Do you have a question about Trauma for our next topic tuesday?

Sounds like it'll be interesting! I'll just tag a few people who may be interested in this @SJT63 @GleB @Former-Member- no pressure to add anything, but just wanted to make sure you knew this event was coming up and had the opportunity to shout out about anything you might like to see covered 😊

@Powderfinger @Scatterbrain @Andrab @Donna63 @ExBPDParent @Sonogong99 @Former-Member I'm tagging you as I've noticed you post about caring for or being involved with someone with lived experience of trauma 🌼 Feel free to ask any questions you may have for Blue Knot, and/or tag anyone else you think might benefit from this!

I'll also tag our lovely Community Guides too, in case you have questions yourselves if you are a carer, or if you know anyone else in our Carers side of the forums who might like to ask a question @WriterMelb @Snowie @Shaz51 @outlander @NatureLover @Maggie @Judi9877 @jem80 @frog @Faith-and-Hope @Dadcaringalone @BPDSurvivor

Hi,

@Former-Member @Daisydreamer

I have a few questions:

1. When dealing with children, what does trauma-informed practice look like? For example, for children who remain aloof and not speak - how do we help them through the initial trauma?

2. Is it better to face and tackle trauma, or is it better to 'move on'?

3. How would you define trauma? What one person sees as 'trauma', may not be for another. Having worked with my psychologist, my childhood experiences have been labelled as 'trauma', yet I still find out hard to accept that it is 'trauma' - it was all I ever knew, yet the experiences have shaped me to be who I am today.

Very new here so please forgive me if I've formatted this incorrectly or committed any faux pas!

Thank you for this opportunity to ask an expert questions about trauma. What a fantastic website I have stumbled upon!

I wanted to ask about, as I'm sure many other friends/family/carers would have experienced this too, the trauma that comes from witnessing other people's trauma. Does this 'secondhand' trauma function any differently psychologically from the direct sufferers' trauma? Can someone be traumatised (in the medical psychological classification sense, not metaphorical) simply from hearing of another persons' suffering?

I would also love to know more about how trauma affects memory. A lot of my recollection of events to do with caring for my mentally ill friend growing up is extremely hazy and sometimes I even find it hard to outline a clear chronology. I also find myself suddenly remembering things after being reminded by other people of them, and initially feeling very nonchalant about them - even if I objectively know they are disturbing incidents. If our brains select memories of trauma to 'forget' because they are too painful to process fully, why can they be often triggered so easily? What does research suggest is the reasoning behind the attempts of our minds to protect us (through forgetting/suppressing trauma)- and often how this safety net often breaks? What seems to be a protective/coping mechanism seems to fail a lot of people with trauma - why do you think that is?

Lastly, how does the concept of trauma fit into our current psychological theories of memory (e.g baddeley and hitch, the basic Sensory memory -WM-LTM model, etc.) If trauma shapes so much of who we are and why we behave the way we do, in your opinion could it ever fit neatly into one of these models or their categories?

I know that most of these questions do not have clear answers, and I'm not expecting any revolutionary definitive conclusion but I would love to hear your thoughts and/or conjectures as an expert in this area!

Thank you so much for your time.

-Scully

Hi @BPDSurvivor and @Scully for sharing some ideas and questions for our upcoming topic tuesday.

We will do our best to get through as many questions as we can on the night, and ensure there are resources we can refer to as well for future 🙂

If it is okay with you both, when the event post is made on the forums, I might tag you both so you can see where the conversation will be held on the 23rd of February. We would love to see you there when our guest is answering questions from the forums community!

Sounds great @Daisydreamer