Trauma is when we experience stressful, frightening or distressing events that are difficult to cope with or out of our control, which then has an ongoing impact on our life. It could be one incident, or an ongoing event that happens over a long period of time. Most of us will experience an event in our lives that could be considered traumatic. When it comes to trauma, how the person experiences an event is important – one person can be in a life-threatening/truly dangerous event and not develop a traumatic stress response afterwards, and someone else can have an upsetting (but safe) experience, but their brain perceives it as threatening, and this results in an ongoing emotional impact. Trauma can have a serious negative impact on someone’s life, particularly with their fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses.
