Here's Why Trauma Is So Common (A Deep Dive Into Understanding Trauma)

Understanding Trauma

• Trauma is a complex topic that affects every aspect of a person's life.

• Trauma is the great chameleon of mental illness, meaning it masquerades as other problems.

"Trauma is sort of a whole brain or whole person effect"

Manifestations of Trauma

Chronic Depression and Addictions

• Mood disorders like major depression or bipolar disorder are episodic and come and go.

• However, there are cases where people claim to have been depressed their entire life, and this is more likely due to trauma.

• Studies show that depression is not necessarily caused by serotonin imbalance in the brain, but instead may be trauma-related.

Impulsivity and Lack of Direction

• Living life impulsively and without direction is a common issue related to trauma.

• The person feels like they lack a sense of direction or have a lack of purpose.

Vulnerability to Repeated Mistakes

• Repeatedly making the same mistakes is another symptom of trauma.

• These mistakes tend to occur in a pattern that the person struggles to break.

Inability to Take Risks

• Trauma can cause a person to become paralyzed with fear, making them unable to take risks.

• This can alter the course of their life and impede progress and personal growth.

Being a People-Pleaser

• A common symptom of those with trauma is the desire to please everyone.

• They have a hard time saying "no" and often go out of their way to keep people happy.

Paralysis of Initiation

• The inability to start tasks or initiate changes is a common issue related to trauma.

• The person feels stuck and unable to make decisions or take action.

Inability to Moderate Relationships

• Trauma can cause a person to have extremely intense relationships that lack balance.

• They struggle to find a middle ground and often become either too attached or disconnected with others.

Somatic Problems

• Trauma can cause physical problems in the body that may not necessarily be a diagnosable medical illness.

• Common somatic problems include headaches, stomach pain, back pain, and fatigue.

Understanding trauma and its physical effects

• People who have experienced trauma often exhibit physical problems that can't be easily explained by medical illnesses.

• These physical problems are often associated with psychiatric conditions such as IBS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia.

• Dr. K explains that these physical issues are frequently a result of the person experiencing trauma.

• Trauma's physical manifestations can be tough to pin down since it can cause a variety of individual responses, which are not classified as trauma-related conditions.

"There's all kinds of weird, so if there's something weird going on with your body, that a doctor is like eh I don't know what's wrong with you, chances are it's related to trauma."

The Prevalence of Trauma

• Dr. K notes that trauma is much more common than many people previously believed.

• This is supported by research indicating that as many as 60% of the population has had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

• According to Dr. K, anyone can experience trauma, even if they do not receive a specific diagnosis.

• Trauma is frequently misinterpreted as other psychological or medical disorders.

"But it turns out that we understand the mechanism of this stuff relates to trauma. Trauma is sort of a unique illness, and the reason it's so common is that trauma is not a pathology of the brain or the mind. It is an abnormal adaptation to a traumatic circumstance or experience so it's really something we have to understand when we look at mental illness."

Trauma's Unique Nature

• Trauma is unique compared to other mental illnesses.

• It is not regarded as an illness or brain pathology; contrarily, it is typically an adaptation to a traumatic event or situation.

• Trauma and its effects on our physiology are a normal and natural response to these situations.

• Trauma's prevalence is seldom acknowledged due to the frequent miscategorization of its effects.

Understanding Trauma

• Sensory experiences that cause emotions lead to the activation of rapid scripts that respond to the situation.

• Emotions are a quick way to present information to the mind when there is little time for analysis.

• Trauma affects five domains in a person: affect, consciousness, self-perception or identity, relationships, and somatic self.

"There are experiences, there are emotions that come with those experiences."

The Five Domains of Trauma

• Trauma changes the way a person relates to their emotions, specifically affecting anger and self-destructive behavior.

• Trauma affects a person's consciousness and ability to focus or be mentally present.

• A traumatic experience changes the way that a person views themselves and their identity.

• Trauma impacts relationships as it is often inflicted by another person and can damage a person's view of relationships and trust.

• Trauma affects a person's physical self and can create somatic complaints.

"The five domains that trauma affects."

What Makes Something Traumatic

• Coercive control and an environment of coercion are the most important elements of trauma.

• The experience of sexual assault or trauma due to genocide can be traumatic, but not everyone who goes through these experiences will develop PTSD.

• Trauma research has discovered that everyone uses the same techniques to control other people, and it is intrinsically known by human beings.

The Mind of an Abuser and How They Destroy Autonomy

• Abusers aim to destroy the autonomy of their victims by imposing arbitrary limits or rules.

• Petty or arbitrary rules are used by abusers to destroy autonomy.

• Destroying autonomy is a key part of the traumatic experience.

• The abuser wants to make the victim feel as if they depend on the abuser for everything good or bad.

• The abused person becomes dependent on the abuser, and this is what the abuser wants to achieve.

• The abuser creates an environment where the victim feels like they are in control by not making the abuser angry.

• The abuser prefers unpredictability, as it makes the victim engage in the behavior.

• People will intentionally create petty rules that are not justifiable.

• Traumatic abusers are the original loot box.

"The abuser becomes God, the bestower of health and happiness, the bestower of being able to go to bed at night without bruises on my body."

Traumatic Relationships and How They Affect Autonomy

• In traumatic relationships, independent action becomes insubordination.

• Independent action becoming insubordination destroys your sense of autonomy.

• Traumatic relationships don't leave room for trial and error.

• If I talk back, I'm going to get beat.

• Trauma can cause the paralysis of initiation.

• Traumatized people who look for perfection before they start might be responding to trauma.

"It's about survival. No impala or gazelle goes up to the edge of the water and debates the crocodile. It's insane; we do not debate crocodiles."

Emotion-focused coping and addiction

• People who have experienced trauma tend to have emotion-focused coping mechanisms.

• This means that they focus on fixing their internal emotional state because they cannot control anything outside of themselves.

• Substance use is highly correlated with trauma because fixing emotions becomes a strategy to deal with problems.

• This can lead to a cycle of problematic behaviors and worsening emotions.

"All I know how to do is use substances to fix the emotions because that's the strategy that worked."

Manifestations of trauma

• Trauma can manifest itself in many different ways, including chronic depression, addiction to pornography, and living life reactively.

• People who have experienced trauma may have difficulty concentrating, suppressing emotions, thinking about the future, and focusing on emotional coping rather than actually solving problems.

• Trauma can lead to a lack of direction and a sense of not knowing who one is.

"All of this negative energy and anger is going to start manifesting in weird ways in my body."

Healing from trauma

• Trauma can be healed, even if it may not be easy.

• The brain may be fragmented, but it is not broken.

• Borderline personality disorder and other conditions related to trauma can go into remission with time and healing.

"The natural history of the human body and mind is to heal."

Understanding Trauma

• Trauma is not a malfunction of some fundamental circuit, but it's pathology. It's not like you've got a lysosomal storage disease where there's some neurotransmitter or some receptor that's just coded incorrectly.

• Safety and stabilization is the most important thing in healing trauma. It's very hard to heal trauma if you're actively getting traumatized.

• Fixing your environment is the first thing you've got to do to heal trauma. Strive for independence or limitations around the toxic people.

• Sometimes seeing a therapist for one hour a week can be enough of a platform for you to rest on and start to branch out in the rest of your life.

• Safety and stabilization is the most important thing.

• The foundation of a lot of this stuff is the disintegration of our emotions. That doesn't mean the absence of emotions, that means literally the disintegration.

• Language can substitute for action. When you articulate, there is integration. When there is integration, there is Flow State. And when there is Flow State, there is improvement.

• The problem still exists, but when you articulate, there is integration.

Understanding Trauma

• Traumatized individuals can benefit from psychotherapy that teaches them how to integrate their emotions.

• The problem is not not knowing how to do something, but the brain being split into a million pieces, dissociated from each other.

"It is a thousand different fragments that are all dissociated from each other and can't actually do anything."

• Understanding comes from integration, which comes from articulating emotions.

"This is the value of understanding. Understanding comes from integration. Integration comes from articulating your emotions."

The Value of Understanding

• Language is a substitute for action.

• Articulating something is a necessary step to understanding it.

• Understanding something is what leads to taking action.

"Once you understand it, I'm not talking about information, I'm talking about understanding, then you start doing it."

Meditation Practice

• Engage in a meditation practice for 10-15 minutes a day.

• Focus your full attention on one thing, it could even be a breath.

• The practice doesn't have to be productive, just put your full attention into it.

"Focus on one thing at a time, that's it."

Trauma as the Great Chameleon

• Trauma is the fundamental way that our brain works and the way we interact with the world.

• The way we find direction, execute tasks, form relationships, and more can all be found in trauma.

• Trauma is the great chameleon because it looks like a thousand different problems, but it's all one problem.

"It's all one problem and that problem has to do with the way that your brain works."

Understanding Trauma

• The reason we suffer is avidya ignorance.

• Buddha says that our suffering is due to our ignorance of the true nature of things.

• Understanding trauma is one of the most important things we can learn to play the game of life well.

• This is because, if we don't understand trauma, it can be like playing a game without understanding the rules, which can be very painful.

• Once we understand trauma, we can better navigate the challenges of life.

"The reason we suffer is avidya ignorance."