Have you ever wanted to know if something you experienced was traumatic, or why some events continue to affect you years later?
Maybe you’ve gone through something difficult, but instead of moving on, you find yourself stuck in those feelings. Sometimes, we experience events that change us, but we don’t understand what trauma really is or how to heal from it.
According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is our emotional response to any event we perceived as dangerous or threatening. It’s how we react to something that felt overwhelming to us.
None of us is born knowing how to process trauma, so how can we understand it and recover? Here are the key concepts about trauma explained simply.
Table of contents
- What causes trauma?
- Types of trauma
- Understanding PTSD
- Why some people recover faster
- The resilience factor
- The connection between resilience and recovery
- When resilience isn’t enough
- Finding solutions that already exist
- The approach that changes everything
- Real resilience is flexibility
- Understanding before solving
- When professional help is needed
- The foundation of recovery
- The intelligence of adaptation
- Final thoughts
What causes trauma?
Trauma can come from big events like abuse, assault, accidents, or natural disasters. Have you noticed it can also come from smaller things like bullying, discrimination, or being treated unfairly? Even emotional neglect or being criticized repeatedly can create trauma.
The cause happens in your environment, but how it affects you depends on several factors: how resilient you are, what social support you have, what family support exists, and how severe the traumatic event was.
Types of trauma
Do you know the difference between acute trauma and chronic trauma? Acute trauma comes from a single event—like getting stuck in a natural disaster. One incident that creates an emotional response.
Chronic trauma is repeated and prolonged. It happens over time, like domestic violence that continues for years, health-related problems, or dealing with a chronic disease that affects your body and requires mental adjustment.
Then there’s complex trauma, which mixes multiple sources. Have you seen a child being bullied at school while their parents fight at home? Both situations happening simultaneously become overwhelming. The child’s emotional response becomes very negative because it’s a traumatic experience from multiple directions at once.
There’s also vicarious trauma. This happens when someone you deeply love goes through trauma, and you experience it too. Have you noticed therapists sometimes develop this? Or people very close to their loved ones—spouses, parents, children—can experience trauma symptoms just from witnessing someone else’s pain.
The interesting thing is the symptoms mirror PTSD exactly. You didn’t directly experience the trauma, but your symptoms will mirror Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Understanding PTSD
Having an emotional response to trauma is completely normal. Initially, people go into denial. Then after some time, if it continues too long, their health deteriorates. They might have problems working, problems in relationships, withdrawal, substance abuse—all of this is normal initially.
But some people can’t bounce back. They sink deeper, and that’s when it turns into PTSD.
In simple terms, PTSD symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, inability to concentrate, feeling triggered, social withdrawal, and avoidance behavior. Have you noticed people avoiding places or people connected to their traumatic experience?
There’s also hypervigilance—a heightened sense of alertness, always feeling like something bad might happen. This is the fight-or-flight response constantly activated.
Why some people recover faster
Here’s the question: why do two people experience the same trauma, but one recovers quickly while the other can’t move past it for years or even a lifetime?
It depends on several factors. First, how quickly can you bounce back? Is your outlook on life positive or negative? This connects to resilience, which is your ability to adapt and recover.
Your resilience helps you start moving forward again. No matter how serious the failure, if your outlook is even slightly positive, you’ll keep trying to reach where you want to be. If your outlook is negative, you won’t try. You’ll give up after one or two attempts.
Resilience is defined as your bounce-back ability. But here’s something important: there are two types of trauma. One is simple, the other is complex.
Simple trauma might be related to events that happened to everyone—like a natural disaster. The person can tell themselves, “I’m not alone. This happened to everyone. It wasn’t in my control.”
But complex trauma is when multiple things connect. Have you seen someone being bullied at school or college while also dealing with health problems? Their entire life feels ruined. This requires psychological help, sooner or later.
The resilience factor
What exactly is resilience? Let me explain where research shows resilience helps you start healing.
Even if you fail seriously, if your outlook is positive, you’ll try again to reach your goal. If your outlook is negative, you won’t try. You’ll give up after one or two attempts.
Here’s something crucial to understand: simple trauma is one thing, complex trauma is another. With simple trauma—events like natural disasters where everyone was affected—you can bounce back relatively easier because you don’t blame yourself.
But with complex problems, everything connects. Someone experiencing bullying at school, problems at home, health issues—their life becomes overwhelmingly complicated. That person needs psychological help.
The connection between resilience and recovery
People who recover from trauma possess certain qualities. So let’s understand what exactly research shows about resilience and how it helps healing begin.
First, no matter how serious your situation, if your outlook is even slightly positive, you’ll keep trying to get yourself to where you want to be. If your outlook is negative from the start, you won’t try. You’ll give up after just one or two attempts.
Resilience is basically defined as bounce-back ability. Now here’s something very important: there are two types of trauma. One is simple, the other is complex.
Simple means event-related—like everyone experiencing a natural disaster together. A person can tell themselves, “I’m not alone. Everyone went through this. Nothing was in my hands.” But complex problems are different.
When resilience isn’t enough
Have you noticed sometimes even strong people get trapped in patterns? There comes a point where trying harder doesn’t work. It’s like quicksand—the more you struggle, the deeper you sink.
At that moment, you need to stop trying the same way. Look around. Maybe there’s something you can grab onto, some branch or rope you didn’t notice because you were too focused on struggling.
To see that rope, you need to stop struggling for a moment. Look around calmly. You need patience and hope. These two words might sound simple, but what do they really mean?
Patience means having a solution-oriented mindset. “There is a problem, I don’t know the solution yet. The problem might be simple or complex—very complex even. I’ve talked to fifty people, nobody understands the solution. But that doesn’t mean there’s no solution. I just haven’t reached it yet. They don’t know where that solution is either.”
Finding solutions that already exist
Let me give you a business example. Do you know what happens when people come to me with ideas? They say, “Don’t discuss this with anyone, it’ll get copied.”
Their thinking is, “I’m the first person in the world who thought of this.” But reality? If you have a thought about a problem and you don’t know its solution, that solution already exists somewhere in the world.
If it’s your problem, many people have faced it before and are facing it now. There’s a strong possibility the solution exists somewhere in the world—multiple solutions exist. We just don’t know about them yet. We make mistakes thinking there’s no solution.
The approach that changes everything
The person who goes through trauma and is dealing with depression can’t focus on solutions. They can’t focus on anything else either. For them, first build social support. You shouldn’t try alone. You need people—whether friends, parents, someone who can support you.
But here’s a big problem: often depression is caused by the people closest to us. Distance doesn’t create problems—someone far away in another country can’t hurt you as much. But when it’s someone close? When your own people, your best friend, your sibling betrays you after you trusted them completely? That creates deep trauma.
At that point, what people misunderstand about resilience is thinking it means staying strong no matter what happens. I’d say that’s not the right approach.
Think of a tree in a storm. If it’s too rigid—very strong, very stiff—what happens? It breaks. But if it’s flexible? The storm comes, the tree bends, survives, then straightens back up.
Real resilience is flexibility
According to me, resilience means being flexible in the sense of understanding there are always multiple solutions to any given problem. This is very important.
When things get difficult, sometimes situations arise where nothing seems to work. Nothing helps. What works then? Having backup. Not that there’s no solution—the solution just hasn’t appeared yet.
It might take days—two days, four days, five days, ten days—but when it comes out, it’s not from forcing it. Because forcing happens in the same pattern we’ve always used. Effort in new ways never happens in old patterns.
So if we want a new thought, first we need to stop. Stop and look at the problem. We never write it down. We’re always busy trying to solve it without truly understanding it.
Understanding before solving
The more you try to solve the problem without understanding it, the deeper you get stuck. If someone wrote down exactly what happened, precisely what traumatic event occurred, they wouldn’t need to stay so depressed or convert to PTSD.
But if the problem is big enough that writing and understanding alone aren’t enough, then what? Then social support becomes necessary. Find people you can discuss with—not people who tell you what to do, but people who help you think.
Here’s something very simple: many people go to authority figures—”Tell me what to do about my problem.” The moment you do that, the other person takes an authority position. They’ll say, “Do this, do that.”
If you do it and it works, fine. If it doesn’t work, they’ll blame you: “I told you to do it, you didn’t listen, now look at the result.” That’s not the right position.
Make it clear from the start: “I’m not coming to you for advice. I’m coming to discuss. I want to understand different angles of this problem. I don’t need you to give me a solution. Please don’t give me solutions. Let’s just discuss the problem. Let’s see what your perspective is.”
Don’t tell me what to do and what not to do. Make that clear to the other person first.
When professional help is needed
If someone insists on forcing you to do something, if they’re in a position to manipulate you, don’t go near that person. They’ll trap you.
Only go to genuine people who can help you understand the problem. Understand clearly: the problem might be conditioning, repeated patterns that need breaking.
Clarity about the specific situation is crucial. Don’t compare it to other situations. First, calm yourself down. Share your feelings. Start understanding: “What happened to me? Why did it happen? What should my reaction have been? What was my actual reaction? Was it right? Can I take back control?”
You need to prioritize yourself. After that, focus on self-care. If you don’t take care of your mental and physical health, dealing with external problems becomes harder.
When your health is bad, small things make you cry. You feel upset easily. But when you feel physically strong, you don’t get affected as quickly. The same applies mentally.
The foundation of recovery
So what’s the exact definition of resilience that I’m talking about? Earlier, I thought resilience meant keep trying, keep working, keep pushing. But what’s mostly seen is resilience is an inherited quality for some people. It can be developed, but many people have it naturally.
But why does it work for some and not others? Several reasons explain this inherited quality. But the core is: this can be compiled and skills can be built from early childhood. You can try to work on it as an adult too.
The person in depression can’t focus on solutions or anything else. For them, first create social support. Understand you don’t have to try alone. You have people—whether friends, parents—but here’s the big problem.
Often, depression comes from the people closest to us. Not from distant people. If you’re sitting here and something happens in another country, it doesn’t affect you. But when your own people do something? When the person you trusted most betrays you? That’s when deep trauma occurs.
The intelligence of adaptation
Here’s what people misunderstand about resilience: they think it means stay strong no matter what. I’d say that’s not the right approach.
Like a tree in a storm—if it’s too rigid, too strong, too stiff, what happens? It breaks. But if it’s flexible? The storm comes, the tree bends, survives, then returns to normal.
According to me, resilience means being flexible in terms of understanding there are always multiple solutions to any given problem. This is very important.
Final thoughts
So, have you understood what trauma really is and how to approach healing? Trauma happens in your environment, but how it affects you depends on your resilience, your support system, and your approach to understanding problems.
The most important thing to remember: every problem has multiple solutions. Some might be complicated or not feasible depending on the situation. Some perfectly match your particular problem. But you don’t know which solution exists or where it is.
That belief—that somewhere, somehow, a solution exists—keeps you searching. “I don’t know yet” is much more powerful than “There’s no solution.”
When you understand the problem clearly, when you stop forcing the same failed approaches, when you look at your situation from new angles with patience and hope, solutions appear that were invisible before.
The person trapped in depression needs first to build social support, then work on understanding the actual problem, then focus on solutions. Not the other way around. Don’t jump to solving before understanding. Don’t try alone when you need support. And never believe there’s no way out.
Because there always is. You just haven’t found it yet.
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