Trauma is a word people are hearing more often, and for good reason. Many people live with the after-effects of experiences that were frightening, violating, overwhelming, or impossible to process at the time. When trauma is not recognised, people can spend years feeling confused by their own body, emotions, relationships, or reactions without fully understanding why (Siddaway et al., 2024; Stubley et al., 2025). In this article, I want to gently explore what trauma is, how it can show up, and what healing after trauma can look like.

At the same time, it helps to define trauma clearly. Not because pain needs to be ranked, but because accurate language can bring relief, understanding, and more fitting support. Trauma is one kind of suffering, but it is not the only kind, and knowing the difference can help people respond to themselves with more clarity and care (Baes et al., 2023; Siddaway et al., 2024).

If this article resonates with you, and you’re also navigating sexual trauma, you might like to read my article, What Trauma-Informed Sex Therapy Looks Like in My Practice.

What Trauma Is

In clinical terms, trauma is more than something upsetting, stressful, or unpleasant. In the DSM-5-TR, the threshold for PTSD involves exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. This may happen through direct experience, witnessing it, learning that it happened to a close loved one in violent or accidental circumstances, or repeated exposure to traumatic details through professional work (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; National Center for PTSD, n.d.; Siddaway et al., 2024).

The ICD-11 uses slightly different language, describing trauma as an event or series of events that are extremely threatening or horrific (Siddaway et al., 2024; World Health Organization, 2021). Both frameworks are trying to describe experiences that overwhelm a person’s sense of safety in a more profound way.

Trauma can involve anxiety, but it is not the same as anxiety alone. Trauma is usually about something that overwhelms the nervous system and leaves the person struggling to return to safety and calm, because the body has been pushed beyond its capacity to respond and recover. It is not simply a hard day, a difficult conversation, or a painful feeling. It is an experience that can leave the system braced, alert, shut down, or stuck in survival mode long after the event has passed (Siddaway et al., 2024; Stubley et al., 2025).

How Trauma Can Show Up

Trauma can affect the body, emotions, thinking, relationships, and sense of self. Common symptoms include intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks, strong reactions to reminders, avoidance, emotional numbing, hypervigilance, irritability, sleep problems, trouble concentrating, shame, and negative beliefs about oneself or the world (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; National Center for PTSD, n.d.; Siddaway et al., 2024).

For some people, trauma also shows up as dissociation, a sense of disconnection from the body, feeling unreal, or emotionally shutting down. Others notice it more in intimacy, trust, boundaries, sexuality, or how safe they feel in their own body. Sometimes the signs are obvious. Sometimes they look more like over-functioning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or a nervous system that rarely settles (Siddaway et al., 2024; Stubley et al., 2025).

Depression can also sit alongside trauma. Trauma does not only present as fear or panic. It can also look like flatness, hopelessness, exhaustion, withdrawal, low motivation, or losing interest in things that once mattered. This is one reason trauma can be missed when people assume it always looks dramatic or visibly distressed (Hyland et al., 2018; Stubley et al., 2025).

PTSD and complex PTSD

PTSD and complex PTSD are related but not identical. In ICD-11, PTSD is organised around three core groupings of symptoms: re-experiencing the trauma in the present, avoidance of reminders, and a persistent sense of current threat, often seen in hypervigilance or exaggerated startle (Siddaway et al., 2024; World Health Organization, 2021).

Complex PTSD is officially recognised in ICD-11 and was developed to better describe the longer-term impact of repeated, prolonged, or difficult-to-escape trauma. This might include chronic childhood abuse, captivity, coercive control, torture, or prolonged interpersonal violence (National Center for PTSD, n.d.; Stubley et al., 2025). In addition to core PTSD symptoms, complex PTSD includes disturbances in self-organisation, such as emotional dysregulation, a persistently negative sense of self, and ongoing difficulty with closeness, trust, or relationships (Hyland et al., 2018; Stubley et al., 2025).

Complex PTSD is not a separate diagnosis in DSM-5-TR. Even so, the concept has been clinically useful because it captures patterns many people recognise in the aftermath of repeated trauma, especially where the effects are woven through identity, attachment, shame, and long-term nervous-system adaptation (National Center for PTSD, n.d.; Siddaway et al., 2024; Stubley et al., 2025).

The Many Forms Trauma Can Take

Trauma does not always look the same. Some trauma is acute, meaning it follows a single overwhelming event such as an assault, accident, medical emergency, natural disaster, or sudden life-threatening experience. Other trauma is chronic, building over time through repeated abuse, coercion, domestic violence, neglect, or ongoing exposure to danger. Complex trauma usually refers to repeated, prolonged, and often interpersonal trauma, especially when there is limited safety, choice, or escape (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017; Stubley et al., 2025).

Trauma can also take different forms in people’s lives.

Familial or relational trauma: can include abuse, neglect, coercive control, chronic invalidation, emotional volatility, domestic violence, or growing up without enough safety, attunement, or predictability (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017).
Sexual trauma: can include sexual assault, child sexual abuse, exploitation, coercion, trafficking, and other sexual experiences involving force, pressure, fear, violation, or lack of consent (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017).
Physical trauma: can involve assault, physical abuse, accidents, injury, or bodily harm where the system is overwhelmed by threat, pain, or helplessness (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017).
Political or collective trauma: can involve war, persecution, displacement, oppression, discrimination, state violence, or traumatic events that affect whole communities or groups (Stubley et al., 2025; World Health Organization, 2021).
Medical trauma: can arise through frightening diagnoses, invasive procedures, emergency treatment, chronic illness, pain, or experiences of helplessness within care settings (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017).
Developmental trauma: refers to trauma occurring during childhood and adolescence, especially where repeated adversity shapes attachment, regulation, and the developing nervous system over time (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017).
Vicarious trauma: can occur when someone is repeatedly exposed to other people’s trauma through caregiving, therapy, advocacy, journalism, or other helping roles, and begins to carry that impact secondhand (Jimenez et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2021).

When Emotional Pain Is Not Trauma

Not every painful experience is trauma, even when it hurts deeply. Conflict, grief, rejection, shame, disappointment, burnout, and ordinary life stress can all affect the body and mind in significant ways. They still deserve care. They simply do not all meet the threshold for trauma as defined in the major diagnostic frameworks (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; Siddaway et al., 2024; World Health Organization, 2021).

Making this distinction is not about dismissing anyone’s pain. It is about responding in ways that fit what is actually happening. Some experiences call for trauma-focused or trauma-informed support around safety, pacing, and stabilisation. Others may call for grief work, boundaries, accountability, communication, rest, meaning-making, or a gentler relationship with one’s inner world. Pain matters, even when it is not trauma (SAMHSA, 2014; Stubley et al., 2025).

Healing After Trauma

Healing after trauma is not one-size-fits-all, and it is not only about talking through what happened. A trauma-informed approach pays attention to safety, pacing, choice, and the many ways trauma can shape the body, emotions, thoughts, relationships, and sense of self (SAMHSA, 2014; Siddaway et al., 2024).

Rather than focusing only on symptoms or asking what is wrong, this kind of work tries to understand what has happened, how a person has adapted, and what may help them feel more grounded, connected, and able to live with greater freedom. For some people, that includes learning how to relate differently to thoughts, emotions, and painful memories. For others, it involves working with the nervous system more directly, noticing protective patterns, or making space for the different parts of themselves that carry fear, shame, anger, grief, or vigilance (American Psychological Association, 2025; SAMHSA, 2014).

For some people, healing also involves parts-informed, body-based, and phase-oriented approaches that recognise how trauma can leave experience feeling internally divided, with different protective, reactive, or younger states carrying fear, shame, numbness, or survival responses. Rather than seeing those states as problems to get rid of, this work helps people approach them with curiosity, grounding, and compassion, while building enough safety and regulation for deeper processing to happen gradually (Fisher, 2011; Griffiths et al., 2025; Steele et al., 2005).

In my practice, healing may draw on a range of therapeutic lenses. Cognitive approaches can help people recognise beliefs and patterns that keep them stuck. Acceptance-based approaches can support psychological flexibility and values-based action. Parts work can help people approach inner conflict with more curiosity and less self-judgment. Somatic approaches can help restore a greater sense of safety, regulation, and capacity in the body. What matters most is not forcing a person into one model, but finding an approach that is respectful, collaborative, and responsive to who they are (American Psychological Association, 2025; Billings et al., 2025; SAMHSA, 2014).

Closing Thought

Trauma is real, and its effects can be far-reaching. But people are not broken because they have adapted to overwhelming experiences. Often, the work is not about fixing a damaged person, but about creating enough safety, understanding, and support for healing to unfold over time (SAMHSA, 2014; Stubley et al., 2025).

If this article resonates, and you’re looking for trauma counselling or trauma-informed sex therapy in Adelaide or Goodwood that is warm, collaborative, and trauma-informed, you’re welcome to explore my services.

Book your first session here.

References

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Jimenez, R. R., DeVylder, J. E., Bartels, S. J., & Moreno, C. (2021). Vicarious trauma in mental health care providers. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 142, 450–457. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2405452621000380

Kim, J., Chesworth, B., Franchino-Olsen, H., & Macy, R. J. (2021). A scoping review of vicarious trauma interventions for service providers working with people who have experienced traumatic events. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(5), 1437–1460. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838021991310

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