The Empowered Therapist

TL;DR: Not every painful experience is traumatic, and understanding the difference can help us respond to ourselves with greater clarity, gentleness, and agency. Disappointment, grief, and relational hurt deserve our attention, even when they are asking something different from us than trauma.

Over the past several years, the way we talk about trauma has changed significantly. That change has brought important conversations into the mainstream and helped many people finally understand experiences they had never before been able to name.

At the same time, I think it has become easier for painful experiences of many different kinds to blur together. Disappointment, grief, relational hurt, stress, activation, and trauma can begin to feel interchangeable, even though we internally experience them differently. Understanding those differences gives us language for what we’re experiencing, and as that language becomes more precise, our responses often become more compassionate, more intentional, and more effective.

This distinction matters because we need to begin teaching our nervous systems that they can respond differently to disappointment than they do to trauma. Somatically, trauma is described as an experience that is too much or too fast, for too long, for our nervous system to integrate. And when we experience trauma when we are really young, it often becomes the case that all future experiences of pain, and maybe even discomfort, get filtered through our traumatic lenses. And this leaves us collecting traumatic experiences rather than showing our bodies that we can experience both discomfort and safety, simultaneously. Let’s break this down a little more.

When a young child depends on caregivers for safety, connection, and survival, chronic emotional neglect or relational instability can become deeply traumatic. A child cannot simply leave the relationship, create boundaries, or seek support elsewhere. Their nervous system adapts to circumstances they have very little power to change. And this is  very different from the position many of us occupy as adults.

Adult relationships can wound us deeply, and I would never police another person’s experience of trauma. It is important however to feel into the difference between emotional pain, and a traumatic experience that profoundly, and categorically shifts our sense of self. Trauma occurs when we have the real or perceived experience of being trapped and helpless, and while we may experience an internal response that mirrors this when we endure the loss of a friendship or during a breakup, we also need to consider if our reaction is more about a held internal response to pain, or if it matches the experience we are actively having.  Beginning to notice the difference between your right now pain and the held trauma responses that play out when you feel pain, will help you to understand the variety of internal reactions your body can have in response to current environmental stress. And when we begin understanding the different ways our nervous system responds to life’s hardships, we often become better able to recognize what kind of support, care, or response each experience is asking of us.

It also feels important to note that many adult relationships offer us something our childhood relationships often did not.

Agency.

As adults, we can decide how we want to respond to what is happening. We can communicate honestly. We can ask for what we need. We can create boundaries. We can leave relationships that repeatedly cause harm. We can seek out people who show up differently than those who came before them.

When we begin calling every painful experience trauma, we sometimes lose perspective of the choices that are within our reach. And thus, our nervous system may begin organizing itself around helplessness even when helplessness is no longer our current reality.

One of the things I notice in my work is that many people are not only responding to today’s disappointment. They are responding to today’s disappointment alongside every earlier experience that felt remarkably similar. And while this makes sense, given their previous experiences, it isn’t likely to help them to feel more resourced or connected in the current moment. 

Y’all, healing involves becoming curious about the difference between right now and back then. Instead of asking, “Why does this feel so big?” we might be better off asking, “What part of this belongs to today, and what part feels familiar because of my past?” Questions like these often create room for a more nuanced response.

Rather than moving immediately into survival strategies, we begin assessing what is actually happening in front of us. Is this relationship consistently supportive? Is this disappointment because I’ve never communicated my expectations or because this person is unable to show up in the ways I desire? Is my current pain about this relationship or a pattern that exists inside of me?

Disappointment and trauma both deserve care. When we understand the distinction between our right now feelings and held trauma responses, we are often able to respond to ourselves with increased gentleness instead of becoming overwhelmed by the belief that every painful experience has the same meaning or requires the same response.

Dear one, every part of you deserves your attention. And you deserve to know the difference between pain that is situational and pain that has been carried forward across time. As you are able, begin to get curious about the reactions you have in your right now life, because it will help you to discern your next move, even when the next move is staying still and feeling your feelings.

Thank you for letting me see you,