Trauma is not necessarily proportional to an event's intensity.
#TRAUMA DEFINITION UPDATE#
It takes an update and reframing of your beliefs and sense of self, a new round of "meaning-making", to work through the trauma's impact. And if nothing fills the gap – nothing external to define and evaluate your worth, no other reasons to go on, nothing to explain the why, what, and how of each day – for some time, one can become unmoored. One's mental resilience, the oil that churns our cognitive machine and keeps us moving in stress, is depleted. Stress accumulates and the nervous system is forced on high-alert.
![trauma definition trauma definition](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/traumafromocclusion-170318145744/95/trauma-from-occlusion-2-638.jpg)
Being unexpectedly fired overturns this all. A job provides self-esteem, purpose and a social network, as well as comprising the activities of much of waking life. One's identity, the foundation of a "personal GPS", is often tied to work and its execution. Being fired from a job, for example, can be highly traumatic. When "the way you see yourself, the way you see the world, and the way you see other people" are shocked and overturned by an event – and a gap arises between your "orienting systems" and that event – simple stress cascades into trauma, often-mediated through sustained and severe feelings of helplessness.Įven our most everyday tragedies stand as potential pits for trauma. Trauma can be understood as a rupture in "meaning-making", says David Trickey, a psychologist and representative of the UK Trauma Council. How might we understand this mental fallout? And what does the science of trauma suggest that we should – and shouldn't – do in order to heal? But what separates it from something merely stressful is how we relate to these events on a deep level of belief.Īfter the pandemic ends, the effects of the mass trauma it has inflicted will linger across societies for years. What trauma is about is events and their effect on the mind.
![trauma definition trauma definition](https://image1.slideserve.com/2743884/chest-trauma-n.jpg)
And, trauma isn't the same thing as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It doesn't always come from short, sharp shocks like car accidents, terrorist attacks, or firefights. It isn't just a word for something extremely stressful. Trauma is a far subtler concept than many of us realise. And even within a mental health lens, "trauma" has hardly been the go-to in media discussions, which focus more on other problems like depression, anxiety, loneliness, and stress. Other frames of reference – economic, political, ecological, scientific – may seem more fitting.
![trauma definition trauma definition](https://aea365.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Hamai-pic-1.png)
When thinking about Covid-19, though, "trauma", let alone "mass trauma", may not be the first thing that springs to mind. The global economy, complex webs of international relations, individual mental health, the pitter-patter of everyday life: nothing has been spared in the viral storm. It's arguably the first of its kind since World War Two, and likely the first of such severity in your lifetime.Īt the time of writing, more than two million lives have been lost, and the number continues to rise by tens of thousands every day. You are living amid the first global mass trauma event for several decades.