II. What is Trauma?

Read through the description of trauma below. It is also in your My Notes document. In that document, highlight the words or ideas that describe the effects trauma can have on a person.

Trauma is the experience of being overwhelmed by a threat to your life or well-being or by a threat to the life of someone you care about. 

Sources of trauma can take many forms such as violence or accidents. It can be caused by large-scale events or by very intimate events. Trauma can also be caused by an ongoing collection of many small threats or losses, like being always on alert for danger, trying to protect your child in a displaced persons camp environment, etc.

Traumatic experiences trigger the body’s fight/flight/freeze response. Sometimes our bodies hold onto that adrenaline and have a hard time de-escalating.

To experience traumatic stress is a normal response to an abnormal experience. There’s nothing wrong – morally, spiritually, or otherwise – with a person who struggles to cope after the experience of a traumatic event.

-Rachel Uthmann, International Association for Refugees

Answer in My Notes the effects of trauma you have seen in people you know or have worked with.