The term "traumatic" is often used in everyday language to indicate a highly stressful event. However, psychological trauma refers specifically to extreme stress that overwhelms a person's ability to cope. Generally, a person who experiences psychological trauma feels emotionally, cognitively, and physically overwhelmed by a traumatic event or series of events.

Psychological trauma can occur in response to one time events like accidents, natural disasters, crimes, surgeries, deaths, or violent events or in response to ongoing or repetitive experiences such as child abuse, neglect, combat, urban violence, concentration camps, battering relationships, and enduring deprivation. The circumstances of events that create psychological trauma commonly include abuse of power, betrayal of trust, entrapment, helplessness, pain, confusion, and/or loss.

Anyone can be a survivor of trauma. A person's subjective experience of an event determines if it was psychologically traumatic. Generally, feeling utterly helpless in the face of an extremely stressful event contributes to the traumatic experience of that event.

Symptoms

After a traumatic event a person can have both psychological and physiological symptoms. Sometimes these symptoms can last long after the traumatic event is over. Symptoms may appear different in adults and children

Psychological

• Irritability
• Mood swings
• Concentration problems
• Isolation/withdrawal
• Intrusive memories of the traumatic event
• Flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Hypervigilance- feeling on guard for another similar traumatic event
• Dissociation- feeling outside of oneself
• Avoidance -especially of situations that trigger memories

Physiological

• loss of appetite
• head aches, chest pain
• stomach pain, nausea
• increase in substance use
• fatigue
• anxiety
• feeling constantly "on edge" or aroused
• sleeplessness

Treatment

Psychotherapy can be very helpful in the treatment of trauma particularly if symptoms are intense or persist six weeks after the traumatic event. Unresolved and untreated trauma can have a long-lasting negative impact on the life and general wellbeing of the survivor.

Although sometimes talking about traumatic events feels initially uncomfortable, the support of an experienced therapist can be helpful in reducing symptoms and restoring healthy functioning.