TRAUMA:
• Is a state of high arousal that stems from the perception of severe threat (overwhelms a person’s capacity to cope)
• Activates instinctive biologically based ‘survival’ responses of ‘fight’, ‘flight’ &/or ‘freeze’ • If not resolved (recovered from) it can lead to high sensitivity to seemingly minor ‘triggers’
• Disrupts interconnection (‘integration’) of key systems of the body and impairs health
• The perception of severe threat (rather than the ‘size’ of the event/s) makes the experience traumatic
• The biological basis of responses to being overwhelmed means the body reacts in the present even if the trauma is in the ‘past’ (‘your body keeps reacting as if you are still in imminent danger’; van der Kolk, 2011:xxi)
• Because responses to trauma are innate and operate outside conscious awareness, recovery from trauma is not about ‘will power’, ‘mind over matter’ or trying to ‘forget the past’
• Responses to traumatised people can be inappropriate if the above points are not understood and can lead to re-traumatisation
• Trauma of all kinds involves divisions or ‘splits’ in experience (‘dissociation’)
• Common dissociative divisions fuelled by trauma are ‘disconnects’ between thoughts, feelings, sensation and behaviour
