trauma

Trauma, from the ancient Greek word for “wound,” usually refers to lasting psychological harm resulting from an event that exceeds an individual’s ability to cope.

There are many kinds of psychological trauma

Over time, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has expanded the clinical definition of trauma. Initially it could result only from firsthand experience of physical violence, but now includes secondhand experience of (witnessing or hearing about) such violence against someone you care about, repeated secondhand exposure to the effects of violence, as well as other experiences causing intense fear, horror, and helplessness. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the condition sometimes resulting from trauma. Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) is a related condition resulting from not just one traumatic event but a history of them.

Complex trauma is, naturally, complex but certain patterns that can cause it have been identified:

Intergenerational trauma

This happens when parents’ experience of trauma leads to secondhand experience of it by their children and/or when parents’ inability to cope with their own trauma interferes with their ability to meet the emotional needs of their children. An example of hurt people hurting people. This was first identified in the 1960s in the symptoms experienced by Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Historical trauma

A kind of intergenerational trauma that results from trauma experienced by groups where the traumatic experiences and their effects are experienced, often in different ways, over time. This was first identified in the 1980s based on studying trauma resulting from the genocide, colonization, relocation, and assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

Racial Trauma

Racial trauma can result from the stress, fear, and experience of violence resulting from racism. As such, it can also be both intergenerational and historical. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the US published Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity identifying racial trauma as a contributing factor to racial disparities in Americans’ health, supporting the idea that Racism is a public health issue.

Systemic/Institutional trauma/betrayal

Another aspect of complex trauma is the role that institutions and systems play in causing, addressing, or exacerbating trauma, especially when those institutions are ostensibly there to help the victim. Examples might be of a victim of sexual assault who goes to the police only to be doubted or gaslit, a child placed in a foster home who is abused by their foster parent, or a woman seeking medical attention being told her symptoms aren’t real. Not only do these experiences cause direct and immediate trauma, but the loss of trust in and sense of betrayal by the institution add another layer to it, complicating recovery.

Trauma is real, but we don’t have to let it define us

It can be confusing that the word “trauma” refers both to the initial (or repeated) experience as well as the lingering symptoms resulting from it. This ambiguity seems especially problematic in the work of psychologist Alfred Adler, a contemporary of Freud and Jung. I learned of Adlerian psychology from the book The Courage to Be Disliked, which I picked up for no better reason than that people tend to like me and I wondered what I was missing out on (a lot, apparently). While I haven’t read Adler firsthand, the book makes clear “In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied.” In Adler’s words:

No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining. (Alfred Adler, quoted in The Courage to Be Disliked in a chapter called “Trauma does not exist”)

I’ve struggled to make sense of this. Adler was, after all, trying to improve the lives of his patients, so he can’t have been denying their experience of traumatic events or the psychological consequences, both of which are empirical facts about the world. What I think Adler was getting at was that recovering from trauma is an act of empowerment, that while the trauma in one’s past is undeniably real, one can choose how to move forward from that. I hope his point was not to minimize trauma, but to emphasize that we can be bigger than our traumas.

If I hadn’t been listening to The Courage to Be Disliked as an audiobook, I’d have thrown it across the room, because “trauma does not exist” is an irresponsible, even dangerous reduction of this idea. Telling someone their trauma isn’t real is the opposite of empowerment. And before empowerment, a precondition of trauma recovery is getting the victim to safety, which is severely hampered by denying the existence of trauma in the first place. The Courage to Be Disliked was an interesting read, but caveat lector.