Identifying & Understanding Trauma Responses

Trauma Responses – A trauma response is NOT a mental illness but it can appear to the ‘uninitiated’ that it is a mental illness

As the graph below shows it can affect your physical health as well as your mental health.

The problem with many (post) traumatic responses of all ‘flavors’ is that the sufferer can easily be retraumatized – either through contact with the traumatizing stimulus (or similar) and so it is not as though the trauma is over and people can ‘start healing’ and ‘move on’.

A good example of this is where a victim shares parental custardy of their children with an abusive partner.

Consequently, the ability to ‘heal’ often looks simpler to do (to an outside observer) than it is in practice.

The first two are those traditionally thought of as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) responses because the traumatic event is over but the person suffers from ‘emotional flashbacks’.

The latter two, I would say are more common where there is a danger of the trauma re-occurring (and so it is not ‘over’).
 
Personally, I have experienced the latter two but even then I would qualify these.

With the last one, I would describe what I experience as not so much hypervigilance but being ‘sensitive’ to situations in which abuse may occur – visitations or contact from an abuser, or having to go into an environment in which one is likely to encounter one’s abuser.

It is not an avoidance response but one in which, when retraumatized it provokes what (to many) may appear be an ‘exaggerated’ or ‘supersensitive’ response.

This is sometimes used by the abuser to ‘demonstrate’ to outsiders that the victim is ‘making something out of nothing’.

I think a lot of this is seen in court cases or police investigations when the stimulus is presented in cold dispassionate terms, some ‘distance’ (in time) from the event, and it does often appear as though the victim ought to have ‘checked’ their emotions or responses.

Similarly, with the second from last one, I would describe it more as an inconsistent or disturbed sleeping pattern – which is part of the ‘fight or flight’ response.

Cortisol is used for energy and so one is in a constant state of ‘preparedness’ for the traumatic stimuli.

This can lead to you putting on weight – The body is preparing for ‘fight or flight’ and so consumes energy in the form of starches or sugar, but instead of being used to physically fight the foe or flee the situation, just ‘escapes’ to another room in the house or computer (but one has still consumed the calories).

You can see how this leads to putting on weight – your body telling you that you NEED to consume these calories, which you do not actually burn…

Again, whether one suffers from ‘social anxiety’ really depends on the type of trauma – this would be common in bullying-type situations.

It is important to understand that not everyone will suffer from all of these trauma responses and that the symptoms one suffers will depend on the type of trauma.