What Do We Need to Understand about Trauma?
Trauma in the Pews 2.0 Section I: Chapter Two (second part).
Since I skipped Trauma in the Pews 2.0 on Mother’s Day to finish the Honor Series, I am posting this today. It could just as easily go under the Brave Survivor category since I knew none of this when I walked into therapy. We truly have come so far in ten years, but that doesn’t mean that aren’t many still beginning to learn about trauma.
What is a Trauma Trigger?
It is common to hear people say that something triggered them. This trauma-related term has become part of our cultural vocabulary. In essence, a trigger is a physical reaction to a stimulus. Pavlov’s dogs were, essentially, triggered to react to the bell. The experiment wasn’t a harmful thing—maybe manipulative, but not harmful. This is not the same as a trauma trigger.
A trauma trigger involves more than simply being reminded of a traumatic event. It is an autonomic reaction based on information that your amygdala has stored to signal danger. For example, a friend’s daughter had several medical issues during her youngest years. No matter how hard everyone tried to help Hannah when visiting the doctor’s office, it was still a traumatic experience.
One day my friend and I took our daughters to a photography studio. As soon as we walked in Hannah began screaming and lunged for the door. Looking around at the rather institutional-looking waiting room, we realized she thought she was at the doctor’s office. Hannah’s amygdala sent a threat message to her brain stem, and nothing could convince this distressed child that she was not in danger. She was in both fight and flight mode; her little body was bent on survival.
Hannah’s amygdala could not distinguish between the current waiting room and the ones from the past. Her body responded as if the danger she experienced in the past was happening now and she was flooded with stress hormones. And the prefrontal cortex went offline. There was no point in reasoning with her (or any other child or adult who has been triggered).
A trauma trigger is terrifying because the body believes it is in imminent danger. When the cocktail of stress hormones is released into the body, it will take time for them to dissipate. For those with a history of trauma, this may take days. This is why you often can’t seem to get over it. It is important to learn how to release these stress hormones from your body. We will discuss this in Section II.
What Causes and Qualifies as Trauma?
Trauma isn’t always a speeding car or a doctor’s office, but it can be a pervasive part of life. Every human has difficult experiences during childhood. If your childhood was relatively stable with few adverse experiences and the help of caring adults to process them, it is possible to enter adulthood with a good foundation. Even very traumatic events can be processed with the help of attuned adults. A traumatic event does not have to result in a life impacted by trauma.
Trauma can be any situation that overwhelms the capacity to cope. There is a difference between traumatic events everyone experiences—that most can leave in the past—and trauma that leaves long-lasting, debilitating effects. Trauma can result from a wide range of experiences. Understanding the impact of trauma involves knowing how the body responds, what you come to believe about yourself because of the event or events, and how you processed, or could not process, what happened.
Types of Trauma
Acute trauma results from a single stressful or dangerous event.
Chronic trauma results from repeated and prolonged exposure to highly stressful (traumatic) events as a child or adult.
Complex trauma results from exposure to varied and multiple traumatic events during childhood in the context of interpersonal relationships, most often a caregiver
The most damaging type of trauma is relational trauma. During childhood, if you experienced overwhelming emotions caused by betrayal, abuse, neglect, or abandonment by the very people who should have protected you, there is little doubt that you now feel the impact of trauma as an adult. In addition, the same or other adults may have shamed you because they lacked any knowledge concerning trauma-related behaviors.
The subconscious coping mechanism of dissociation (subconscious distancing) may have been essential to your survival. If dissociating became a way of life, you may now feel like you are living just outside of yourself. Like me, you may believe living this way is how everyone lives. Being in touch with trauma-based emotions is scary and when religious teachings tell you to leave the past behind and never trust your feelings, it sounds like a good idea.
Most religious teachings emphasize the renewing of your mind without consideration for how trauma impacts the body. Yes, being left to figure out how to survive on your own probably caused you to internalize false messages about yourself, and healing will address this.
You can learn to think differently, but not with a traumatized body that is constantly on guard. To renew the mind, the body must feel safe. For this reason, healing as a spiritual practice will focus on befriending your body. As van der Kolk stated, “Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies”(The Body Keeps the Score, p. 160). Trauma-sensitive spiritual practices can support this part of healing.
Final Thoughts
The good news is that healing from the impact of trauma is possible. This does not mean that you will reach a point in which you can live as if the trauma never happened. It does mean that it is possible to alleviate the intense suffering by processing the trauma and freeing yourself to live the abundant life Jesus intended.
The path to fully healing trauma, especially relational trauma, must include relationships that provide unconditional love or regard. Peter Levine states, “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Healing comes not because others offer answers but because they listen and compassionately believe the stories you share about your traumatic experiences. This is the role that trauma-responsive communities can provide—sadly, many of you have experienced just the opposite within church communities. I know this is true because almost every story that is shared with me involves elements of religious trauma. This will be discussed in the next chapter.
Excellent as always!