Trauma Psychoeducation
When you’ve been through something traumatic, it can be really important to actually understand
what is happening to you. This is important because it can help remove some of the isolation and
confusion that you will likely be feeling as a result of your experiences.
One of the most helpful strategies for this is what we call ‘psychoeducation’, which is essentially
sharing useful information around a topic, in this case, trauma. This is, however, only a brief
introduction.
What Trauma Is
Trauma is an event (or events) that occurs where someone is, or perceives, that they, or someone
they care about are in life threatening danger. The things that are experienced or perceived as
trauma, varies, depending on the age of the person experiencing it; someone who is very young, will
experience different things as traumatic, compared to an adult.
Trauma is a deep experience, that can have far reaching consequences in how someone is in the
world, how someone feels, what someone does and how someone copes.
Types of Trauma
There are two types of trauma.
Type One- Type One trauma is when someone has experienced a single trauma, that will not reoccur
in a connected way. This can also be called a ‘Simple Trauma’. This might be an event like a car crash,
or natural disaster, an assault of some type or some other event where they feared for their life or
the life of someone they loved. People can experience more than one of these in their life, but they
will not be connected. That can also include being in, for example, two car accidents. They may both
be trauma, but they will be unconnected from each other, and therefore, seen as separate incidents.
Being dysregulated, and experiencing dysregulation after a trauma like this, is completely normal. It
takes around, and at least, 28 days to reach some level of stability after a trauma has happened, and
this will be quicker with good support around you. Within those early days, you may notice things
like heightened emotions, hypervigilance, intrusive experiences and also a desire to avoid.
Type Two- Type Two trauma is when someone has experienced a prolonged trauma, and this is of a
relational nature. This can also be called a ‘Complex Trauma’. A prolonged trauma means that it is
something that happens over and over again, with the knowledge it will happen again. This often
occurs in childhood (for example, sustained abuse, neglect or inadequate parenting), but can occur
in adulthood (such as in domestically violent situations).
Having a sustained and prolonged period of trauma leaves all the same challenges as Type One
trauma, however, the person also has no opportunity to get over the trauma before the knowing the
next one is coming, and also will experience relational challenges as a result of the experience. This
can mean that it impacts wider areas of someone’s life.
Post Trauma Experience
It is common to experience some difficulties after going through something terrible. If these
difficulties continue, and have a significant impact on you, then you might be having a post
traumatic experience (which, for some people, leads to a diagnosis of Post Trauma Stress Disorder or
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Something that is important after a trauma is to have good support around you. This can be in the
form of family and friends, or community or colleagues, or professionals. The more support
someone has in the early days, the easier someone’s recovery from their experience will be. The
more alone someone feels, the more the symptoms may persist.
There are different criteria to meet for both PTSD and cPTSD, but I’m not going to talk about those,
because I’m not a diagnosing professional. I also believe that for us to work together to get you the
outcomes you need, we need to look at whatever it is that you are experiencing and work
specifically with you, with that in mind.
That said, there are many common things that people can experience after a trauma.
These are things that can occur for anyone who has experienced a trauma, be it Simple (Type
One), or Complex (Type Two).
-Avoiding internal experiences that remind you of the trauma, like remembering the trauma.
-Avoiding external experiences that remind you of the trauma, such as going to particular places or
seeing people or having conversations.
-Having dreams or nightmares.
-Thinking about it when you didn’t mean to.
-Feeling as if the experience is happening again.
-Having flashbacks, that may include imagery of what happened to you, or it may be an emotional
pattern you have.
-Feeling very upset when you remember what happened to you.
-Feeling more irritable and angry.
-Struggling to remember everything that happened to you, or only having memory fragments and
snapshots.
-Feeling numb or disconnected from yourself.
-Having different physical symptoms, such as an upset tummy, or heart pounding, or shaking, or
sweating.
-Feeling very vigilant and paying attention to more things than you used to.
-Struggling to cope with your feelings.
-Changing your routines and patterns to avoid anything upsetting.
-Struggling to concentrate.
-Struggles with falling or staying asleep.
After a Complex Trauma (Type Two) people may also experience the following symptoms:
-Experiencing emotional flashbacks.
-Having a strong ‘inner critic’.
-Do things that are risky and/or impulsive.
-Having feelings of shame, guilt or blaming yourself.
-Feeling that no one can understand, or that you’re ‘too broken’ or ‘unfixable’ or something similar.
-Feeling that what happened to you was ‘normal’, or struggling to connect to how trauma it was.
-Thinking about the person/people who hurt you a lot, either in a positive or negative way. You
might idealise him/her/them or want to hurt him/her/them.
-Finding it hard to trust people.
-Feeling unsafe in relational situations.
-Being a victim again, or victimising others.
-You might also struggle with wider physical symptoms, such as chronic pain, issues with your
digestive system, with your heart and lungs, with sex and conditions such as functional neurological
disorder.
It is important to identify that these are normal human responses to abnormal circumstances.
Another way to look at post trauma experiences are around themes. After trauma, there are five
areas that are identified as being impacted by trauma (Taken from Cognitive Processing Therapy
https://cptforptsd.com/). Not everyone is impacted by all of these, so have a read and see what you
relate to. These themes are typically impacted in relation to yourself, in relation to others, and/or in
relation to the world.
The themes are:
Safety
Trust
Power/Control
Esteem
Intimacy
These things happen because your body and brain are trying to help you (although it’s not always
helpful).
References
Resick, P. A., Monson, C. M., Chard, K. M. (2022) Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD; A
Comprehensive Guide
Walker, P. (2021) Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Independently published.