I took a self-defense class in college where the guy teaching the class said that there's nothing lesser about "date rape" because a person who is sexually assaulted in a dark parking lot by a stranger learns to fear dark parking lots and strangers, but a person who is sexually assaulted in a relationship learns to fear being close to people. I was stunned by how much sense that made. (This was also when I banished that phrase from my vocabulary.)

Lately I am becoming much more interested in the effects of adverse/overwhelming events on the nervous system and the body. I am trying to learn how to feel things in my body and to check in with my body when I am reacting in an emotional way. (And I have certainly been through upsetting or sad events where my body doesn't react in that way in the moment or afterward.) I think there is something important to the idea of the body keeping the score, so my personal definition of trauma would involve some aspect of that. It helps to take the "what is real trauma?/is this bad enough?" factor out of it. At the end of the day, I think it's more useful to consider the impact the event had on the person, rather than the specific circumstances of the event.