- How do you know if you have emotional trauma?
What's the difference between emotional trauma
and physical trauma, and how do you deal carrying
that with you to have, you know,
the life that you actually want to have?
To thrive instead of just surviving.
I'm here to help, this is "Ask a Therapist Mended Light."
(dramatic music)
So when I was in school to become a therapist
we talked a lot about PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder.
And that's defined as having experienced
a physical trauma, right, either an assault,
or an attack, or an act of violence,
or a near death experience, or a serious injury,
or a grave illness, or witnessing something
like that happening to somebody else.
But it's always like a physical threat of death,
or violence, or something like that.
And because of this, in a lot of psychological circles,
emotional trauma is discounted, or seen as lesser.
Now, obviously, not if it's emotional abuse.
But we often don't look at anything beyond that
as traumatic, but what is trauma?
You've probably heard me say that it's believing
that your world is safe and then discovering that it's not.
And that's true most of the time.
Some of the time your world was never safe.
You were born into abuse, you were born into
where you weren't wanted, where you were unloved,
where you were neglected, or where you were loved,
as much as this person knew how,
but you were just terribly mistreated.
So it's not always your world was safe,
and then you discovered that it's not.
So what is trauma?
It is something that is so disturbing
and distressing that later you are triggered.
And what does that mean?
It means that reminders of the trauma
cause panic, cause anxiety, cause intense sadness or grief,
or fear, or depression, lead to an intense negative
emotional response that you don't want
to be having, right, that's a trauma.
A trigger sets that off.
It could be a smell, it could be a sound.
It could be a memory, a picture.
It could be a video, it could be a movie
that takes you back to what was going on
at that time in your life, it could be a taste.
It could be like a series of words.
Almost anything could be a trigger as long as it reminds you
of something that caused you such distress
that you now experience intense, emotional turmoil.
In order for something to be a trauma, there's triggers
and, as a result, there's avoidance of triggers, right?
Whether by completely avoiding situations or circumstances
where we can see, hear, taste, or smell,
or remember these types of things.
Whether it's pushing out thoughts of the past
or replacing them with something else.
Or whether it's intensely working to change your life
so that the negative things don't happen
to you again, right?
Whatever form it takes, it's avoidance of the trigger
because you don't want to have to go through that.
A type of hyper vigilance also, follows trauma.
Hyper vigilance is you're always on edge
you don't really feel safe, you're on the lookout
for when the other shoe's gonna drop,
when the penny's gonna fall, when bad things
are gonna happen again, when you're gonna get hurt,
when you're gonna get abused.
Now, we often tie this to the physical,
as I said before, physical acts of violence,
or threats of violence, or death, or assault, or things...
or danger, or disease, or things like that.
And then emotionally, we tie it
to verbal and emotional abuse.
But, honestly, loss is traumatic.
Whether it's loss due to death,
loss due to divorce or breakup, or the dissolution
of a friendship or a relationship that can be traumatic.
Having your heart broken can be traumatic,
especially if you invested your hopes
and dreams for the future in another person.
And if you think I'm being dramatic
by saying that's traumatic the fact is
there are varying degrees of trauma.
I've been traumatized by breakups that are nasty.
I've been traumatized by breakups
that were healthy breakups but it was just devastating
because I really wanted that relationship.
And, as I said, there's varying degrees of trauma.
Within two years, when I was in college,
I was dating somebody that I wanted to marry
and it was a healthy breakup, but it didn't work out.
And it took me half a year to get over the depression of it.
It took me half a year if I smelled her perfume
on somebody else, I passed by places
that we spent time together sometimes I would just cry.
I would avoid reminders, I would avoid memories.
And I would avoid getting into relationships again
'cause I didn't want to go through that sort of pain,
or grief once more, that was traumatic.
Two years later, my mom died.
This is the breakup, this is my mom dying.
You know, both traumatic, or if we're looking at a spectrum
this is the breakup and this is my mom dying.
And there's varying degrees.
And you don't need to say that something wasn't traumatic
because you're comparing it to something far worse.
Losing my mom was traumatic.
It would be a mistake for me to say,
"Well, I wasn't in a concentration camp in the Holocaust
"and I didn't lose all my family."
Or, "I haven't ever been around
"when a genocide was happening," right?
Or, "I haven't experienced this or that."
It's not the Olympics of suffering.
A trauma is a trauma.
Does it cause distress, such distress
that you experience depressive symptoms,
or anxiety, or grief, or sadness, or fear
to the point that it interrupts your daily life
and keeps you from doing the things that you want to do?
Or at least thriving and doing them the very best you can?
That's a trauma, no matter what it is.
You don't need to minimize it.
Do you avoid reminders?
Do you experience hyper vigilance?
All of these things are indicators
that even if you haven't experienced a physical threat,
even if it's not tied to a physical threat,
or danger it could still be traumatic.
So how do we work through this?
A blow by blow is beyond the scope of this video.
It is our mission here at Mended Light
to help people through their traumas.
The first thing is to recognize
that you've experienced a trauma to not minimize or compare.
The second thing is to get a healthy support system,
is to not carry it alone.
I know so many people who don't want to trouble
their loved ones, their family, their friends.
They don't wanna be a "burden," but that's why
we have loved ones to burden the hell out of them.
(chuckles)
No, but that's why we have loved ones,
that's why we have relationships,
so that we can be there for one another,
so that we can support one another during our darkest hours.
My mom had health problem for 15 years
before she passed away, the full extent
of which I never really knew.
Obviously, she couldn't hide all of it.
And I knew stuff was going on, but I was a teenager
and I was in my 20s and I remember being angry
with her while she was still alive,
and angry with her after she died
that she didn't want to "burden" her kids,
that she didn't want us to worry,
so she wouldn't tell us things.
And I remember telling her, "Mom, I'm not a child anymore."
I mean, that's probably a good mentality,
if you're dealing with a child 'cause a child
can't really be there for you.
And they're just gonna worry and they'll feel helpless.
But once I'm a teenager, once I'm an adult
it's okay to talk to me, tell me what you're suffering,
tell me what you're struggling with.
Even if I can't do anything other than just be here for you,
mourn with you, comfort you, right?
And maybe there's things I can do 'cause I can drive now,
I can run errands, there's things I can do, right?
She kept it to herself 'cause she didn't wanna burden us.
And that always made me really sad
because she denied me the opportunity
to serve her, to support her, to lift her
the way she had done for me so many times.
When you are afraid of being a burden
to the people in your life, look at it the other way.
True loved ones want to be there for you.
Yes, they have stuff going on, so what?
That doesn't mean they need to carry you,
or you need to be inconsiderate
and completely interrupt their life flow.
But a text or a phone call saying,
"Hey, I'm struggling, no rush, do you have 10 minutes
"we could talk some time today, or tomorrow?"
I guarantee they'll find 10 minutes, right, today
or tomorrow, more often than not they can find 10 minutes.
A good friend of mine texted me and said
"Can you keep me in your prayers, I'm having a hard day."
He didn't say, "Drop what you're doing."
He didn't say, "Hey, can we go have lunch right now?"
He just said, "Can you keep me in your prayers?"
And I did, but then I also went and took him out for sushi.
But that was my call, right?
You never know, the people in your life,
what they can do for you.
Now, some of you're watching this and you say,
"I've tried, I've tried reaching out for support.
"I've tried, I've got an emotional trauma
"and I don't wanna go through it alone.
"And the people in my life don't understand.
"They don't think it's something to make time for."
If that's the case, I'm very sorry.
This is why there are therapy groups.
This is one of the reasons why there are therapy groups,
both online and in your community.
You can also reach out to us,
or in our Mended Light community,
in our groups, on our social media, there are people
and we'll put links for those groups below.
There are people in our groups,
in the Mended Light community who are going
through similar things to what you're going through.
They can give you advice, they can give you feedback,
they can give you counsel,
sometimes from strangers is the best thing.
The next thing, recognize that you've experienced a trauma,
reach out to friends and family,
and loved ones for support is get professional support.
The fact is the more you avoid your triggers
the more power you give them.
The more afraid of something you are
the more power you give it.
Facing things head on is uncomfortable,
and unpleasant, and scary.
But it also gives you power and strength.
You wonder what else you can do?
What else you can accomplish, what else you can pull off,
what else you can face?
And the things that you confront get smaller,
and smaller, and smaller,
and your power to handle them increases.
And you may need a counselor's support to do that.
Now, I want to hear from you, in the comments below,
how do you manage your emotional trauma?
What do you do to cope?
How do you recognize that it is a trauma?
What are you struggling with right now?
And how can we help you?
Also, what would you like me to answer?
This is "Ask a Therapist," so ask me a question.
Let me know when the comments below
what would you like me to address in one of these videos?
Now, today, we've talked about how do
you know if you've had emotional trauma?
I wanna direct you to, "How do you know
"if you've got trauma period," the broader umbrella.
Check out this video right here.
As always keep shining because we need your light.
I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist.
And this is "Ask a Therapist."
We'll see you next time, here it comes.
♪ Come on ride the train and ride it whoo hoo ♪
Is it trauma train?
I don't think actually nobody wants
to get aboard the trauma train.
This is not my best work, but here's the video
I was telling you about so go ahead and click on it.