It is important to understand clearly what trauma is because it can take many shapes and not every form of trauma is treated the same way. Understanding a traumatic event helps both the person affected by it and the people trying to help them, having information on what trauma is and how it affects someone can help with painting a complete picture of the person’s problem going straight to the root and understanding its foundation. Understanding someone’s past and present experiences and even your own experiences can help to reflect on what happened and rationalize the event, even though it may seem impossible. Plus, someone trying to help someone else understand their background can help them understand a person’s personality and what their symptoms may be. To summarize, understanding the origin of one’s trauma and how in can affect them simplifies the approach to treating and listening to them.
Triggers and flashbacks: To better understand how a traumatic event affects one’s life we need to understand what a trigger is and how flashbacks occur. First of all, a trigger is something that brings back a memory of trauma or a portion of said trauma. A trigger can be triggered in multiple ways, but here’s an example to portray what a trigger is and how it activates. Imagine you had a traumatic event that involved gunfire that happened years ago. Now, when you are here a mildly loud noise that resembles the one of a gunfire (like a firework for example) you might feel a sudden surge of panic and fear that reminds you of that event even though the sound wasn’t actually a gunfire. As for most aspects of trauma, a trigger can be pretty hard to anticipate for the person suffering from trauma. Most of the time it will surprise the traumatized person and put them in an uncomfortable state of full alert, and they will be afraid of everything around them, because they are remembering that specific event that marked them long ago. Any sensory reminder can be associated with a trigger: smell, noise, touch or sensation that may remind the person of their trauma is considered a trigger. Finally, triggers can also be associated with a time or place in particular like the age the person suffered their traumatic event or even the place where it happened may bring back memories.
To continue on the same line of thought, flashbacks are almost always associated with a trigger. A flashback is the action of experiencing the previous traumatic event once again in the present. While experiencing a flashback the person may feel and present the same kind of reactions as they did when the event first happened. Normally the flashback itself won’t be too long, but what is more important is that the emotion someone feels when they are getting a flashback will last for a couple of hours or days if the person really has no experiences with these types of events. Like said before, the flashback is almost always associated with a trigger that precedes it, but here’s the thing, sometimes flashbacks can just happen like this with no trigger preceding it. Another form of re-experiencing someone may have is when they are sleeping or when they are at rest, intrusive thoughts and nightmares may be haunted by these flashbacks, and the person may experience once again a part of the scene that traumatized them.
Trauma is not a newly discussed subject. Many psychologists in the early 1900’s were already discussing the subject of trauma and how it affected the body. Most of the renowned psychologists of 20th century have discussed the issue of trauma and traumatic experiences and how to deal with them. People like Sigmund FreudRef, Burrhus F. Skinner and Carl RogersRef are prominent figures in this field of studies.