"In this rush to sell trauma, many authors make it sound as though trauma is the event itself, or the memory of what happened, or something lodged in the body, or a reaction that never shuts off and inevitably derails our lives and relationships. What they are describing is not trauma, but fragments of it-individual angles, partial expressions, isolated consequences."
"They are capturing slices of a much larger phenomenon while missing the very elements that would do justice to what truly happens to us. Ironically, this narrowed lens mirrors one of trauma's own effects at its worst: the exaggeration and distortion of reality. Trauma is not the event.It is not the memory of the event.It is not the initial reaction, the shock, or the surge of emotion that mobilizes our responses.And trauma is certainly not something "stuck" in the body."
"Trauma is a phenomenon -a complex condition that emerges when a wound does not heal as it should. By "phenomenon," I do not mean a metaphor, a theory, or a story we can tell ourselves at will. I mean something real: observable, measurable, describable. Trauma is as real as bleeding. It follows identifiable patterns, involves specific processes, and unfolds according to recognizable dynamics-whether we name them correctly or not."
Trauma has been commodified and presented as a personal possession to be owned, narrated, and curated. Many portrayals conflate trauma with the precipitating event, its memory, bodily sensation, or an unending reactive state. Those portrayals capture fragments or slices rather than the whole phenomenon, producing a narrowed and distorted understanding. Trauma should be understood as a complex, observable condition that results when a wound does not heal. Trauma follows identifiable patterns, involves specific processes, and unfolds according to recognizable dynamics, requiring distinct understanding beyond immediate injury or reaction.
Read at Psychology Today
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