What is Trauma?

Maté defines trauma as an inner injury, a rupture within oneself due to hurtful events that happened to the person. Trauma is a psychic injury that stays lodged inside our nervous system and it lasts long past the original event which caused it. It is also re-triggered at any time.

Unresolved trauma keeps us stuck in the past as we try to live normal lives, while protecting ourselves from the unhappy memories of the original trauma. When we suppress those memories though, we can’t heal and grow past the original trauma. Unresolved trauma has negative consequences which impact us emotionally, mentally and even physically. Maté quotes Peter Levine as saying, “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” (Maté. The Myth of Normal. pg 21)

Unresolved trauma comes up time after time, client after client, in my counselling practice as people try to heal from and move past depression and anxiety. Is unresolved trauma at the root of your depression or anxiety? Is it at the root of a different psychological problem?