Trauma, a word broadly used by people in everyday life, is sometimes misunderstood. It is often thought of as as a major threatening experience in one’s life such as physical abuse, sexual abuse or situations that endanger the life of an individual. While there is truth to this way of thinking about trauma, it is not the whole story. Sometimes an individual experiences traumatic moments of overstimulation, overwhelm or impingement without recognizing what they have gone through as a trauma.
In certain cases, these less commonly recognized forms of trauma can manifest with different levels of intensity and can be the result of a single or multiple events.
The experience of having your emotions dismissed can be a traumatic experience. Many people experience having their emotions dismissed by significant others in their lives. When these experiences happen during childhood, they can be especially traumatic. If a traumatic dismissal of one’s emotions involves being belittled by someone significant, it can manifest later on as a belittling of one’s own self. It can also manifest as a chronic denial of one’s own emotional states. In my clinical experience, it has been essential to identify the traumatic root causes that often underpin these kinds of difficulties with one’s self. An important part of that process is recognizing when a trauma has occurred.