Moving Beyond Trauma as a Buzzword

In recent years, “trauma” has become a cultural buzzword, used in contexts far from its clinical definition.

“That meeting was traumatizing!”

“I am traumatized by how bad that restaurant was.”

“That pile of emails gave me PTSD.”

By using the term this way, we’re muddying the waters of what really is trauma, and diluting the experiences of people for whom carrying trauma has deeply impacted their lives and relationships.

Activation vs. Traumatization

When “trauma” means everything, it stops meaning anything.

We’re essentially confusing trauma with nervous system activation and feeling “triggered.”

In a traumatized state, your body goes into shutdown, and you lose the ability to make decisions. Sounds may feel distant, you can’t find words, and you go numb. This is your body going into survival mode to protect your psyche and help you get through whatever situation you’re in.

However, during activation, your nervous system becomes hyperaroused. You may feel anxious, tight, or jumpy, but you can still think and make choices. You can take some deep breaths and move your body, and bring yourself back to baseline fairly quickly. 

Both experiences are valid, but they’re not the same.

Baselines and Sensitivity: Why Two People React Differently

Our individual nervous system baselines differ. Two people with different thresholds and past experiences may respond differently to the same situation.

For example, let’s say a door slams loudly in a hallway where two people are standing.

One person feels activated by the loud noise of the door slamming. Their body jolts and their heart rate jumps. They feel tense and alert, and their thoughts are racing, but they can still think clearly and make decisions. They decide to go outside for a walk and take some deep breaths. Within 15 minutes, they’re back to baseline and can make sense of what happened.

Another person hears the door slam and enters a traumatized state. Perhaps they grew up in an abusive household, and a door slamming in their home meant their parent was angry and about to turn violent.

This person’s body freezes. Their shoulders cave, and their breath goes shallow or disappears. Decision-making collapses, they abandon what they were doing, sit on the floor staring into space, feeling numb. They lose track of time and have a patchy memory. Hours later, they’re drained, and it’s hard to resume their day.

Understanding Your Trauma

Trauma isn’t the event itself. It’s what happens inside of you as a result. Peter Levine defines trauma as “anything that is too much, too soon, or too fast for our nervous system to handle.”

Acute trauma follows a single incident. Chronic trauma comes from repeated or ongoing threats. Complex trauma develops in prolonged, inescapable, often relational contexts – especially in childhood – shaping a person’s sense of safety and self.

Most people are carrying around some form of trauma, whether acute, chronic, or complex.

It’s easier to identify if you’re carrying acute trauma, such as being in a car accident, or the victim of a violent crime. With this type of trauma, there is usually a before and after. Perhaps after the event, you noticed symptoms such as insomnia, intrusive thoughts, or flashbacks.

It’s more difficult to spot whether or not you’re carrying the burden of complex trauma. This is especially the case for individuals who have attachment issues – a kind of trauma that I’ve found to be common in my practice.

Attachment Trauma: What Is It and How to Navigate It

Attachment trauma arises when a child’s bids for care are met with chronic misattunement, unavailability, or instability. The body learns that closeness isn’t safe or dependable, and that template often repeats in adult relationships.

For example, someone who grew up with an absent parent may subconsciously choose romantic partners who are avoidant or show avoidant tendencies themselves, because they never practiced truly opening up to love as a child.

Or someone who felt like they were never “enough” for their parents as a child might develop an anxious attachment style, where no amount of attention or affection in their relationship feels like enough for them.

I recommend that anyone working through attachment trauma go through a process of reparenting themselves. This is where you intentionally give yourself what you may have been missing in childhood – whether love, support, safety, or structure. 

The book You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard C. Schwartz is an excellent resource for reparenting yourself and healing attachment wounds in the context of your relationships. 

Schwartz is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic modality that helps us understand and work with our inner family of different “parts” that influence our patterns and behaviors – from a place of non-judgment.

You might also check out the book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find – And Keep Love if you’d like to learn more about attachment styles.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is another highly effective way to treat trauma, as well as guided psychedelic medicine experiences, as part of an ongoing psychotherapeutic process.

And of course, talk therapy can help you understand, explore, and process past traumas in a safe and non-judgmental space. We offer all of these modalities at Reflective Healing Center.

You Never Fully Heal Your Trauma. And That’s OK.

In her book, Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, Rabbi Tirza Firestone explains how you never fully heal and release your trauma. You integrate it. It becomes a part of you, and you learn how to take care of it. This is the approach we take to trauma therapies at Reflective Healing Center.

So, how do you actually do this?

You learn how to regulate your nervous system. You learn how to develop relationships that are supportive. You learn how to communicate your needs and feelings.

You learn how to self-soothe. You learn who the safe people are, and where the safe places are. You learn about the foods and substances that nourish your system, and how to engage in self-care.

All of this allows us to turn our traumas into wisdom and live more authentically and compassionately toward ourselves and others.

If you’re wondering how to move through the trauma you’re carrying, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Reflective Healing Center offers trauma-informed and attachment-focused talk therapy, EMDR, and psychedelic therapies.

Book a free consultation and explore what support could look like for you.