Definition of Trauma

“Trauma is when we have encountered an out of control, frightening experience that has disconnected us from all sense of resourcefulness or safety or coping or love”.

– Tara Brach, 2011

A traumatic event can involve a single experience, or enduring repeated events, that completely overwhelm the individual’s ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved in that experience.

Traumatizing events can take a serious emotional toll on those involved, even if the event did not cause physical damage. This can have a profound impact on the individual’s identity, resulting in negative effects in mind, body, soul and spirit.

Components

Regardless of its source, trauma contains three common elements:

• It was unexpected.
• The person was unprepared.
• There was nothing the person could do to stop it from
  happening.

Simply put, traumatic events are beyond a person’s control.

It is not the event that determines whether something is traumatic to someone, but the individual’s experience of the event and the meaning they make of it.

Next: Prevalence of Trauma >