Exploring Trauma

Trauma is more than a bad memory or a rough patch. At its core, trauma is the lasting emotional, physical, and neurological impact of an overwhelming experience. It's important to remember that every human being has different levels for what is "overwhelming". On an individual basis, trauma is any experience that exceeded the person's ability to cope at the time it occurred.

That experience could be a single event, like a car accident or an assault, or it could be chronic and cumulative such as childhood neglect, living with domestic violence, or growing up in a home where emotional needs were never seen or met. I'm more focused on the effects of chronic exposure here.

What Trauma Does to the Brain

Trauma is a biological event, not just a psychological one. During overwhelming experiences, the brain enters survival mode: the amygdala (our internal alarm system) fires intensely, while the prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational thought and decision-making) goes offline. If this happens often or over time, the brain can actually rewire itself for survival. This means prioritizing hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, and rapid threat detection, even when danger is no longer present.

These changes often mean that a trauma survivor's nervous system stays on high alert. The hippocampus, which helps sort memory and context, may shrink or become less effective, causing flashbacks or confusion about whether a threat is past or present. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex struggles to regulate emotion or override fear based reactions.

How Trauma Affects Early Development

When trauma happens early in life it interferes with development across every domain: emotional, cognitive, physical, and relational. A child’s developing nervous system learns to expect chaos, danger, or abandonment. This can show up later as difficulty with trust, impulse control, attention, learning, or emotional regulation.

Kids that grow up in unsafe environments may learn to suppress feelings, stay constantly alert, or people pleasing to stay safe. These adaptations are not flaws, they are protective strategies that once worked. The trouble is, these same strategies can cause problems in adulthood when safety, closeness, or vulnerability are actually possible.

Racial, Cultural, and Environmental Trauma

Trauma doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Race, class, gender, and systemic oppression shape who experiences trauma, who gets diagnosed, and who gets help. For example:

• Black and Indigenous communities may experience trauma through state violence, intergenerational grief, or environmental racism.

• Immigrant and refugee families may carry collective trauma tied to displacement, war, and family separation.

• Queer and trans individuals often experience trauma through chronic invalidation, erasure, or religious rejection.

Trauma-informed care that doesn’t account for culture and context will fail the very people it’s meant to serve.

Trauma in Relationships

One of the deepest impacts of trauma shows up in relationships. People with unresolved trauma may struggle with intimacy, trust, boundaries, or feeling safe with others. Sometimes they push people away before they can be abandoned. Sometimes they over accommodate, trying to earn safety by being agreeable. Others feel distant, emotionally numb, or hyper-reactive in moments of stress.

Importantly, these aren’t signs of a “broken person”. They’re signs of a nervous system that learned how to survive.

How Trauma Affects Behavior

Trauma doesn’t always look like panic or flashbacks. It often hides in plain sight: procrastination, people-pleasing, outbursts, self-doubt, numbing, perfectionism, overworking, substance use, or withdrawing completely. It can also look like being "high functioning" on the outside but exhausted and disconnected inside.

Survivors of trauma often experience difficulties with attachment, boundaries, and trust. They may:

• Feel unworthy or unlovable

• Alternate between isolation and codependency

• Interpret safety as boring, and chaos as familiar

• Struggle to communicate needs or tolerate vulnerability

  
  

These behaviors are not random. They’re protective adaptations. Trauma teaches people how to survive a dangerous world. Healing asks them to rewire for a safer one. But that requires safety, consistency, and trust, often for the first time.

The Good News: Healing is Possible

Because trauma lives in the body and brain, healing isn’t just about talking; it’s about retraining the nervous system, restoring safety in relationships, and giving people the tools to respond instead of react. Effective trauma therapy helps clients build internal resources, develop awareness of their survival patterns, and gently make space for healing at their own pace.

You don’t have to “just get over it”. You get to move through it. I see it as an honor to be one of the people who walks beside you with a compass, maps, and lanterns.