By Nicholas Bamonte
The Trauma of Trauma
There is a concept that I have been made aware of recently; the mass adoption of therapeutic language into the common lexicon, or “therapy-speak”. In more plain English, there has been a noted rise in the use of terms normally reserved for academic psychology articles and therapy sessions in regular, everyday language. “Intrusive thoughts”, “gaslighting”, “unconscious bias”, “setting boundaries”, etc. Perhaps one of the most widely adopted bits of therapy-speak is “trauma”. Think back to the conversations that you’ve been part of or times that you’ve heard others speak over the past week. I can almost guarantee that the word has come up once or twice. Normally, this wouldn’t even be worth bringing up or thinking about, but the word “trauma” can come with some unintended baggage. For you see, while the proper definition of the word can encompass almost any form of distress, like me, most people will typically assume exceptional distress when the term is used, such as severe injury, natural disasters, armed conflict, and assault, both physical and sexual. Even the definitions provided by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, and Psychology Today on their websites generally emphasise more extreme events when describing and listing examples of trauma. In this way, it can seem like there is a certain “gap” when the term is used to refer to the relatively mundane and common. For many, such as myself, it can almost feel disrespectful to use the word when referring to such relatively minor inconveniences and stressors. Using the term would fill me with a sense of imposter syndrome or invoking some kind of “stolen valor”. This was nonsense, of course. Trauma is about the impact it leaves on the experiencer and their response to it, not the nature of the act itself. Still, I couldn’t shake off the cultural and social expectations that came with the word.
Big T and Little t
As I’ve said before, I’ve struggled somewhat when trying to use the word “trauma” to describe my own situation and struggles, even if it’s definitionally correct. I would hem and haw, and make sure to preface that what I’m calling “trauma” wasn’t so severe, that it wasn’t REAL trauma. As I write this myself, I can finally realize how unintentionally toxic my own attempts at consideration ended up being. That every time I spoke of my struggles and the painful experiences that have left scars on my psyche and soul, I would forward it by practically denying the legitimacy of my own pain. That when I would try to open up and expose my wounded and sensitive parts, I would immediately compare myself to others, and find myself lacking in comparison. And the worst part? This self-harming behavior is ultimately the byproduct of some of the qualities I value highly and like about myself, my conscientiousness and desire to be accurate and objective. The thing about trauma? At the end of the day, it’s a subjective experience. The worst, most traumatizing experience of someone’s life is the worst, most traumatizing experience of their life, regardless of how it measures up against anyone else’s experience. I’ve lived a fairly quiet, comfortable, even privileged life, but I still have trauma. Everyone has, really. Going back to the definitions of trauma, a fairly consistent example is the death of a loved one, and it is part of the human condition to lose people that we love. If you never have, you’re either young enough to have not had the chance yet, or you’ve never had a loved one to lose, and that in itself is another type of trauma. I will admit that I’ve often scoffed at the suggestions of loved ones taken from self-help social media posts; “Change the words you use about yourself, even as a joke, the harmful words sink in and slowly change your way of viewing yourself.” Now, I think that I’m finally starting to get it. After all, it’s often the little stuff that gets ya. Noticing this struggle that I’ve had with trying to “quantify trauma”, my psychiatrist introduced me to a phrase that I’ve truly taken to heart, “Big T and little t trauma”. To me, it allows for that comparative framing to be communicated without fully putting some types of trauma over others. Sure, the types of trauma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are bigger than the other types of trauma that we’re talking about, but they’re both still trauma at the end of the day. And in some ways, the little t traumas can be just as bad, if not worse, than big T traumas. After all, as I said earlier, it’s often the little stuff that gets ya.
No Second Strike vs Death by a Thousand Cuts
Now, remember when I said earlier that I’ve lived a rather quiet life, with no real major “big T” trauma? I kinda, sorta, maybe lied, a little. I wasn’t trying to be deceitful, I just honestly sometimes forget about this one, tinsey, tiny moment that might be considered big T worthy. When I was 3 going on 4, my twin brother accidentally ran me over with a golf cart. You know, just kid stuff.
I had an aunt and uncle that my parents were extremely close to (they were my godparents after all), who lived up in a little community outside of Atlanta, Georgia called Peachtree City. As a newer little planned suburban community outside of the state capital, one of the neat little gimmicks, so to speak, of living there was the existence of specialized, dedicated “golf cart paths” that would wind through these forested sections throughout the area. I loved them. My aunt, uncle, and their son, my cousin, had an electric golf cart that they would go out in. See, though, the key happened to be in a bit of an out of the way spot, and with how silent electric motors can be when not actively accelerating, it was pretty easy to forget that the cart was still on. So when my twin brother saw some of our teenage cousin’s friends leaning against the front of the golf cart, when we had been diligently instructed to always stay out of the path of a vehicle, even when not moving… well, in an excellent example of toddler logic, he decided to go up and push down on the accelerator, to give them a little playful nudge in warning. They, by this time, had gotten out of the way. Me, on the other hand, well, I don’t remember precisely what I was doing, only that I turned my head while running across the driveway, saw a blurry flash of a golf cart moving, and then the next thing I remember, I’m staring up at the golf cart’s undercarriage. Now, they were able to get me out from under the golf cart and call 911, but emergency services decided that, given my age, I should be sent to a hospital better equipped for pediatric trauma (in the physical sense), which was in Atlanta proper, and an hour and a half away by ambulance/car. So instead of being taken there in a conventional ambulance, I’m taken in an air ambulance, or in other words, a helicopter. The thing was, given weight and air concerns, only myself and the crew were allowed to fly there. My mom was not allowed to be with me, and had to drive up there with my aunt. At the hospital, they found that I had ended up breaking my femur, so I had to be in a full body cast that covered not only my entire leg, but stretched up to also cover the ribs on the same side. Naturally, I couldn’t fit into the seat of a commercial airliner in a full body cast like that, so my family had to charter a private jet to fly us home back to Miami.
All jokes aside, this is probably the most dramatic and traumatic moment in me and my family’s lives, and yet, I don’t really think it left any major, lasting impact on my psyche. My family would continue to vacation at my aunt and uncle’s at least once a year for roughly a decade after, and I would continue to love it. I didn’t develop any negative associations with the city (a beautiful, near idyllic place that’s high up on my list of places that I would move to), my aunt, uncle, and cousin (some of my favorite relatives whom I actively look forward to seeing), or golf carts (I still prefer them to cars). My family and I have actively dug deep to try and find any signs of unresolved trauma or lasting psychological effects from the event, and the closest we’ve seem to have gotten is that I was a little embarrassed to be seen by the other kids in our neighborhood with the cast on, and that it might have played into a fear of heights that borders on phobia. Honestly though, that feels like a bit of a stretch to me. At most it contributed to me being a bit more shy and withdrawn as I grew older, but I suspect that would have happened even if I never found myself stuck in a body cast. I really don’t think this traumatic event traumatized me in any meaningful way. This isn’t unprecedented or anything. There is an entire psychological parameter established to explain this variance in people’s outcomes in response to trauma, resilience. Resilience is a person’s capacity to resist trauma and hardship, whether through cognitive flexibility, effective support structures, coping skills, optimism, and other such qualities. Experiencing trauma doesn’t guarantee that a person becomes traumatized.
Ironically, a lot of my major psychological issues and hangups seem more connected to my more minor, but also more consistent, little t traumas. As I’ve already laid out in a previous article, I struggled a lot with trying to keep up with my peers in class, and with my brother at home with homework. It felt like I was constantly rushing not to be left behind by everyone else, and as I struggled, others seemed able to indulge in so much more free time then I was ever able to, and as the years went on, that disparity grew. And on days where there was no school or homework, we’d have friends coming over to our house. That might not normally seem like a problem. After all, many neurodiverse teenagers struggle with forming and maintaining friendships, what do I have to complain about? Well, I like to think that everyone needs a certain amount of time to themselves, either to work on personal projects and interests, or simply to just spend time with themselves. Everyone else just had that time while I was still working on my homework, and the only chance that I had to have that same time coincided with the time that everyone else wanted to spend hanging out together. When I tried to advocate or talk about this frustration, I would always have the same thing repeated back to me, “My brother has the right to invite his friends over, just as I have the right to not involve myself with them”, as if me wanting to have a little more time to myself and not spend every ounce of non-school night free time with them made me a bad friend. As if not wanting to hang out with them literally every chance we had meant that I didn’t actually consider them a friend. Like I had to let my brother have them over and hang out with them in order to be considered their friend. That wasn’t the intended message, I know that, but the unintended implication always stuck with me. Fast forward a couple of years, and I have issues with self-esteem and a compulsive impulse to deny my own wants and desires in favor of the group’s, or at the very least, what I perceive as their desires. I imagine that you can see a bit of a connection.
People generally assume that the impact of trauma is at least somewhat proportional to the severity of said trauma, but I believe that this is a fallacy. While there is plenty of evidence that extreme trauma can often result in long lasting issues and disorders, such as PTSD, not only is this not guaranteed, but I believe that this focus has caused people to underestimate the impact of lowered intensity, yet consistent trauma. One widely documented and understood aspect of the brain and its neural system is called neuroplasticity, or the “plasticity” of the brain. Plasticity, in this case, refers to the brain’s ability to be molded structurally through the growth of neurons and the change in the number and function of their dendrites, allowing for the brain to be an organ that regularly undergoes physical metamorphosis over time. Key word being, over time. Every thought and action plays out within that complicated neural network. Every firing of a synapse strengthens the connection, just a little. This strengthened connection encourages new growth of dendrites and thus, new synaptic connections. That’s why practice makes perfect. The key to neuroplasticity is truly time and repetition, and while the focus is typically on how people and their brains better themselves, the inverse must also be true. Just as our positive thoughts and behavior patterns are reinforced through repetition, so too are our negative thoughts and behavior patterns, our trauma responses. The more time you spend afraid and stressed, the easier it becomes for your brain to trigger that state of being, and the harder it becomes to break.
I don’t think I’m that special or unique. I can’t be the only person who’s struggled more with “the little things”, things that you, at the time, can just power through. They’re uncomfortable and stressful, but not enough to trigger a need for a dramatic change, not like a truly traumatic event would. How dangerous, I’ve realized, that way of thinking can be, and how what seems negligible can slowly creep up, like a parasitic vine, until you find yourself choking in its stranglehold. My take away message is ultimately, trauma comes in many forms. You’ve got your big T traumas, and your little t traumas, and while the size of the t might be different, they’re both trauma. Don’t be ashamed to call it what it is.
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