Thoughtful Thursday: Trauma

Thoughtful Thursday: Trauma

Understanding trauma

• Stress can be categorized into positive, tolerable, and toxic.

  • Positive stress serves an adaptive function, it helps us survive and grow because it signals the body to use resources required for certain events. This does not overburden our body unlike other forms of stress.

  • Tolerable stress is a higher degree of stress as a result of more severe events but we are able to tolerate this because of protective factors such as supportive friends, a healthy environment, and so on.

  • Toxic stressors are the same severe events but we are unable to tolerate this because of the lack of sufficient protective factors. This is where trauma exists.

• Trauma is a response to a highly distressing event. This can be different for all of us because what we find highly distressing varies and so do our coping mechanisms. Traumatic experiences drastically impact us and not being able to continue on as usual is understandable.

• A mix of environmental, temperamental, and genetic factors contribute to the onset of trauma. Traumatic experiences tend to have the most severe effects on people who are predisposed to it in some way.

• In childhood, we are deeply vulnerable. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in particular can be cause for traumatic stress that tends to have long term effects on us.

• The effects of trauma can be physical, psychological, and so on- ranging from numbness to severe impairments like intellectual difficulties. To combat the issues, people often resort to health risk behaviours like substance abuse. While it is a means to self-soothe, coping in this way can perpetuate the problem so it becomes necessary to establish healthier patterns of coping.

Relation with PD

Trauma can be a contributory factor for many mental health concerns. While PTSD is what first comes to mind when we talk about trauma, personality disorders are also of significant relevance in this regard. Not everyone with a personality disorder, however, reports a traumatic experience in childhood.

Prolonged and repeated trauma in childhood can contribute to an inability to regulate emotions, which results in behavioural patterns characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD). This involves disturbed relationships, self-injury, and so on. Trauma is also associated with dissociative identity disorder where individuals face certain disconnects in their thoughts, identities, and so on as a result of trauma.

Hence, it is worthwhile thinking about how events in the past have impacted us and what are some ways we can deal with them effectively.

Questions

Q1. Have you ever had a traumatic experience? How do you think it has affected you?

Q2. Any other thoughts about the topic?

References

APA. (2021). What causes personality disorders? Apa.org. https://www.apa.org/topics/personality-disorders/causes

Oral, R., Ramirez, M., Coohey, C., Nakada, S., Walz, A., Kuntz, A., Benoit, J., & Peek-Asa, C. (2015). Adverse childhood experiences and trauma informed care: the future of health care. Pediatric Research, 79(1-2), 227–233. https://doi.org/10.1038/pr.2015.197

Paris, J. (1998). Does Childhood Trauma Cause Personality Disorders in Adults? The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 43(2), 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1177/070674379804300203

Treatment (US), C. for S. A. (2014). Understanding the Impact of Trauma. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/#:~:text=Initial%20reactions%20to%20trauma%20can

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