Question
What are the different types of trauma?
Answer
There are several different types of trauma including big "T" and little "T," acute trauma, chronic trauma, and complex trauma. Big T trauma includes serious injury, sexual violence and assault, or life-threatening experiences. Threats of serious physical injury and sexual violence can cause intense trauma, even if the person is never physically harmed. Small T trauma includes highly distressing events that affect individuals on a personal level but don't fall into the big T categories. This includes things such as non-threatening injuries, emotional abuse, the death of a pet, a breakup, a challenging relationship, and a loss of a job.
Acute trauma results from a single form of a distressing event, such as an accident, rape, assault, or natural disaster. The event is extreme enough to threaten the person's emotional or physical security and creates a lasting impression on the person's mind. Chronic trauma happens when a person is exposed to multiple long-term and prolonged distressing traumatic events over an extended period. Chronic trauma may result from a long-term serious illness, sexual abuse, domestic violence, bullying, or being exposed to extreme situations such as war. Several events of acute trauma, as well as untreated trauma, may progress into chronic trauma. The symptoms of chronic trauma often appear after a long time, even after years. Keep this statement in mind. The symptoms of chronic trauma may not appear for a long time after an event. The symptoms of chronic trauma often appear after a long time, even after years. The symptoms are deeply distressing and may manifest as unexplainable emotional outbursts, anxiety, extreme anger, flashbacks, fatigue, body aches, headaches, and nausea.
The last type of trauma is complex trauma. This is the exposure to multiple traumatic events or experiences. The events are generally within the context of interpersonal relationships. Complex trauma may give the person a feeling of being trapped and often has a severe impact on the person's mind. It may be seen in individuals who have been victims of childhood neglect, domestic violence, and family disputes. It affects the person's overall health relationship and performance at work or school. It's very important for us to be aware of these types of trauma and help parents understand them, especially if they do not understand what it means if their child has experienced trauma. Often, if people understand why things such as challenging behaviors occur and what may be causing them they're more understanding of the situation.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Collective Trauma and Building a Trauma-Informed Culture, presented by Nadia Tourinho, MSW, LICSW, LCSW-C.
