Trauma is an emotional response to distressing events that can significantly impact an individual's mental and physical health. It can arise from various experiences, including accidents, crime, bullying, or loss, and can manifest as acute, chronic, or complex trauma. The effects of trauma include emotional dysregulation and may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which impairs daily functioning and alters thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

1. WHAT IS TRAUMA?
The American Psychological Association defines trauma as an emotional response to a terrible event like
experiencing an accident, being the victim of a crime, or enduring a natural disaster. The variety of
individual responses to trauma can make it challenging to define. In the face of these difficulties, it is
essential to understand the meaning and effects of such distress.
Trauma: Sudden And Unpredictable
Trauma can stem from a multitude of experiences in which a person finds them emotionally or
physically threatening and beyond their control. The more fearful and helpless an individual feels, the
more traumatic the situation becomes. These situations may lead to distressing emotions, painful
memories and anxiety. Widely perceived causes of trauma are generally associated with horrific crimes
or war.
However, more commonly overlooked causes include bullying, abandonment, harassment, psychological
abuse, childbirth and losing a loved one. In fact, these types of traumas may cause an exponentially
negative impact on other situations such not achieving a goal, birthing, parenting or maintaining healthy
relationships.
Trauma impacts a person’s control over their life, leading to emotional dysregulation. Regardless of the
type of event, trauma distorts the way a person thinks, acts, feels and interferes with daily functioning.
Types Of Trauma
 Acute Trauma

2. Acute trauma results from a single incident or dangerous events, such as a car accident, death of a loved
one, mass shooting, or natural disaster (hurricane, flood, earthquake)
 Chronic Trauma
Chronic trauma is repeated and prolonged, such as domestic abuse or child abuse.
 Complex Trauma
Complex trauma is exposure to multiple traumatic events, usually affecting a person’s overall health,
relationships, and daily functioning. For example, ongoing sexual, physical, or emotional abuse
combined with medical abuse or abandonment.
 Vicarious Trauma
Vicarious trauma, also known as secondary trauma, occurs when a person has close contact with
someone who has experienced a traumatic event. For example, people who work in victim services such
as law enforcement, medical services or fire services.
The Emotional And Physical Distress Of Trauma
A tragic event is heart-wrenching. The challenge continues even as an individual who tries to cope with
the emotional reactions.
Experiencing trauma can increase anger, fear, shame, denial, confusion, guilt and irritability. This is not
only because of the traumatic event itself but because victims often brush off the emotional experience
of the event. Unlike most memories, trauma makes the memories recurring. The trauma brings the
sensations and emotions back into the present.
Trauma can also have physical effects such as digestive issues, fatigue, headaches, racing heart, shaking,
and becoming easily startled.

3. A counselor who is trained in trauma is mindful of these consequences when discussing trauma.
What affects one person may not affect another to the same degree. Physical effects correlate with the
human fight, flight or freeze responses. When in the triggered condition, a person will fight back, run
away or standstill. These responses are common to all people.
Trauma Might Lead To PTSD
The combination of those emotional responses and physical effects can lead to what is known as Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD. It is defined as a disorder that may occur in
people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event who have been threatened with death,
sexual violence or severe injury.