I found this and it really shifted my thinking of trauma and denial.

Here’s the link and 2 pieces from the article that really spoke to me.


The Denial of Trauma

The psychological definition of trauma is “damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a distressing event or an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds the ability of the individual to cope and integrate the emotions involved.” This definition often gets simplified into the dictionary definition of “a deeply disturbing or distressing event,” which is where we all get a little lost. It’s very easy to understand trauma as something horrific, like war, or mass violence, or a natural disaster. It’s the “exceeding ability to cope and integrate emotions” section that gets lost on us.

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We need to get rid of the view that trauma is an action (an event). The more psychology tells us about trauma, the more it becomes clear that trauma is a reaction. Most importantly, it is an individual reaction.