Compared to the early days of trauma recognition, we are a much more informed and aware culture. From the basic idea of “shell-shock” afflicting soldiers to the modern expansion that life- is- trauma, you can go a mile deep and get lost in all the data. Exposure to this information is great for reducing stigma and empowering individuals to seek counseling and support, but it can also hold us back from actual healing. Just because we understand something does not mean we have overcome.
In fact, of all the layers of mental health treatment and therapy, trauma can be thought of as the deep, underlying core that takes time and care to address. Newer modalities like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR for short) can be a powerful and timely trauma treatment, but even that takes careful preparation and a strong relationship with your therapist.
Peeling back the first layer is learning and understanding what might be happening and how trauma-responses operate and impact our daily life. Seeing a pattern or response as trauma-based does not immediately reverse it, however it is a vital part of recovery to understand the nature of the beast. For example, the difference between feeling something is part of your character and truly accepting the biological basis for changes in emotions and behaviors can help disentangle the guilt and tendency to believe things are forever going to be this way ( I am, therefore this is permanent).
Traumagenic states are one way to help re-define the experiences that happen after traumatic events. It is important to realize that not every potentially traumatic event will result in a response, or might be experienced much later after additional stress or traumas. Just because you have witnessed or experienced something difficult does not mean that you will experience these states.
It’s important to note the word “state”. Pop-psychology focuses so much on helping categorize our experiences, like personality type, enneagram, etc. that we can confuse at state with a trait. For certain individuals the stress of their childhood or chronic trauma may result in personality changes, but that is not the average situation. For most of us trauma responses are emotional and psychological states that are triggered by a situation or reminder of what happened. These responses are clearly outside of our normal behavior or our desired response. Much of what makes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder so difficult is the sense of being overwhelmed by ones own emotions and thoughts. These are not chosen or habitual behaviors—yet. These are altered states of mind brought on by full-body reactions to memories of the past. Memories that feel very present.
Keeping this in mind, let’s look at some predictable patterns of response found in children who have lived through terrifying and overwhelming life experiences—that we would call traumatic. If you are considering events that threatened your life or the life of someone you are close to, then these may apply to some of your adaptions or responses.
Self-Blame
Trauma damages our sense of self. Once we walk away from a terrifying experience we are searching for a way to reconstruct a positive view of ourselves. Certain traumas, like crime and acts of violence are more likely to produce this response than escaping a hurricane or deadly tornado. There is a deep shame, a sense of feeling strange, inadequate, or just different than others. Blame ultimately lowers self-confidence and can bring on depression and anxiety in situations where an individual before would have felt comfortable or even confident. Body image and eating disorders are also highly connected with the attempt to adapt and manage internal shame scripts. There may be internalization of negative stigmas or messages about what happened. There can be a tendency to isolate.
Powerlessness
Trauma reveals a reality where we become aware of how vulnerable we are. The world becomes a dangerous and unsafe place. To help compensate for this loss of safety in the world, individuals will seek power or ways to control their situation. This is not always clear or directly related to the trauma itself. Children can begin to lie, defy authority or become aggressive. Adults or teens may become involved in destructive behaviors. The predominate emotional experience connected with this is often anger and rage.
Loss and Betrayal
Maltreatment or abuse by a family member or sudden loss of someone important to us can result in an intense sense of betrayal and loss. This can look like grief, depression, inability to trust others or even explosive anger. For children who experience mistreatment by a trusted adult, this betrayal can become a sense of being unable to trust any adult. This can look like clinginess or even numbing emotions and becoming apathetic. Adults may be better able to put a situation into perspective, but they may still isolate or withdraw from relationships or even avoid building new ones. Individuals can experience complicated grief, that is inability to put loss into the past—reliving it and feeling as if losses keep happening over and over in their life. This is much different than healthy grieving, while intense and painful, it is specifically associated with the loss and becomes more bearable over time. Betrayal traumagenic responses create emotions and behaviors that convince us that things will disappear, loss will continue or that things are not to be trusted.
Fragmentation of Bodily Experience
This method of the brain and body putting away the hurtful and scary memories is greater than just dissociation. The painful memories connected with hurt and physical violation are actually encoded into sensory experiences, not verbal. This can create problems with eating, sleeping, somatic complaints (eg. genuine increase in perceived pain without cause), or risk-taking behaviors. Understanding this is a possible response the body has to trauma can be a relief for individuals who feel almost possessed or unable to control their body functions or behaviors. These are key signs of a traumagenic state and indicate a need for professional support. It can also help alleviate the re-traumatization that comes from seeking medical help and feeling invalidated when there is no identified medical reason for their concerns. It is real; but the treatment is not in the body, it is in the mind.
Eroticization
Even for children and youth, eroticization can be a complex response to sexual abuse and assault. Behaviors such as excessive masturbation, public masturbation, or sexual play are not moral failings but a red flag that a child has experienced sexual abuse. In the long-term, the hypersexuality or difficulty sorting the unwanted experience can impact intimacy and relationships. Patterns of sexual difficulty can be helped or even reversed for adults when the original trauma(s) are finally addressed.
Destructiveness
A response known as “identifying with the aggressor” is a traumagenic state that attempts to modulate the feeling of victimization. Aggression, destruction and revenge fantasies help individuals regain a sense of power and control. Understandably, approaching these behaviors in children and teens with punitive or aggressive discipline contributes to these behaviors. The behavior is not because empathy is impossible, but a primal searching to be safe makes empathy dangerous. Until someone can feel safe again, they may not be able to extend empathy to others.
Challenges with Attachment
For traumas that occur in childhood and have occurred within a trusting relationship with an adult there can be long-term efforts to reject others efforts to meet needs. Sabatoging possibly close and satisfying relationships when faced with closeness is a protective measure to ensure that they do not trust the wrong person again. Seeking attention and comfort and then not feeling satisfaction from the interactions can be another sign of chronic rejection of nurturance.
For those with untreated trauma, these states probably do read like traits, personality or even destiny. Traumagenic states are powerful and can convince us otherwise, but the good news is healing and recovery can happen. The most difficult part is often the persistence. Believing that you will not always have these feelings or believe the thoughts your mind is feeding you, that you can be safe and find trust again, these take time and can make all the difference.
If you are recovering from a life-threatening incident or have lived through events that were not ever fully processed, you might benefit from seeking a trauma therapist. It might start with addressing sleep issues or eating habits, but ultimately unwinding the source of these protective states can help you develop new, adaptive responses to triggers and memories. Good trauma therapy does not mean talking about the trauma constantly, but it does mean doing the painful work of addressing those memories and the damage they have done.
