By Esther Giller
President and Director, The Sidran Foundation

We all use the word "trauma" in every day language to mean a highly stressful event. But the key to understanding traumatic events is that it refers to extreme stress that overwhelms a person's ability to cope. There is no clear divisions between stress (which leads to → ) trauma (which leads to → ) adaptation. Although I am writing about psychological trauma, it is also important to keep in mind that stress reactions are clearly physiological as well.

Different experts in the field define psychological trauma in different ways. What I want to emphasize is that it is an individual's subjective experience that determines whether an event is or is not traumatic.

Psychological trauma is the unique individual experience of an event or enduring conditions, in which:

1. The individual's ability to integrate his/her emotional experience is overwhelmed, or
2. The individual experiences (subjectively) a threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity. (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995, p. 60)

Thus, a traumatic event or situation creates psychological trauma when it overwhelms the individual's perceived ability to cope, and leaves that person fearing death, annihilation, mutilation, or psychosis. The individual feels emotionally, cognitively, and physically overwhelmed. The circumstances of the event commonly include abuse of power, betrayal of trust, entrapment, helplessness, pain, confusion, and/or loss.

This definition of trauma is fairly broad. It includes responses to powerful one-time incidents like accidents, natural disasters, crimes, surgeries, deaths, and other violent events. It also includes responses to chronic or repetitive experiences such as child abuse, neglect, combat, urban violence, concentration camps, battering relationships, and enduring deprivation. This definition intentionally does not allow us to determine whether a particular event is traumatic; that is up to each survivor. This definition provides a guideline for our understanding of a survivor's experience of the events and conditions of his/her life.

Jon Allen, a psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas and author of Coping with Trauma: A Guide to Self-Understanding (1995) reminds us that there are two components to a traumatic experience: the objective and the subjective.

"It is the subjective experience of the objective events that constitutes the trauma...The more you believe you are endangered, the more traumatized you will be...Psychologically, the bottom line of trauma is overwhelming emotion and a feeling of utter helplessness. There may or may not be bodily injury, but psychological trauma is coupled with physiological upheaval that plays a leading role in the long-range effects" (p.14).

In other words, trauma is defined by the experience of the survivor. Two people could undergo the same noxious event and one person might be traumatized while the other person remained relatively unscathed. It is not possible to make blanket generalizations such that "X is traumatic for all who go through it" or "event Y was not traumatic because no one was physically injured." In addition, the specific aspects of an event that are traumatic will be different from one individual to the next. You cannot assume that the details or meaning of an event, such as a violent assault or rape, that are most distressing for one person will be same for another person.

Trauma comes in many forms, and there are vast differences among people who experience trauma. But the similarities and patterns of response cut across the variety of stressors and victims, so it is very useful to think broadly about trauma.

Single Blow vs. Repeated Trauma

Lenore Terr, in her studies of traumatized children, has made the distinction between single blow and repeated traumas. Single shocking events can certainly produce trauma reactions in some people:

• Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, etc.
• Closely related are technological disasters such as auto and plane crashes, chemical spills, nuclear failures, etc. Technological disasters are more socially divisive because there is always energy given towards finding fault and blaming.
• Criminal violence often involves single blow traumas such as robbery, rape and homicide, which not only have a great impact on the victims, but also on witnesses, loved ones of victims, etc. (Interestingly, there is often overlap between single blow and repeated trauma, because a substantial majority of victimized women have experienced more than one crime.) Unfortunately, traumatic effects are often cumulative.

As traumatic as single-blow traumas are, the traumatic experiences that result in the most serious mental health problems are prolonged and repeated, sometimes extending over years of a person's life.

continue: Types of Psychological Trauma

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Reviewed: 04/2006