TL;DR –Trauma isn't limited to soldiers returning from war or survivors of car crashes—it's any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope and leaves you feeling threatened, helpless, or profoundly unsafe. The crucial understanding that changes everything is this: trauma is subjective. What matters isn't whether your experience would traumatize someone else or fits a specific checklist, but whether your body and nervous system experienced it as overwhelming. If you've spent years wondering whether your childhood difficulties "count" as trauma because they weren't dramatic enough or others had it worse, you're asking the wrong question—if it felt traumatic to you, it counts, period.
While trauma can be categorized into types—acute (single events), chronic (repeated experiences), secondary (exposure to others' trauma), and complex/relational (developmental trauma in caregiving relationships)—what defines trauma isn't the category but your individual experience of being overwhelmed. Your nervous system doesn't compare your suffering to others' or check whether your experience was "objectively" traumatic enough; it simply responds to what overwhelmed your capacity to integrate and cope. Understanding this subjectivity validates countless experiences that have been minimized or dismissed, allowing healing to begin from a place of truth rather than comparison.
“Trauma is any experience that leaves a person feeling hopeless, helpless, or profoundly unsafe.”
– Janina Fisher, PhD
In the course of my thirteen years as a therapist, I’ve heard some iteration of these two questions hundreds of times:
“What even *is* trauma?” and “How do I know if mine “counts”?”
I’ll never get tired of answering these questions – whether it’s for my individual therapy clients or here on the internet with you.
I’ll never get tired of answering these questions because they were two of the dominant questions I wondered about for years, too.
So I answer my clients and I share this information widely online because they’re the answers I would have so desperately wanted to know when I was 15 or 20 years old.
So, with the hopes that this will feel helpful to you, let me share some psychoeducation with you.
What is trauma?
“Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”
– Judith Herman, MD
Let’s begin with a broad, high-level overview of what trauma is and isn’t.
This may feel redundant and obvious to you but I still want to ground us into this 30,000 foot view and reiterate what you may already know so that this information and everything else I share in this essay is firmly cemented.
I believe psychoeducation for those of us who come from relational trauma histories is critical.
The more you really understand the basics of it – not to mention the more you know about it specifically – the more easily you can see yourself and your life story more clearly and be equipped to seek out the right kind of support.
So, again, we ask the question: what defines trauma?
Trauma is subjective.
I want to share a quote with you from one of my favorite trauma clinicians – Karen Saakvitne, Ph.D.
“Trauma is the unique individual experience of an event or enduring conditions in which the individual’s ability to integrate his/her emotional experience is overwhelmed and the individual experiences (either objectively or subjectively) a threat to his/her life, bodily integrity, or that of a caregiver or family.”
It guides my work with anyone who has experienced it. Especially those who have experienced relational trauma and I hope it feels helpful for you to hear.
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START THE QUIZWhy is this quote and what it represents so important?
For so long, in my field and collectively by lay people, trauma was imagined as something only soldiers endured in war.
Or as a single, terrible event like a car crash or a rape.
And OF COURSE these are all potentially very traumatic experiences.
But in this current iteration of psychological traumatology – there has been an increasing (and much needed) understanding of the neurobiology of trauma, including the subjectivity of it.
In other words, contrary to popular belief, it isn’t relegated to just a discrete set of experiences or incidents (like a car crash or wartime conflict).
Instead, it now has a much more expansive definition.
Trauma can be an event, series of events, or prolonged circumstances that are subjectively experienced by the individual who goes through it as physically, mentally, and emotionally harmful and/or life-threatening AND that overwhelms the individual’s ability to effectively cope with what they went through.
The key here is the word “subjective” – what may make something traumatic to me, may not to you, and so forth.
As a clinician, I gauge trauma by whether the client’s BODY is having a trauma response, not whether the precipitating incident was objectively traumatic.
If a trauma response is present, then trauma is present.
Again, I want you to understand that it is subjective so that we can answer that second question – “How do I know if mine counts?”
Simply put, if it felt traumatic to you, it counts.
What kind of events and circumstances might lead to trauma?
“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.”
— Bessel van der Kolk, MD
Now, having grounded us in the realization that it is subjective and highly personal, there are still proverbial buckets of experiences we can categorize traumatic events and circumstances into that help us answer the first part of that question: “What even is trauma?”
These buckets of experiences, combined with the element of subjectivity, come into play when we talk about relational trauma. (the focus of my clinical body of work) Because you endure relational trauma. As well as have traumatic experiences from any of these other types of trauma buckets, too. WHICH can exacerbate the impacts of relational trauma.
I’ll be writing more on this – the compounding of various forms of trauma – in future essays but, for now, let’s just quickly review these primary buckets.
- Acute trauma: This refers to a single-incident, one-time event such as experiencing a wildfire, car crash, school shooting, terrorist event, or house fire.This is what so many people historically and stereotypically think of as “trauma.”
- Chronic trauma: This refers to a set of experiences that are repeated and take place over time, such as enduring racial microaggressions, middle school bullying, poverty, exposure to violence in the community, or long-term medical challenges.
- Secondary trauma: Also known as vicarious trauma. This type can affect people who help others cope with trauma, such as healthcare professionals, therapists, and first responders. It results from exposure to others’ traumatic experiences rather than from direct personal experience.
- Complex trauma: Often called developmental or relational trauma. It’s the kind that takes place over time in the context of a caretaking relationship. (Usually between a parent and child.) It fails to adequately support the child’s biopsychosocial development. Such as in cases when ongoing neglect, sexual abuse, physical punishment, witnessing domestic violence, or being raised by a personality- or mood-disordered parent occurs.
Recognizing Your Trauma Through Professional Support
When you’ve spent years questioning whether your experiences “count” as trauma, working with a trauma-informed therapist can provide the validation and framework you’ve been seeking.
A skilled therapist understands that trauma isn’t measured by comparing your story to others’ but by recognizing how your unique nervous system responded to overwhelming experiences. In the therapeutic space, you don’t need to justify why your trauma is “bad enough”—the focus is on how these experiences affected you subjectively and continue to impact your life today.
This validation alone can be profoundly healing for those who’ve minimized their suffering or been told they’re “too sensitive” or “overreacting.” For those beginning to recognize patterns of impact from their past, understanding the signs that your childhood negatively affected you can help connect current struggles to their origins.
The therapeutic relationship provides what may have been missing—someone who believes your subjective reality matters, who doesn’t require your trauma to fit specific criteria, and who helps you understand that healing begins with honoring the truth of your experience, not proving it was “traumatic enough.”
This – complex trauma – is the focus of my entire body of clinical work in the world.
I’ll be elaborating on how and why this particular kind of trauma is, in my personal and professional opinion, one of the most damaging kinds to endure in my next essay.
But, for now, hopefully by sharing this high quality psychoeducation with you in today’s essay, you can help answer the questions I would have liked to answer when I was fifteen or twenty years old:
“What even *is* trauma?” and “How do I know if mine “counts”?”
And now I’d love to hear from you in the comments:
Did this information help answer one or both of those questions for you? How does realizing this support you and your healing work?
If you feel so inclined, please leave a message. Our community of 30,000 blog readers can benefit from your share and wisdom.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
References
- Pearlman, L. A., Saakvitne, K. W., & Weingarten, K. (2000). Risking connection: A training curriculum for working with survivors of childhood abuse. Sidran Institute.
