We’re all (at least) a little bit traumatized

Something funny (interesting not haha) happened when I started writing my first blog post (EVER) about PTSD. I couldn’t stop writing about trauma. It is so pervasive and inherent to the human experience and apparently, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. This is part 1 of a series where I will attempt to shed some light on trauma. I hope it’s useful to you!

I read an op-ed a while back critiquing the overuse of the word “trauma[i].” While I do not think every injury or negative experience is necessarily a TRAUMA, there are more common experiences that leave us traumatized than we might be aware of (childbirth; poverty; discrimination; climate change, so on…more on this later).

In social work school we used to joke about being in the “Oppression Olympics,” and I made a point to remain respectfully silent when we were invited to be vulnerable and share adverse experiences in classroom practice. What did I have to be traumatized about? Looking back, I realize I did everyone a disservice by staying quiet—for the people who did share their experiences, they stayed isolated in the spotlight, othered from the “normies.” For those of us who didn’t think we warranted the experience of trauma, we minimized our individual struggles, which also minimized our unique strength and resilience.

When I finally started working with my own therapist, she gently helped me to recognize that in fact I do indeed have my own trauma, which I had always categorized as “not that bad.” I see this a lot with therapy clients, where people may downplay the painful things that happened to them because they don’t seem that bad compared with all the awful things that could have happened, or that happened to someone else. Something I appreciate about more normalized use of the label of “trauma,” is that it destigmatizes trauma. If we can name it, we can tame it people!

Labels aside, I have found it immensely helpful to identify the big scary thing (we all have at least one) in the therapy room. By simply acknowledging the real pain that we have endured, we are presented with an opportunity to learn more about ourselves.

Here’s a simple prompt for you: What difficult thing happened to me? What strengths helped me get through that? How has this changed me? What do I need now?