Little t vs big T trauma

We grew up poor. Thought patching clothes was normal. Father had PTSD from the war. And his family went from being well off to being refugees. Mother grew up even poorer than we were. I guess didn't realise we were poor. Things from parents esp father rub off though re attitudes, false assumptions, blame games. @avant-garde

I have read a bit about attachment trauma - how sometimes relationships in early childhood that don’t provide a kid with what they need to regulate emotions and socialise can cause trauma (changes to the brain ) that places the kids at risk of developing mental illness later on

I have bipolar disorder/schizo-affective disorder, borderline personality disorder and CPTSD though I never went through serious physical abuse as a child

I can relate to the way it feels invalidating to serious trauma when people say things that don’t seriously affect them are traumatic

But on the other side of the equation, back in the “chemical imbalance “ era it used to be common to invalidate emotional trauma by saying it wasn’t traumatic enough so anyone suffering from mental illness whose trauma didn’t look “traumatic enough” would be invalidated in how it had genuinely changed their brain

I think context is everything , it’s really important not to invalidate the impacts of really serious abuse but at the same time recognise that emotional trauma or attachment deficits can also alter brains and leave people susceptible to mental illness

@avant-garde i find this a very interesting and sensitive subject.

I don't really have any answers right now as my brain isn't able to really comprehend thinking like that.

But for me trauma is events that have happened throughout my life that have had negative impacts in more ways than one. So things that have happened and are triggered by things that can occur in everyday life can be very confronting and it's like living that trauma all over again.

It's invalidating if someone says to just get over it and it wasn't that bad etc.

But not everyone understands how trauma works and it can affect everyone differently. For example some people can shut-down and withdraw, others can have panic attacks etc.

I think it's hard to define trauma as it can really relate to so many things. But it's understanding that everyone can be affected in different ways and what's traumatic to one person may have no affect on another.

Thanks for your thoughtful response @avant-garde and for introducing the topic

it is a very interesting and sensitive one

I think the psychology field is only just starting to scratch the surface of what it calls “trauma”

I have heard the original meaning of the word is “wound” so that it depends on how the person is affected

I am fascinated by trying to understand why some people get mental illness and other people don’t

but that being said I think some things are so horrible that they would be still traumatic even if the person didn’t develop mental illness from them

some people might cope better and not end up with psychosis or some other very disruptive effects but still traumatised

I have only indirectly heard that people are using the word “trauma” to cover minor things (whether in terms of what happened or in terms of the effect it had)

I can see how it might be invalidating

I guess the thing about when there are events that affect people and alter their brains sometimes the triggers to set it off can be relatively minor things that remind a person of more scary things

But I can see how it might be invalidating if people are ignoring really serious abuses people went through in favour of little things

It’s hard to think of an objective definition of what trauma is because it’s different for everyone

I know people who coped with horrible abuses and tragic losses but didn’t develop a serious mental illness they just had the ability to cope better

maybe there needs to be different word or category what causes people to have severe effects compared to experiences that are very serious an horrible?

@avant-garde

It's a very interesting discussion. I probably would have agreed that it's very invalidating to hear about those 'little t's' when you're dealing with a big T. The past couple of years though I've found myself in the middle of little t's, big T's and t's somewhere in between.

It's all very relative and as a little t can make the person with a big T feel invalidated, it works the other way around as well. From my own life and as an adoptee, I always knew it affected me and was more than likely the reason I had such low self-esteem and confidence growing up which made life extremely lonely and difficult. I never saw it as trauma though and saw it as just my own weakness and failure and basically being too sensitive to dealing with the thought that my biological family rejected me.

Last year I finally decided to dig into this a bit more, discovered insecure attachment styles and talked to other adoptees for the first time in my life. I suddenly discovered that those feelings and thoughts I had had for the past 53 years were very common among other adoptees. I started to see it as not a weakness in myself, but that there was trauma there. Digging in to it further i discovered there has been quite a bit of research on the subject and what they call separation trauma. I had always thought of it as I was a newborn baby, how could I be traumatised? But the more I looked into it the more I understood just how much damage it had done, not only to me, but to a lot of other adoptees. Learning more about insecure attachment styles (also very common with adoptees) I discovered that so much of what I had put down to just being too scared in life with forming any connections with other people, was not fear, but trauma responses. So many adoptees I have spoken to have talked about how they have given up trying to explain this to other people as it's just to hard to explain. They talk about being told they should be grateful they were adopted, and how they had a family who loved them as a child so what's the issue?

It made me think about my own past couple of years dealing with a serious physical health issue. I remember sitting in a waiting room in March 2023 waiting for one of 39 of my daily treatments. There was a guy sitting a couple of metres from me who was upset. Long story short, he was going through a similar battle to mine, but much more advanced. He had been messed around waiting for doctors for hours and had had enough. A doctor had come out to talk to him and i'll never forget what he told the doctor. He said he was there for an appointment that was supposed to be in the morning and as it was now mid afternoon he was still waiting. He said how his wife was pregnant with their first child and all that was keeping him going was to fight his disease long enough to still be around to see the birth of his child in about 3 months and he was wasting what little time he had left, sitting there waiting and waiting.

As I listened to this, I thought here I am feeling sorry for myself and this guy has it so much worse! I then though about what a terrible situation he was in, but realised it doesn't mean I didn't have a right to feel bad about my own situation. That it was pointless trying to compare, because there's always someone worse off.

A few months later I started a support group for guys going through the same disease I was. Some of them were more advanced and some of them had a diagnosis of less aggressive disease, some of which may never actually require any treatment at all. As someone who was at the opposite end of that aggressiveness scale I know that these guys had a right to as stressed and anxious and upset as I was. Part of supporting these people made me realise that that comparing what is worse than what is a very slippery slope that doesn't help anyone.

So it changed my thinking quite a bit. I now look at is as the effect of the trauma it has on a person rather than the trauma itself. Things that seem so simple to deal with for us, may feel extremely difficult to someone else and cause quite a lot of stress.

It reminded me of an experience back in year 10 in high school where we were given a book of raffle tickets to sell to raise funds for a new school bus. Back then my social anxiety and self confidence was very bad still and the thought of knocking on peoples doors to ask if they wanted to buy a ticket terrified the hell out of me! So much so I was even struggling to sleep. As the date drew closer to when the raffle book was due to be handed back with the money we had collected I somehow forced myself to do it as I know how embarrassing it would be to turn up to school and have to say i hadn't sold any. The first house, no one was home and i thought this wasn't so bad. The 2nd someone answered and I don't even remembered what i babbled about. I didn't sell a ticket and I went straight back home as it had become too much to deal with!

When it got to our home room at school and each persons name was called to bring out their book, my name was called and I had to walk up in from of the class to hand in my book, and very empty money container. The teacher took it, looked at it and proceeded to give me a bollocking in front of the class about having no school spirit, being lazy, and hoping that I felt guilty every time I sat on the new bus! I remember standing there thinking what am I supposed to do. No one in that room understood how traumatic this whole thing had been for me and so I decided that I had to stand there and take it because the only alternative was to admit the truth but that would only be worse as everyone would discover how weak and broken I was. I mean by this stage in my childhood, I was more than used to letting people believe what they wanted about me... no matter what they thought, it was better than letting anyone discover the truth. The ironic part of the raffle story was that until the day I finished year 12 at that school, i never once got to ride on that bus! 😁

I'm not saying that these days there are something that are really hard to see as traumatic. The example you use as saying no to a child for example. I see it as probably more traumatic to say yes to them all the time, because they will grow up not reading for the real world where sometimes you get told no. Even in this case though, maybe a child has been brought up by abusive parents who said no to even the most basic necessities. This child has then had to be put in to foster care and maybe saying no to them needs to be done with a lot of care because it probably does bring up some trauma for them.

I know that's is a really extreme example, but it just shows that i think it's important to find out why someone feels something is traumatic before we judge. Sometimes that judgement may still be its not even really a t at all.

I didn't mean to bang on for so long, but let's face it... i usually do. 😁

Thanks for your amazing response @MJG017 I learned so much from it

I read about secure and insecure attachment styles when I was trying to understand why I had mental illness

I think it has an important impact on people and can even determine whether people get PTSD from other traumas or not

I guess it all depends on the context of when a person says everyone’s traumas are important and whether the person who said it meant it to be inclusive or invalidating

I think there is something very different about severe PTSD responses and just attachment trauma but that being said both are very real and difficult to deal with

I really liked the story you told about different diseases still being hard to deal with even if some were more severe and some milder. I think there is a real parallel there with trauma both big T and little t trauma

But I guess if the context is that a person is saying “everyone’s trauma is important “ and it’s making a person feel invalidated it could be the way it’s said and the reason it’s said - for example if it was said to discourage or minimise the circumstances a person who was dealing with big T trauma

I guess it all depends on the context and the reason that a person said what they did

I like what @MJG017 was saying. Defining trauma can be hard. Comparing traumas to other people's trauma isn't helpful, some will always be worse, some will always be not as bad.

I do understand that there should be definitions to what should be classed as trauma. A lot of little t's put together can kinda become a big T though. It is more the extent to which the trauma occurs, the frequency, how seriously it effects the person etc.

I guess that is why there is a difference from cPTSD to just ptsd. The latter is usually from a single occurrence and the CPTSD is often from complex, multiple, layered, intense, and repeated traumas.

And something I guess can be classed as traumatic without causing major stress. I.e. it is traumatic to experience a car crash, but not everyone who has a car crash will develop ptsd.

Interesting, thought provoking questions.

As varied as the event can be so is the impact on everyone. One thing I find interesting is more than one person experience the exact same event/s, some have no lasting impact and others the impact of the event stays with them and changes them.

what is trauma - to me, trauma involves an event of some type that leaves a negative impact on the person. Thoughts, reactions and people’s nature changes. Changes that stay with the person always. Reminder of the original event triggering the person and, in their mind, transporting them back to when the event happened and having them feel like they are reliving the event all over again.

comments of “but it happened in the past” …. “Just move on and forget about it” ….. I find invalidating. Is like telling someone to get over not having body organs. The impact of what happened is part of us.

Thank you @Former-Member and @The-red-centaur I agree with everyone and it’s been really interesting to see everyone’s responses

We can have lots of little t traumas that can add up to an impact like CPTSD and sometimes people can go through something horrible and not develop PTSD from it

Sometimes people can have buried trauma and something small and seemingly normal - like saying no to a child might trigger past unresolved traumas

I think it is important to recognise everyone’s trauma is different but equally real 🙏🏽