Trauma often refers to experience or events that are overwhelming. Experiences of trauma can be terrifying, shocking, and devastating, and often result in profound feelings of terror, shame, helplessness, and powerlessness. These experiences overwhelm or compromise an individual’s capacity to cope. It is the individual’s experience of the event, and not necessarily the event itself, that becomes traumatizing. 

However, not everyone who experiences trauma will experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Stress symptoms are a common reaction to a traumatizing event, but may subside with time. In addition to experiencing a traumatic event, a diagnosis of PTSD requires the following symptoms to be present for more than one month, and to significantly impair the quality of one’s life: 

• a persistent re-experiencing of the trauma (i.e. intrusive thoughts, nightmares, or “flashbacks” of the traumatizing event which causing prolonged distress or dissociation)
• persistent avoidance of distressing trauma-related reminders (including trauma-related thoughts, memories, people, places, or things)
• negative alterations in mood (i.e. inability to recall significant features of the traumatic event; persistent feelings of distorted blame of self or others; alienation, distress or detachment from others; inability to feel positive emotions such as love, happiness and joy; significantly diminished interest in previously-enjoyed activities; negative emotions such as horror, fear, guilt and shame; feelings like “I am/the world is bad”, etc.)
• Trauma-related changes to arousal states that began or were worsened by the traumatic event (i.e. feeling “on-guard” or fearful most of the time, angering easily, engaging in self-destructive behaviour including addictions, feeling highly “jumpy”, difficulty concentrating or sleeping).

According to some experts, distinction can be made between PTSD and C (i.e. Complex)-PTSD, the main difference between the two being the frequency of the trauma: while PTSD is caused by a single traumatic event, such as a car accident, C-PTSD is caused by long-lasting trauma that continues or repeats for months, even years, usually in the context of abuse. Unlike PTSD, which can develop regardless of what age you are when the trauma occurred, C-PTSD is often the result of childhood trauma.

Trauma is not only limited to the individual, but can be found at the collective level as well. Groups who have experienced a widespread trauma in common, such as war, slavery, or a pandemic may hold similar experiences of the shared trauma in their individual bodies and minds. Trauma may also be intergenerational, as the profoundly traumatized may pass on their trauma symptoms to the following generations (including through DNA, which the field of epigenetics has shown). Along with inter-generational traumas, there are attachment traumas that can occur when a child does not feel that they were adequately seen, heard, loved, or nurtured by their attachment figures, who are usually – but not always – their parents. An insecurely-attached child may grow to become an adult who has difficulty sustaining satisfying intimate relationships with appropriate boundaries.