Can We Control How We Perceive Trauma?

A person's experience of a traumatic event may differ from another's.

One of the most important things to remember while trying to comprehend trauma is that neither the incident nor the sequence of events is inherently traumatic.

What matters is not what occurs to us, but how we choose to see it. The individual's reaction to the situation is what causes trauma.

A person's reaction to an incident will vary from person to person based on their personality, background, and other circumstances.

This means that two people might have the same experience yet come to quite different conclusions about what it means.

That might leave one individual with severe PTSD while the other emerges relatively undamaged.

An incident must completely overwhelm a person's coping mechanisms for it to be classified as trauma.

What this implies is that people will experience emotions like terror, helplessness, and dread as a result of the occurrence.

The feeling of being unable to do anything is crucial.

It's well-established that helplessness greatly increases a person's likelihood of seeing a given incident as traumatic.

The way a traumatic incident is experienced may also be affected by a number of other variables.

Consider the child's age, temperament, and life events, to name a few. internal coping mechanisms and external supports, such as those provided by family, school, religion, and friends.

The presence or absence of at least one caring, safe, and sensitive adult in the kid's life is the single most crucial element in determining how the child will behave in the wake of a traumatic occurrence.