yet not each of them will leave a lasting mark on the psyche.

The human species has been equipped with many mechanisms to deal with difficult situations. Most of the reactions that we can observe in our body after an traumatic situation serve a natural return to psychophysical balance.

The persistence of the following symptoms immediately after the traumatic event does not have to have serious consequences:

  • experiencing a lot of anxiety,
  • trembling, crying, pale,
  • rapid breathing and pulse,
  • no reaction to attempts to make contact, feeling of being absent,
  • becoming motionless or nervously repeating inadequate behavior, gestures, words, etc.

It is personal skills, predispositions and the quality of the support that determine how deeply and for how long a traumatic event can take over everyday life. Including specialist support at this stage is not necessary yet, but it can be extremely helpful when symptoms persist over time, generating further difficulties in various areas of life.

There may be many consequences of traumatic events. It is worth getting to know them in order to be able to notice any disturbing symptoms in yourself or in a person whose psyche has been exposed to excessive strain. I advise against trying to diagnose, for example, PTSD on your own, but it is worth knowing the factors that should be concerned about the occurrence.

Problem

In a world where psychological terminology becomes an integral part of the everyday vocabulary, it is difficult to be sure that what we want to say is actually what it is. For some time now, the word "trauma" has been abbreviated by all cases, a bad mark on a test, a misunderstanding with the boss or a quarrel with an inattentive driver on the street is a trauma.

The commonality of certain concepts blurs the boundaries of what they really are and what phenomena they describe. The interchangeable use of the terms trauma, psychological shock, trauma, shock, etc., often leads to misunderstandings or unfairly flattening the experiences of others. Bearing in mind the natural processes that language undergoes, especially the colloquial language, I encourage all those who are interested in psychology to organize their terminology.

Persistent effects of the experienced trauma should be consulted with a specialist

The following symptoms should be consulted with a specialist if they persist:

  • depressed mood, prolonged feeling of sadness, depression, regret, shame, melancholy, etc.,
  • feeling of excessivearousal, difficulties with concentration, attention,
  • anxiety attacks caused by seemingly trivial factors, persistent anxiety,
  • irrational fears for your and your loved ones' life and he alth,
  • difficulty in experiencing emotions, feeling cut off from emotions or excessive, inadequate emotionality,
  • intrusive recurring thoughts, images and / or sounds related to a traumatic event, reliving the trauma,
  • avoiding places, situations, people related to a traumatic event,
  • difficulties related to sleep e.g. realistic nightmares, insomnia etc.
  • difficulty coping with anger, feeling angry.
Important

People who experienced trauma often react to objectively safe stimuli, which they feel are related to the trauma, as if they were the primary traumatizing stimulus. The stimulus that triggers the body's reaction can be, among others :

  • sound,
  • fragrance,
  • view of a specific place, person etc,
  • touch (physical, surface texture, etc.)
  • feeling of helplessness similar to that in a traumatic situation,
  • specific social relations,
  • situation of excessive stress not related to the original traumatic event, etc.

For example, in a person who survived a traffic accident, such a stimulus may be the squeak of a braking car, the sound of a falling metal object or the smell accompanying the event. A person who only witnessed the event can succumb to the same mechanism. For someone who has seen a pedestrian die under the wheels of a car, the triggering stimulus may be the smell of a tree blooming nearby, the scream of another passerby, etc.

It is this automatic and inadequate reaction to the real threat that intensifies the negative effects of the trauma. In this situation, the body falls into a vicious cycle. He reads more and more stimuli as dangerous, so he is more vigilant. The greater the vigilance (constant state of tension and readiness to react), the greater the probability that it will find and consider another stimulus as dangerous, which in turn may cause even greater vigilance. In this way, the impression of a real threat keeps growing.

Unfortunately, it also happens that a traumatic experience, as it strongly disturbs the psychophysical balance, turns out to be a stimulus for diseases and mental disorders of a different nature, e.g. depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc. After such a strong experience, people with a certain type of predisposition to a given disease or a disease in remission stage can be expected to develop itsymptoms.

It is worth remembering that the human body can cope with many traumatic events on its own with appropriate social support, but if after another week the symptoms persist or even become stronger, it is worth opting for a psychological consultation.

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Category:

Psychology