Psychological Trauma: What It Is and Why It Comes Back

Trauma isn't about a weak character or about someone who "couldn't cope." It's how the psyche responds to an event or a series of events that overwhelmed the usual ways of protecting oneself. In the moment of threat, it does everything to survive — and later those same survival strategies make themselves known in peacetime life. Below is how such a trace is structured, why it doesn't erase on demand, and what can be done about it.

What Psychological Trauma Is

Psychological trauma is a response to an event experienced as a threat to life, body, or the integrity of the self. The threat may be physical, or it may be tied to humiliation, rejection, helplessness, or the inability to influence what's happening.