Living is not for the weak, and from start to finish living presents an abundance of adversity and suffering. Many of the problems of life may not be pleasant but can be managed. But there are times in life that an experience pushes us beyond our ability to handle and cope with a situation. This is a classic definition of a traumatic experience—one that goes beyond our ability to cope.
The consequences of traumatic experience can be daunting. The physical and emotional pain of the experience are only the beginning. The initial trauma can result in immediate negative consequences, new difficulties as the individual matures, poor social success resulting in lack of support and isolation, and then end in emotional or even physical breakdown and premature death. If this sounds as if the consequences of untreated traumatic experiences are being exaggerated, consider the following.
Since we all face life experiences that can override our ability to physically and emotionally cope with a situation, some amount of trauma is a part of the human experience and in fact can build our reliance if we can successfully manage the trauma. But trauma becomes an even more critical issue for young children, who must rely on others rather than find internal resilience. In the following description of the negative results of untreated trauma, we are considering significant traumatic experience that led the individual to view the situation as life-threatening and the individual’s brain to remember the experience as a threat to survival. Even with this level of trauma, it has been estimated that as many as 4,000,000 children are exposed to such trauma every year in the United States. The results of such serious trauma can include short-term and long-term consequences.
Short-term consequences of significant traumatic experience such as serious child abuse include the following:
- Immediate psychological and/or physical pain.
- Loss of trust in those whom the child needs for protection and support.
- Hypervigilance to persons, places or things that the child associates with the traumatic experience.
- Loss of self-regulation, such as crying, raging, excessive fear, and associated behavioral outbursts.
- Loss of the opportunity to be a child, such as the loss of the ability to play, to learn, to enjoy, to laugh due to being concerned the experience has not ended.
- Loss of the ability to feel pleasure and contentment.
- High levels of distraction, defensiveness and hostility.
- Poor attention span.
- Sleep disturbances.
- Higher statistical chance of further trauma.
- Self-directed aggression.
- Dissociation and psychic numbing.
- Over-activation to trauma, deprivation in other areas of life.
- Impaired attachment.
- Pervasive negativity.
- Negative impact on executive functions.
- Stress response cycle activated by minor situations.
- Poor social and relational skills.
- Becoming emotionally stuck at the level at which the trauma occurred.
Long-term consequences build on these negative effects on the individual due to the brain remembering the events in a special way so as to be prepared to avoid any possible repetition of the traumatic event. These longer-term issues can include the following:
- Damage to physical and psychological health over time.
- Misinterpreting social and environmental cues leading to poor social success.
- High levels of fear and anxiety.
- Personal isolation.
- Organizing one’s life around negative experiences.
- Consistent reactive emotions and behaviors.
- Personal powerlessness can result in negative traits, such as a controlling manner.
- Being distant from others needed for personal support.
- Affective blindness and not seeing the needs of others.
- Becoming stuck in negative coping styles.
- Inability to use feelings as guides for decisions and behavioral responses.
- Personal emptiness.
- Developing risk behaviors, such as addictions that compensate for inner emptiness.
- The experience of reliving the trauma.
- Self-harm and suicidality.
- Poor work/career performance.
- Negative views of self, others, life.
Although our example was for a child, but due to the long-term impacts of trauma many of these issues can continue and remain problematic in adulthood. A close look at the above list can show that initial reactivity to a traumatic experience can become habitual and lead to more serious negative coping styles over time. For this reason, traumatic experiences can become more negatively impactful on the individual in future years.
Trauma Is Part of The Human Condition
There is no question that all of our lives, at times, present us with situations that are very difficult with which to cope. There are also times when our coping skills are not enough. When we cannot cope and we experience the situation as very physically or psychologically threatening, traumatic experience can be the result. Since there has essentially been no time Homo Sapiens have been on the planet that we were ever truly safe, trauma has always been a part of our human condition.
We like to complain that modern living is more stressful and difficult than the “good old days.” But just when were the good old days? Perhaps in the roaring 20s when there was an effort to live for the day and enjoy life? But this was right after the first World War, right during the stock market crash where people lost fortunes, their homes, and much of the population of our country was destitute. Perhaps the good old days were the 30s and 40s when “happy days are here again.” But these were years of dramatic changes in the economic fabric of our society due to the effects of the industrial revolution on every aspect of our society. It was also a time of great global unrest that planted the seeds of a second “war to end all wars.” Perhaps the good old days were in the 50s, if not why would they call the TV program of this time in America “Happy Days?” While there was a strong attempt in the 50s to believe that everything was getting better and technology would cure most of our problems, what technology brought was the very real concern that nuclear war could end life as we know it on the planet at any time.
A close look will show that there never was a time in the past that mankind was in better shape than we are today. Safety and security are not something we take for granted today, but the further back in time we go, the more tenuous safety appears to be for much of the world’s population. It appears that if there ever was a good time to be alive, it is right now in respect to healthcare, economic possibilities, human rights, and the rule of law. Clearly some countries provide more of these advantages than others. But even with the growing challenges our present day provides us: wars, global climate change, overpopulation, genocide, poverty and much more, the evidence suggests mankind has collectively never had it so good and these are actually the good old days, if they ever existed.
So if the current age constitute the good old days, why don’t they feel so good? The answer seems related to our access to information about the trauma of others. There is the presence all around us of trauma in our lives and the lives of others. News throughout the day gives us doom and gloom live from all over the planet from the latest pestilence, climate calamities, to man’s inhumanity to man. The only secure feelings any of us can achieve are when we ignore the reality around us that security is to a large extent an illusion.
Since trauma to some degree is part of the human experience then it is our task to understand what trauma is, how it impacts us and how to rise above it through resilience. Like other issues, we cannot solve a problem until we identify and understand the problem. The good news is that trauma need not be a lifelong sentence of dysfunction and suffering. There is much we can do to counteract all the negative impacts that trauma can cause. But the starting place is to know the problem and then seek the solution, and solutions are available.
[Excerpt from Beyond Healing, The path to personal contentment after trauma. (2009). D. L. Ziegler]