EMOTIONAL TRAUMA?—?A POTENTIALLY SERIOUS BUT IGNORED PROBLEM
Akira Olsen, PsyD, MA
Board-Certified Clinical Psychologist (California & Nevada) | Consultant | Founder @ WARM | Mental Health & Well-being, Attention & Trauma Expert | Marquis Who's Who Honoree 2024
What’s emotional trauma?
In order to help you understand what emotional trauma is better, we are first going to define what trauma is. Trauma is an experience of serious and sometimes potentially fatal injuries. You can experience trauma either by witnessing a horrible event or by being directly involved in something terrible. For example, if armed gunmen were to raid a shopping mall and kill innocent children, as a witness of such a horrible event, you will most likely be traumatized – unless you do not have a conscience. Another instance is if you are directly involved in an accident, or a life-threatening situation, you may also be traumatized. For the purpose of this discussion, we will talk about two types of trauma – physical and emotional trauma. Physical trauma involves direct serious or life-threatening injury to the body, while emotional trauma involves injuries to the mind. Emotional trauma (also called psychological trauma) usually happens when you experience a deeply disturbing or distressing event. Any event that leaves you feeling helpless and alone, any event that shatters your sense of security and self-worth whether violent or not is emotionally traumatic. One reason why it may be difficult to detect emotional trauma is that it is highly subjective. Some, common events that may not mean anything to most of us may be emotionally distressing to some people. Physical trauma can also lead to emotional trauma most of the time. It is important to recognize emotional trauma because it tends to be overlooked most of the time even though it can cause serious long-lasting impacts on relationships, academics, work, marriages and many other aspects of a person’s life.
Differences between emotional trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):
Emotional trauma is a potentially serious problem; however, it is not the same as post-traumatic stress disorder. There are some key differences:
· The first is that post-traumatic stress disorder is more intense than emotional trauma and can cause greater psychological and physical havoc.
· Emotional trauma, unlike PTSD, may not be caused by a life-threatening event. Things like a nasty breakup from a significant relationship or the loss of a dream job or business which are not life-threatening events can cause emotional trauma. We are going to talk more about this in the next section
· Unlike Post-Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD), emotional trauma tends to be disregarded as a trivial problem even though it has some potentially serious effects.
Causes of PTSD and emotional trauma:
PTSD is caused by severe and potentially life-threatening events. These events could either happen directly to the person in question or it could be that the person happened to witness such events. Some of these traumatic events which can precipitate PTSD include ghastly accidents (be it on the road, sea or air), sexual abuse (such as rape), abuse as a child, robbery, terrorism, wars, natural disasters (like Hurricanes and tsunamis) , witnessing a violent death such as dogs mauling a person or a gang-style execution, a permanent and disabling injury or death to a loved one and so many other causes Emotional and psychological trauma on the other hand, can be caused by:
- Past violent events, like accidents, terror attacks, rape, child abuse and so on
- Continuous stressful situations, such as living in a violent neighborhood, being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease (like cancer/HIV), domestic violence from parents or spouse, bullying, neglect of a child and so on.
- Commonly overlooked causes, such as humiliations, breakup from a significant relationship, a major surgery, unexpected serious injury to or death of a loved one, a major adverse life change (like loss of a job) and so on.
Effects of emotional trauma
Emotional trauma is not as serious as PTSD, and may not cause PTSD. However, it is still a serious issue and is closely linked to other anxiety disorders such as social anxiety disorders, panic disorders, generalized anxiety disorders and so on. Children need a lot of love and attention, they are fragile physically and emotionally and childhood is the formative stage of life. Emotional abuse and neglect in childhood may cause significant damage to their mental health. By the time these emotionally abused children become teenagers and they start to develop physically, mentally and emotionally, they may develop psychological and behavioral problems as a result of the emotional trauma they experienced as children. Many adults who were “emotionally abused” by parents who had Narcissistic Personality Disorders tend to find it difficult to relate to other people. Some effects of prolonged emotional trauma may be self-destructive behaviors like substance abuse, alcoholism, sexual dysfunction, withdrawal from others, impulsive behaviors, feeling of depression, dysfunctional relationships, feelings of insecurity and inability to keep a stable job due to emotional problems.
Treatment of emotional trauma:
The goals of treatment of emotional trauma are to resolve the major aspects of emotional trauma symptoms in the short term and reduce emotional trauma over the long term. The major aspects of emotional trauma include cognitive (having to do with thinking and memories) disruptions such as disturbing thoughts that the traumatic events may happen again and nightmares; behavioral disruptions such as avoiding places where the traumatic experience happened and being overly aware of your environment; psychological disruptions such as overwhelming anxiety, emotional detachment from others, depression, shame and so on. Treatment options such as Cognitive behavioral therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, Compassion-focused therapy, and trauma therapy such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) which involves slow exposure of patients to traumatic memories and “desensitizing” them through changing their focus using eye movements to track progress of treatment and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) which is a more specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy that involves psychoeducation on emotional trauma followed by a gradual exposure to the event that caused the trauma and a way to identify and get over unhelpful thoughts
REFERENCES
https://www.cascadebh.com/behavioral/trauma/signs-symptoms-effects/
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/traumatic-stress.htm
https://www.avalonmalibu.com/blog/childhood-emotional-trauma-manifests-in-different-ways/
https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/cognitive-processing-therapy.aspx