What is Trauma?

Human beings are creatures of habit.

We learn a specific way of thinking, of behaving, and we stick to it until life experiences teach us a better way of doing things.

Sometimes those life experiences are gentle and slow, giving us time to adapt to the new learnings, which we then call growth. Sometimes those lessons are harsher, and faster, giving us less time to prepare for change. We call those lessons as trauma.

Trauma is a sudden forced change to our physical or psychological self, that is too fast or intense for us to cope with, leading to damage.

Consider someone going to the gym for the first time. On Day 1, lifting a 300 pound barbell would not be possible, and attempting it would most certainly lead to physical injury. But by working out every day, building core muscle strength, learning the correct form and gradually increasing the weight, this person would eventually be able to reach that target.

300 pounds on Day 1 would be traumatic. Over a year, it is growth.

Our mental health is not very different. Our ability to deal with change is not a constant. Some changes happen at a pace we are comfortable with, and are of a nature we are familiar with. Our mind adapts to these new circumstances, neural networks reshape themselves forming new connections in a process called neuro-plasticity and we evolve.

No one is 100% trauma proof, just like no one is fracture proof. But what level of stress gives you trauma or breaks your bone depends on how much your mind and your body has been conditioned to stress before. Just like vaccination with live inoculation helps improve your immunity against the same infection, so too does small repeated amounts of stress help build your resistance against larger attacks.

Build trauma reserve.

Build up your reserve when you’re healthy, to tilt the odds more in your favour when the stress level rises. Because there may not be time to adapt when it does.

Power of therapy is real

Dealing with trauma after it has happened is difficult. Therapy is a way to clear your head and outsource thoughts. It helps to untangle the various defences your mind sets up to deal with the aftermath of trauma. The priority is your health. There are several excellent NGO’s and organisations that offer therapy options. @kaha.mind and @therapize.india on Instagram are good places to start. If you have tried other sources and have found them beneficial, let me know and I’ll add those to this blog post.

Take care everyone.