Trauma: One of the many stumbles of life

Afia Ayman

Have you ever paid attention to how your past happy experiences can bring back the fragments of memories that give you joy! This is evocative mainly. On the contrary, trauma can bring back unwanted experiences and can generate triggering moments that nobody planned for. Trauma can be triggered more easily than we think.

A related event, discussion, or news about one’s experienced trauma can take us back to our darkest moment like a time machine and cause minor to major inconveniences. According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is an emotional reaction to a horrific occurrence, such as an accident, rape, natural disaster, etc.

Shock and denial are typical feelings immediately after an incident. When a child watches or encounters violating events when they are young, it can cause childhood trauma. Such as sexual, physical, or psychological abuse, violence in communities or schools, suffering or witnessing domestic violence, untreated parental mental illness, terrorism or a national catastrophe, sexual exploitation for profit, extreme poverty, loss of a loved one suddenly or violently, experiences with war or refugees and so on. When a child had to go through all this unwanted violence, trauma generates and it does not get eliminated at once. Traumatic events stay in a child’s mind even though the child grows. These events stay like a stubborn ink stain on a white shirt, which is hard to remove.

People who have experienced trauma are three times more likely to suffer from depression, three times more likely to smoke tobacco, and fifteen times more likely to commit suicide or self-harm activities. Trauma is not the opposite of happy experiences at all, instead trauma and happiness can run parallel, at the same time in someone’s life.

A person can generally lead a positive life  but still can suffer from the impact of trauma. Some of the impacts of trauma are panic attacks, anxiety attacks, anxiousness, numbness, sleep disorders, drug, and alcohol misuse, eating disorders, low self-esteem, cardiovascular

disease, violent behaviors, parasuicidal attempts to distract thyself, self-isolation from everyone, and so on. Trauma can be provocative in most cases, which means the flashbacks of past incidents will result in physical stimuli and actions. It can include shortness of breath, excessive sweating, crying, chest pain, poor immune system, etc.

The impacts of trauma can vary by age, gender, and person. Trauma has three types- Acute, Chronic and Complex. The effect of a single event is acute trauma. Chronic trauma is recurring and lasts a long time, like domestic abuse or violence. Exposure to numerous stressful incidents results in complex trauma.

Apart from all this pessimism, trauma is curable. Trauma can be healed if appropriate assistance is provided to the people in need. In order to heal, trauma survivors need to feel safe and secure. They are let to experience some kind of personal control. Trauma survivors do not need to feel small or ashamed for seeking help.

There are several renowned medical interventions, ready to provide counseling and required help to people who had to undergo traumatic experiences. It is high time we raised vproper awareness about trauma and how it can be healed.

Writer: Undergrad Student of Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP)