Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsSo, What Is a Trauma Response?What Isn’t a Trauma Response?Trauma Survivors Should Not Be PathologizedEven Therapists Question What Is and Isn’t TraumaWhat’s the Harm in Labeling Everything As a Trauma Response?When Are Labels Helpful in Healing?

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

So, What Is a Trauma Response?

What Isn’t a Trauma Response?

Trauma Survivors Should Not Be Pathologized

Even Therapists Question What Is and Isn’t Trauma

What’s the Harm in Labeling Everything As a Trauma Response?

When Are Labels Helpful in Healing?

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I’m atherapistwho specializes in treating trauma, specifically those experiencingpost-traumatic stress disorder. This means I’m versed in utilizing trauma-specific techniques likeeye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR) therapyto support those who have experienced abuse, neglect, interpersonal violence, and a range of catastrophic events.

While trauma used to be most commonly associated with veterans, research has expanded to acknowledge that a range of adverse events can be considered trauma and can trigger trauma responses.ujk

In this work, I’ve become attuned to the fact thattraumais often overlooked. What some consider an experience of typical cultural practice, like corporal punishment in the form of spanking children, can actually veer into child abuse, which can result in trauma. Others may consider themselves someone who loves working hard and working a lot. This may be a response to having experienced abuse and learning to use overworking as a distraction from the lasting effects of trauma.

The increasing awareness of trauma and its impact on our minds, bodies, and hearts allows more of us to feel validated, seek out treatment, heal, and ultimately stop the cycle of trauma. Yet, not everything is a trauma response. Insisting it can cause more harm than good.

What Is EMDR Therapy?

First, let’s get very clear on the actual definition oftrauma. The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.”

The wordssignificant,long-lasting,andfunctioningare the key terms to keep in mind when considering what might be a trauma response and what may be a reaction to a stress-inducing situation. We can conceptualize trauma as a two-part phenomenon: the event and then our internal processing that shapes our response to the event.

A trauma response is how we respond to trauma. Mental health professionals typically conceptualize this through the lens offight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These responses are involuntary functions of our autonomic nervous system and take hold when we are faced with a traumatic experience.

Fight is when we face the event head-on and begin engaging in combat; flight is when we evade the event in order to stay safe; freeze is when we stop everything and become immobile until the threat passes; and fawn, which is also sometimes called “tend and befriend,” is when we appease the perpetrator to avoid any further escalation of the conflict.

Post-Divorce Trauma and PTSD

First, let me be clear. This video isn’t incorrect, and the creator, who creates plenty of excellent videos, didn’t do anything wrong. Research shows that rewatching content can not only provide comfort but can also lead to a deeper awareness of our personal growth since we are revisiting content at a different time in our lives, inviting us to reflect on the plot, how we experience the content, and how our perspectives have changed.Engaging in a safe, relaxing, and supportive activity isessentialfor trauma survivors.

However, this doesn’t mean anyone who loves reruns of “This Is Us” is experiencing a trauma response.Social mediaisn’t a replacement for therapy and trauma responses can be quite individualized. Content like this, which went viral, can lead to hundreds of people believing their comfort rituals are a response to trauma. Some may be left digging for trauma that hasn’t occurred.

Social mediaisn’t a replacement for therapy and trauma responses can be quite individualized.

Something that I find even more problematic is the lack of sources for the claims made on social media. If this is anecdotal evidence from someone’s experience as a trauma therapist, that is completely valid but should be clearly stated as such since that is different from receiving information from a peer-reviewed journal.

Those who do hold a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder aren’t always having atrauma response. Let’s say someone with PTSD gets into a disagreement with their spouse. While the disagreement wasn’t heated, it touched on a sensitive topic that both parties are struggling to see eye-to-eye on. This person feels misunderstood, angry, and sad. They have trouble focusing the next day, considering how the situation can be remedied.

They might be a bit irritable, too, since their sleep also suffered. This isn’t necessarily a trauma response—depending on the content of the disagreement, it could be a reasonable response tointerpersonal conflict. In fact, insisting this is a trauma response could be quite pathologizing for the person who is having an appropriate response to an unsettling experience.

How to Know When It’s Time to See a Therapist

Here’s a personal example. I strongly dislikegoing to the dentist. The sound of the drillingoverstimulatesme, and I have sensitive teeth, so even routine cleanings can feel uncomfortable. During one appointment, I motioned to the dentist to stop, and she didn’t see my hand moving, leading her to continue drilling. Once she finally saw me and stopped, I was scared and breathing. In the following weeks, I turned over the event in my mind, thinking about how I dreaded future dental appointments, and ended up talking about it with one of my colleagues.

“I don’t want to go back at all. Does this now mean I have trauma around going to the dentist?” I mused aloud. I was serious—I never liked the dentist and was really scared during that appointment. I considered bringing it up to my own EMDR therapist.

“Well. It was an awful experience and you’re having an appropriate response to it. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re having a trauma response,” my colleague replied.

While this response may seem lacking compassion to some, it was very grounding for me to hear. I reflected on the definition of trauma. I did have significant fear during that experience and wasn’t looking forward to returning, but it didn’t have long-lasting impacts on my behavior or functioning. In fact, I returned to my follow-up appointment, spoke to my dentist about how I felt, and worked with her to troubleshoot how to make sure this didn’t happen in the future. While I’m still not a huge fan of the dentist, I am able to get through my appointments with minimal stress.

What to Know About PTSD in Teenagers

For starters, labeling everything as a trauma response is an inaccurate approach. Everythingisn’ta trauma response, and spreading misinformation isn’t good for anyone. Assuming everything is trauma can result in folks feeling that something traumatic must have happened to them, when, in fact, they’re having an appropriate response to an unsettling experience.

I did have significant fear during that experience and wasn’t looking forward to returning, but it didn’t have long-lasting impacts on my behavior or functioning.

In turn, individuals may find themselves digging for traumatic memories and mining their past for explanations as to why they’re having a particular experience of a negative event. Furthermore, assuming someone who is atrauma survivoris experiencing a trauma response can be deeplypathologizing.

While it is problematic to slap trauma as a label onto any old facet of thehuman experience, there are times when it is extremely important to have the appropriate label of trauma. I cannot count how many times I have seen someone deeply suffering and not understanding why, blaming themselves for things that happened to them, insisting it wasn’t a big deal and they should be “over it.”

Overwhelmed? Do These 5 Things Today

2 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Psychological Association.Trauma.Russell CA, Levy SJ.The temporal and focal dynamics of volitional reconsumption: a phenomenological investigation of repeated hedonic experiences.J Consum Res. 2012;39(2):341-359. doi:10.1086/662996

2 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.American Psychological Association.Trauma.Russell CA, Levy SJ.The temporal and focal dynamics of volitional reconsumption: a phenomenological investigation of repeated hedonic experiences.J Consum Res. 2012;39(2):341-359. doi:10.1086/662996

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

American Psychological Association.Trauma.Russell CA, Levy SJ.The temporal and focal dynamics of volitional reconsumption: a phenomenological investigation of repeated hedonic experiences.J Consum Res. 2012;39(2):341-359. doi:10.1086/662996

American Psychological Association.Trauma.

Russell CA, Levy SJ.The temporal and focal dynamics of volitional reconsumption: a phenomenological investigation of repeated hedonic experiences.J Consum Res. 2012;39(2):341-359. doi:10.1086/662996

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