Trauma 101
Everybody talks about trauma these days, but most people still don’t actually know what it is.
Trauma isn’t just about “what happened.” It’s about what your body couldn't handle in the moment, and couldn’t fully process afterward.
Trauma is what happens when an experience overwhelms your system’s ability to cope. And it leaves a mark — whether you consciously remember it or not.
It doesn’t have to be “big” to be real. You can be traumatized without visible scars. You can be traumatized by something others shrug off. You can carry trauma from something you can’t even name.
And when it’s unprocessed? It doesn’t just live in your mind — it lives in your body.
This article will break down:
What trauma really is (and what it isn’t)
Why kids are especially vulnerable
What happens inside your system when trauma strikes
Why you might not remember — and why that doesn’t mean you’re fine
The difference between acute and complex trauma
And what healing actually means (hint: it’s not just "moving on")
What Actually Is Trauma?
Trauma isn’t the event. It’s the impact the event has on your system.
It’s what happens when your body, mind, and emotions get overwhelmed — so overwhelmed that you can’t fully process or integrate what’s happening.
Instead of moving through the experience, your system gets stuck in survival mode.
It traps the energy of the event — the life-preserving energy that your body generated when it went into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (including the fear, rage, grief, etc. that came along with it) — in your nervous system, muscles, breath, memory, and beliefs.
It’s your nervous system not fully processing or believing that you’ve made it through to the other side, and that you’re safe now. Your body is still behaving as though it needs to rescue itself from imminent danger.
The source of the trauma can be:
Physical (like an accident or injury, illness, or poverty)
Emotional (like abandonment, humiliation, or betrayal)
Psychological (like chronic invalidation, powerlessness, or terror)
It can come from one big event (acute trauma), or from a thousand small cuts over time (complex trauma).
Why You’re More Vulnerable to Trauma as a Kid
Your system was never designed to handle adult-sized challenges when you were still tiny.
In childhood, everything hits harder because:
🔹 You had less capacity.
Your nervous system, brain, body, and emotional regulation systems were still developing. You didn’t have the skills or internal resources adults (ideally) do.
🔹 You depended on your caregivers for survival.
Any threat to connection — abandonment, anger, rejection, emotional neglect — felt life-threatening, because it was.
When you’re little, losing attachment = losing protection = danger.
🔹 You had no context.
You couldn’t rationalize or reframe scary experiences.
You didn’t know: “Mom’s mad because she’s stressed, not because I’m unlovable.”
You just felt the withdrawal — and blamed yourself.
🔹 You couldn’t leave.
If a situation was unsafe — physically, emotionally, or relationally — you couldn’t walk away. You couldn’t advocate for yourself. You couldn’t find new caregivers. You had to stay and survive the best you could.
That’s why “small” experiences — like being ignored, mocked, dismissed, guilt-tripped, or chronically misunderstood — can leave deep trauma imprints.
Your system wasn't overreacting. It was doing everything it could to survive with the kid-sized tools it had.
What Trauma Does To Your Body
When something overwhelming happens, your system tries to protect you — fast and hard.
You don’t “choose” how you respond. Your body chooses based on what it thinks will give you the best shot at survival.
Here’s how it goes down:
🔹 Your threat detection system (amygdala) lights up.
It screams DANGER! — whether the danger is physical, emotional, or relational.
🔹 Your body floods with survival chemicals.
Adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine — to prepare you to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.
🔹 Your thinking brain (prefrontal cortex) starts to go offline.
Critical thinking, language, and memory formation all drop WAY down. (That’s why trauma memories can be fragmented, foggy, or missing entirely.)
🔹 Your body tries to complete a survival response.
Maybe you fight. Maybe you run. Maybe you freeze. Maybe you try to please and appease.
If the threat passes and your system feels satisfied that it is safe, the body can complete the stress cycle — literally shake it off — and move on.
BUT… if the threat is ongoing, overwhelming, or the system doesn’t get a chance to express itself, the survival energy gets stuck in your body — like a pissed off bull trapped in a tiny pen.
That stuck energy becomes chronic tension, anxiety, shutdown, hyper-vigilance, emotional swings, body pain, digestive issues, dissociation, self-abandonment, depression... You name it.
Your body isn’t the enemy — it did everything it could to keep you alive. You just experienced too much, too fast, with too little support.
Why You Might Not Recognize Your Trauma
One of the cruelest tricks trauma plays is hiding itself. You can feel all the symptoms — the anxiety, the body pain, the trust issues, the shutdowns, the outbursts — and still think: “Nothing that bad ever happened to me.”
Here’s why:
🔹 Your thinking brain goes offline during threat.
When you’re overwhelmed, your body prioritizes survival over complex mental processing. Memories can be:
Fragmented
Out of order
Stored as sensations, not narratives
Sometimes it’s not that you “forgot” — it’s that your brain never had the chance to fully record what happened.
🔹 Your mind minimized or normalized the experience.
Especially if the people around you brushed it off, blamed you, or treated chaos like “just the way it is”, your brain filed it under “not a big deal” …Even when your body kept screaming otherwise.
🔹 You adapted too well.
Survival often requires not feeling how bad it was — because feeling it fully, at the time, might have been too much to manage while also trying to survive.
You became skilled at ignoring your own pain. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It means you were adaptable enough to survive it.
You don’t have to remember the trauma for it to be real. Your symptoms are the body’s way of remembering what your mind had to forget.
Acute Trauma vs. Complex Trauma
Not all trauma looks the same… Some hits you like a lightning strike. Some wraps around your life like a slow, tightening vine.
⚡ Acute Trauma → PTSD:
A single event.
Sudden. Shocking. Obvious.
(Example: a car crash, an assault, a natural disaster.)
Acute trauma is often easier to spot because it’s linked to one big thing — something your brain can point to and say: “That. That was bad.”
Any sensory experience that reminds you of the event can become a trigger — launching your body+mind back into the unprocessed survival moment.
🥀 Complex Trauma → C-PTSD:
Repeated or prolonged exposure to overwhelming situations.
Especially when escape or safety wasn’t possible.
(Example: growing up in an unpredictable household, long-term emotional neglect, systemic oppression, chronic abuse.)
Complex trauma isn’t one wound — it’s a thousand little cuts, layered over months, years, even decades.
It changes how you see yourself. It changes how you expect the world to treat you. It teaches your system to live in permanent survival mode.
Acute trauma feels like something broke you.
Complex trauma feels like you are inherently broken.
Neither one makes your pain less real.
Neither one makes you too damaged to heal.
But understanding the difference matters — because healing complex trauma usually isn’t about “getting over” a single event. It’s about rewiring your entire sense of safety, connection, and self-worth.
Common Trauma Myths + Misunderstandings
There’s so much bullshit out there about what “counts” as trauma. And most of it keeps people stuck in shame, confusion, and silence.
Let’s clear it up…
🚫 Myth: "If I don’t remember it, it couldn’t have been that bad."
Trauma memories aren’t stored like regular memories. When you’re overwhelmed, your brain prioritizes survival over complex mental processing.
You can have zero conscious memory and still carry the imprint in your body, your relationships, and your patterns.
Your symptoms are the body’s way of remembering what your mind had to forget.
🚫 Myth: "Other people had it worse, so mine doesn’t count."
Trauma isn’t about measuring who suffered the most. It’s about what overwhelmed your system.
You don't have to earn your right to heal by proving it was “bad enough.” If it hurt you, it matters.
🚫 Myth: "Trauma only comes from big, obvious events."
Trauma can come from the big stuff — car crashes, violence, disasters — but it can also come from a thousand “small” experiences of disconnection, invalidation, neglect, shame, or chronic fear.
Beyond that, it’s not just about what happened. It’s about what it was like to face it alone.
🚫 Myth: "Time heals all wounds."
Unprocessed trauma doesn’t fade. It festers.
Time passing doesn’t complete the stress cycle. Time doesn’t rewire a nervous system… Integration does. Safety does. Connection does.
🚫 Myth: "Having trauma means you’re broken."
Having trauma means your body adapted to survive overwhelming conditions.
If you’re still here, it’s because your system fought like hell to keep you alive — that’s not brokenness! That’s proof that you’re a fucking miracle of nature.
The Role Of Shame In Trauma
It’s not just what happened that leaves a scar. It’s about the support you (didn’t) receive in the aftermath.
If your pain was met with understanding, validation, compassion, support, protection… your system had a chance to process, release, and integrate the experience.
But if your pain was met with…
Blame
Dismissal
Gaslighting
Mockery
Pathologizing
Isolation
…then instead of healing, your system internalized + personalized the pain. It learned: “Not only am I hurting, but I’m hurting because I’m wrong / bad / broken.” That’s how shame seals trauma into the body.
Shame cuts you off from your innate worthiness, goodness, and intelligence. It teaches you that your needs, your pain, your instincts are wrong or disgusting or dangerous.
And once you believe that, you hide. You cut yourself off. And you stay stuck + struggling, alone.
Healing trauma isn’t necessarily about revisiting past memories. It’s about giving the hurt parts of you the witness, compassion, and protection they always deserved.
How Trauma Healing Actually Works
Healing from trauma isn’t about forgetting what happened. It’s not about pretending it didn’t hurt. It’s not about “moving on” because you’re “supposed to.”
Healing is about finishing the survival cycle that got interrupted. It’s unfreezing the parts of you that got stuck. It’s coming back into connection — with yourself, your body, and safe people around you.
Here’s what real trauma integration usually involves:
🔹 Building a sense of safety — slowly and internally.
Not just being safe, but feeling safe enough to let your guard down without panicking.
(Check out 👉 How To Drive Your Meat Car)
🔹 Completing survival responses.
Shaking. Crying. Moving. Speaking. Fighting. Running. Feeling. (Whatever your body needed to do at the time but couldn’t.)
(Check out 👉 Somatic Shaking)
🔹 Processing emotions without shame.
Letting yourself freely grieve, rage, mourn, celebrate, move, release.
(Check out 👉 Feelings + Needs)
🔹 Reconnecting to your body’s signals.
Learning how to listen when you’re hungry, tired, scared, happy, overwhelmed, full, tender, powerful.
(Check out 👉 Interoception)
🔹 Building self-trust again.
Choosing yourself, over and over and over, until it feels natural.
(Check out 👉 Values 101 and Integrity 101)
Healing doesn’t mean the past never happened. It means you are no longer trapped inside it.
It means you can move freely, choose freely, love freely, live freely… without your nervous system dragging you backward every time it gets freaked out.
💡 Pro Tip:
Healing doesn’t have to be some huge, dramatic breakthrough. You don’t have to “fix” yourself overnight. You don’t have to have it all figured out.
It starts in micro-moments:
Catching yourself when you want to bolt — and breathing instead.
Letting yourself cry without apologizing.
Saying “I need a minute” instead of pushing through.
Noticing when your shoulders tense — and shaking it out instead of soldiering on.
Every tiny choice to listen to your body is a revolution.
You don’t heal by force. You heal by meeting yourself, again and again, with truth, tenderness, and trust.
Want more ways to understand yourself?
I’ve got a whole library of mind-body magic waiting for you✨