Trauma: What Is Happening to Me?
Trauma can make your inner world feel confusing and unpredictable. Many clients come to therapy asking the same question: “Why do I react this way, even when I know I’m safe?”
If this resonates, it’s important to know this first—you are not broken. What you are experiencing is your nervous system responding exactly as it learned to in order to survive.
This page explains what trauma is, how it affects the brain and body, why reactions can feel automatic, and how trauma-informed therapy supports healing in a compassionate, evidence-based way.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma occurs when an experience overwhelms your ability to cope and leaves your nervous system stuck in survival mode. While people often associate trauma with major events like accidents, assaults, or natural disasters, trauma can also develop through ongoing stress, emotional neglect, bullying, or sudden losses.
What matters most is not the event itself, but how your mind and body experienced it. Trauma is subjective. Two people can live through the same situation and be impacted very differently.
Trauma does not mean weakness. It reflects a nervous system that adapted to protect you during moments of threat or overwhelm.
How Trauma Affects the Brain and Nervous System
Trauma changes how the brain and body communicate. These changes help explain why reactions can feel intense, fast, and hard to control.
The Amygdala: The Brain’s Alarm System
The amygdala scans for danger. After trauma, it can become overly sensitive—reacting to neutral situations as if they are threats. This can lead to hypervigilance, anxiety, or feeling constantly on edge.
The Hippocampus: Memory and Context
The hippocampus helps organize memories and distinguish past from present. Trauma can disrupt this process, which is why reminders of the past may feel like they are happening now, not then.
The Prefrontal Cortex: Emotional Regulation
This area helps with reasoning, impulse control, and calming the body. Trauma can reduce its ability to regulate emotional responses, making reactions feel sudden or overwhelming.
The Nervous System: Stuck in Survival
Trauma can keep the nervous system locked in fight, flight, or freeze. Over time, this can affect sleep, digestion, focus, mood, and overall wellbeing.
Understanding these patterns helps shift the question from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to my nervous system?”
Why Trauma Responses Feel Automatic
Trauma responses are not choices. They are automatic survival reactions that happen faster than conscious thought.
When the brain senses danger—even inaccurately—it prioritizes protection over logic. This is why you may:
- React strongly to small triggers
- Shut down emotionally
- Feel flooded by fear, anger, or shame
- Struggle to calm yourself afterward
These responses once served a purpose. Therapy helps your system learn that safety exists in the present, allowing regulation to return.
Types of Trauma
Trauma can take different forms, and identifying the type helps guide effective support.
Single-Incident Trauma
Results from a one-time event such as an accident, assault, or medical emergency.
Complex Trauma
Develops from repeated or prolonged exposure to distress, such as chronic abuse, neglect, or unsafe relationships. It often impacts identity, trust, and emotional regulation.
Developmental Trauma
Occurs during childhood when safety, consistency, or emotional attunement is missing. These early experiences shape how individuals relate to themselves and others later in life.
All forms of trauma are valid and deserving of care.
Small-t Trauma vs. Big-T Trauma
Big-T trauma refers to major, life-threatening events.
Small-t trauma includes experiences like chronic criticism, emotional invalidation, divorce, or ongoing stress.
Both can deeply affect the nervous system. Trauma is defined by impact, not severity. If an experience continues to influence your reactions, relationships, or sense of safety, it matters.
How Trauma Therapy Supports Healing
Trauma Therapy does not force you to relive the past. Instead, it gently supports your nervous system in learning safety, regulation, and choice.
At MCAFT, trauma-informed approaches may include:
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) – supports reprocessing traumatic memories
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) – helps build self-leadership and compassion for inner parts
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – supports awareness and reframing of trauma-related thoughts
- Mindfulness-Based Therapies – strengthen present-moment awareness and regulation
Therapy is collaborative, paced, and respectful of your autonomy.
Taking the Next Step
Living with trauma can feel exhausting and isolating—but support is available. Healing is not about erasing the past; it is about changing how your body and mind relate to it today.
If you are ready to explore trauma-informed therapy in a safe, compassionate space, we are here to support you.