A small “t” trauma includes an event, situation, or experience that exceeds one’s capacity to cope. This disrupts one’s emotional functioning. These events, problems, or experiences are not inherently life-threatening, but instead, it impacts one ego. Freud suggested trauma “intrudes upon the ego,” and the ego struggles to adjust and adapt to this intrusion. The person will feel helpless and distressed. The individual often overlooks this form of trauma. These are your personal experiences for the (my) listening audience you try to forget and not talk about with others. Some examples are one’s experience with divorce, adultery, financial distress, legal issues, relationship challenges.

A capital “T” trauma is when an event, situation, or experience causes one’s life and their integrity to be threatened. The person feels powerless and having little control in their life and circumstances. Most consider a capital “T” trauma as a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, going to or feeling like you live in a war, sexual and physical assaults, all significant accidents such as a car, airplane, train, or boat. Most research fails to explored with capital “T” trauma: racism, sexism, isms in general, institutional forms of oppression, slavery, historical, cultural, and unconscious forms of trauma.

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What are the different types of trauma?

Secondary Trauma and Vicarious Trauma

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, defines Secondary Trauma as the “emotionally duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another.” It is when the mind, body, and spirit are emotionally affected by hearing someone’s trauma. Examples include when a social worker who hears stories of child sexual abuse may zone out, become highly agitated, or overprotective with their children. Vicarious trauma is like secondary trauma. Vicarious trauma is when one is exposed to someone’s trauma over a period. An example is when a domestic violence worker begins to think relationships are all “bad” because of their in this field. Vicarious trauma includes individuals working in high stressful trauma-exposed environments (child abuse investigators, prosecutors, clinicians, those in the helping profession, those working in animal shelters, ambulance and hospital workers, police are just a few examples). Both forms of trauma lead to compassion fatigue and burnout.  

I have seen this in all areas of social work. In the beginning, one goes from wanting to change the world. To do a good job and provide a helpful service. To being discouraged by many systems and feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated. I am beginning to see this more with our teachers in the educational system since the onset of COVID. Teachers, police, and hospitals are often the first place that hears about child abuse. They are now in family’s homes through videoconferencing, seeing some of the chaos they were not exposed to previously. There are few practices in place to take care of our teachers.

Additionally, they will have to hold their student’s racialized experiences when they probably have not been able to safely and honestly address their personal views. Teachers are forced to keep a child’s emotional pain without any training, clinical support, or empathy from their school districts. The outcome will be drastic for our educational system. Teachers already experience burnout, but once compassion fatigue settles into their mind-body-spirit, this will directly impact my kids, your kids, and our kids. Then the cycle keeps repeating itself.

Developmental trauma

Now, Let’s take a look at developmental trauma.  This form of trauma occurs in childhood. It includes various forms of chronic abuse and neglect. There is limited to no caregiver response, which causes a significant amount of distress in the child. Research suggests developmental trauma leads to lifelong challenges such as smoking, alcohol and drug use, obesity, depression, cancer, stroke, and even heart disease. There is more to why we have addictions, medical issues, and mental suffering. If you struggle in this way, consider how aspects of developmental trauma have impacted your life. Now, if we think about this a little more, what are the needs of a child. During the early years in life, they need a safe and trusting adult. They need a responsive caregiver to feed them, provide affection and attentiveness, give them social encouragement, and ensure they are getting enough sleep and stimulation.

To support healthy development and growth, the caregiver should be loving, accessible, dependable, predictable, and safe. Developmental trauma is created within the home environment. When a caregiver is unavailable, developmental trauma or what we used to call reactive attachment disorder manifest. I see other labels such as ADHD, Oppositional defiant dx, PTSD, learning and processing disorders, mood instability, and speech delays in my work with developmental trauma. Neuroscience informs us how the brain changes the way it develops before 25 years of old. Traumatic events are imprinted in the brain at the early stages of development. Even our genetics change. Our genes, 48 chromosomes, are changing to survive through trauma, which helps us understand why traumas are inherited.

When a child experiences multiple chronic and prolonged forms of trauma, it is complex trauma. This form of trauma is ongoing over many developmental stages. There are disruptions in the child’s primary caregiver relationships. For example, children involved in the foster care system have experienced many traumatic events, and their primary caregiver changes as the child shifts from foster home to foster home. Furthermore, children are exposed to many forms of abuse; sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, maltreatment, emotional abuse, the list goes on and on. This also includes community violence, police violence, anything a child experiences as if they live in an environment similar to war. Children who experience chronic traumas have changes in their ability to process and understand information, regulate their emotions, and place their experiences into categories to make sense out of their experience. 

Can you imagine being a ten-year-old boy raised by a single parent and constantly saw fighting in the home?  This young boy sees gang and community violence on the way to and from school. There are financial struggles and racialized experiences that made him feel shameful. His parent may physically hit him for not listening or losing focus, or zoning out. This boy can’t focus in school, or he turns inward and uses school as his escape.  When you live in trauma, the mind and the body have to shut down to survive. Complex trauma is this ten-year-old boy going to war until he is 20. This is the type of damage we can only imagine. 

That’s a lot to take in. For some, this may be triggering, thought-provoking, or bring on more curiosity. Continue to listen as these ideas on trauma will be expanded on. Other trauma experiences are related to historical and intergenerational trauma. This includes racialized experiences, slavery (mental and physical), forcible removal from a family/ community, genocide, and war. However, this will be discussed in the episode with Epigenetics. 

Now, I haven’t even mentioned what most people know. That is PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  It was during the 1900s when research started to look at survivors of traumatic events. Early studies looked at child sexual abuse, holocaust victims, war veterans, and those involved in major disasters. Without going into all the history on PTSD, what is PTSD? To get this label, one a particular experience and meets a few symptoms. One, you experience a traumatic event directly or indirectly. Two, you witness a traumatic event. Three, the traumatic event involved a close family member if you were not directly impacted. Then, one develops symptoms related to the traumatic events; has intrusive thoughts, avoids the event or reminders of the event, changes in their cognition, and changes in their emotions or responses. 

Trauma is an experience we have in common. Whether we experience a small t trauma or have clinical symptoms related to tragic events, this is our connection and part of our human experience. Continue to listen, and with each episode, you will learn more about trauma and social work. I will end with this, “traumatized children grow up to be traumatized adults, ask for help, find your voice, and work through your childhood stuff.”