TRAUMA, Trauma, trauma, or Drama?
When A Word Becomes Overused And How It Causes Problems For Everyone
TRAUMA, Trauma, trauma, or Drama?
When A Word Becomes Overused And How It Causes Problems For Everyone
Written by a human, for humans, always.
Trauma exists.
But there’s a problem...
What do “you” mean when you say trauma?
No...
I’m not asking you to write in the comment section or email me your thoughts.
I’m asking you to consider what the word “trauma” actually means.
Why?
The reality is that in today’s world it means a “lot” of different things...
Those different things are often not equal...
Either in intensity nor psychophysiologically...
And that is a problem.
The reason it is a problem...
Is that different types of “trauma” as people use the word today...
Require vastly different methodologies in terms of psychophysiology.
For instance...
Say you receive blunt-force trauma to the head.
That is a form of “trauma”...
But if you go and try to get it resolved with talk therapy...
It really is not going to do anything helpful.
That just is not what a therapist works on...
It is the wrong type of trauma.
If you have blunt-force trauma to your head...
You probably are going to have a concussion...
Which means you likely need a Medical Doctor of some sort, from a Sports Medicine Specialist to a Neurologist.
Now, when I asked what “you” mean when you say trauma...
You likely were thinking of a different type of trauma that is more frequently discussed in today’s world...
Psychological trauma.
But again...
When people talk about psychological trauma...
They often are not discussing the same thing.
There is TRAUMA, which I’m using here to refer to some of the greatest psychological horrors that we can be exposed to as humans...
There is Trauma, which is still a form of trauma that leaves a significant psychological impact but at a lesser level than TRAUMA...
There is trauma, which is actually just regular everyday adversity that humans face, but which people seek to put a label on it for various reasons...
Then there is drama, which is where a person is not experiencing or has not experienced any significant level of psychological trauma, but is seeking either...
Some reason or explanation for what they are facing in their life, which is not caused by any trauma, but which is a valid unrelated problem...
Or...
They are seeking attention.
Here is how this becomes so problematic.
When people say they have “trauma” in any of these senses...
They could be referring to any one of these...
And getting them incorrect becomes very problematic.
If you treat someone who has attention-seeking drama “trauma” as if they had TRAUMA....
You can actually end up causing real psychophysiological harm to the attention-seeker...
While simultaneously making it vastly more difficult for someone with TRAUMA to get the resources they actually need.
The same happens for the unrelated drama “trauma” where they may be chasing something in therapy that does not exist...
Be getting medicated for problems they do not have...
Often creating new problems in their body...
While the real challenges they face have to do with something else entirely that is going on unresolved...
While time and resources are being used all on the wrong thing.
Or if we look at the person with trauma...
If we treat them as if their regular human challenges are Trauma...
This can very easily begin to create feelings of brokenness, leading quickly to a loss of autonomy and agency...
Which creates significant psychophysiological barriers of powerlessness which can be difficult to overcome...
All over things which are very normal, human, and frequently have relatively easy solutions.
Now, something similar can happen with Trauma if we treat it as TRAUMA...
But the difference is that even though both have similar solutions...
By calling it the same thing, the person with Trauma may “believe” that it is something which is extremely difficult to overcome...
Because they are imagining that they have TRAUMA...
And this creates a psychophysiological response where it actually becomes “more” difficult for them to overcome their Trauma.
It is a weird function of our psychophysiology that simply by believing something is more difficult, it literally becomes more difficult than it has to be...
And it is the same function that by believing something is possible, we are vastly more likely to be able to accomplish or overcome that thing.
When we use the same exact word for TRAUMA and Trauma, we may actually make it vastly more difficult for the person with Trauma to get to a resolution in their life.
All of this can also become worse...
Depending on the healthcare practitioner you have.
How?
Well...
While it is possible to have an egomaniacal healthcare practitioner who purposefully does bad things...
Such as misdiagnose for their own profit...
Or push a client deeper into their problems so they can give a new label to the client’s challenges for their own gain...
Often that is not the real challenge.
Far more often...
A healthcare practitioner is trained in a specific way, and they may be really good at how they are trained...
But their training actually becomes the problem.
It was designed in a certain way to see the world a certain way and treat things in such a manner...
And because that is how their entire vision was shaped within their training...
It becomes a set of blinders.
So, say that a particular talk therapist is trained that most emotional challenges stem from Trauma...
What it does is that it frames their perception to “see” every emotional challenge as a Trauma to identify.
Then, their training kicks in...
And they start to both convince their client that there “must” be a Trauma, and they will begin a crusade to find that Trauma...
Even if the real problem might actually be the fact that the client has a nutrient deficiency in their diet, making it impossible for their body to produce certain neurochemicals that we create the emotions they seek.
The vast majority of the time...
This type of talk therapist actually really does intend well for the client...
But their training has blinded them into seeing the world in such a way that actually does not help clients who have no Trauma...
Potentially even to the point where the client unintentionally invents a memory, which now both the client and therapist truly believe was hidden deep in the subconscious.
However...
The problems do not end here for us...
Because we can also have what are called Trauma Capsules, which are progressions of Memory Capsules in the Nervous System.
Now here is what is interesting about the Trauma Capsules...
They “can” be created by TRAUMA and Trauma...
But they can also be created by a long series of trauma with similar features...
Such as sights, colors, sounds, emotions, etc.
Now here is where it becomes tricky...
The Trauma Capsule can develop from these...
Begin to become physically experienced as things such as pain...
Can become triggered by anything we experience in the future with similar features to what was originally stored there...
But...
Usually you cannot solve them through methodologies used for TRAUMA or Trauma.
What this means...
Is that someone may go to a talk therapist for TRAUMA or Trauma...
Actually “resolve” the purely psychological aspect of those events...
But may still experience physical effects from the Trauma Capsule becoming triggered...
Making both the therapist and the client believe that there is still something unresolved psychologically...
When the real challenge is actually in the Nervous System, requiring a different solution.
Then...
You can have some mixture of “all” of these different types of “trauma”.
For instance...
Someone could go to war and experience a physical trauma...
That is simultaneously a psychological TRAUMA...
Which also is stored in the nervous system as a Trauma Capsule.
They could go to a talk therapist and a Medical Doctor for those different traumas.
The doctor may not be able to do a lot about the injury except make sure things do not become worse, which may become a new Trauma.
That may end up leading the client to have relationship problems, making them lonely, and so they begin to have a seeking attention drama out of their loneliness.
The TRAUMA may become resolved from a psychological standpoint, but the Trauma Capsule may still trigger...
So a Talk Therapist may begin to wonder if there is a “different” Trauma that is hidden beneath the TRAUMA.
The client likes that they are getting attention, and they are still experiencing the effects of the Trauma Capsule, and so begin to believe there is a subconscious Trauma...
But because it does not actually exist...
The therapist and the client continue to delve and treat for problems that do not exist...
While real problems remain unresolved and unquestioned...
Even though the Therapist really is trying everything in their power to help the client...
And even though the client likes the attention, they really do want to reach a resolution of their challenges to live life as “normally” as possible...
Whatever that means in the aftereffects of their real TRAUMA.
Can you see how we overuse the word “trauma” now as a society...
And how difficult it can make things for everyone?
What does this mean for us?
We need to become vastly more precise with what we mean when we say “trauma”.
Whether that means we create new terms...
Or we eliminate certain types and begin to call them something more appropriate to their scale.
We also need to have a deeper understanding of the various ways things play out from a whole person perspective...
Understood through different types of modalities...
So that any singular practitioner does not become trapped in one line of thinking...
And can make better calls for where a line might need to be drawn in their work and where a different type of practitioner might be more appropriate.
People also need to understand...
That not everything called “trauma” is the same thing...
And to treat them all the same is a recipe for disaster.
Trauma exists...
We just need to know what type we are talking about to find the best solutions.
To Your Sageship,
Cody
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