Types of Trauma

There are many types of trauma someone might experience including:

• Injury
• Violence
• Life threatening events
• Abuse
• Neglect
• Bullying

Often these will get grouped into three main types of trauma. 

• Acute: Often this is a singular traumatic experience like a car accident, sexual assault or a natural disaster. 
• Chronic: This type of trauma occurs over time and might include domestic violence, bullying, addiction, sexual or physical abuse, long term illness. 
• Complex: Complex trauma results from experiencing multiple chronic and/or acute traumas. An example of this would be experiencing childhood abuse and then marrying someone and experiencing domestic violence. It could also be living in an area that suffers from long term civil unrest. 

Benefits of Therapy

After you experience trauma it can be painful. It is hard to carry it. It is hard to feel that something has been taken away from you. And it can be hard to cope with the realization that life won’t ever go back the way it once was. It is recommended to start therapy as soon as possible. Often left untreated we are finding that it can lead to illness, substance abuse, self harm and PTSD. Long term affects we are finding could even affect the brain. 

Treating trauma has many benefits including:

• A reduction in trauma related symptoms
• Better ability to manage the nervous system and changes that come with that–anxiety and heart palpitations or shaking. 
• Ability to refocus or restructure responses to painful traumatic experiences
• Development of healthy coping skills

Trauma Therapy Types

The good news is there are a number of different ways to treat the trauma you’ve experienced. 

These include: 

• Counseling therapy–CBT, psychodynamic therapy, group therapy, etc. 
• EMDR
• Medication 
• Holistic therapy 
• Neurofeedback
• Meditation

This article goes into more depth on some of these treatments. 

Please also feel free to browse some of our other trauma related articles:

• Chronic Illness Caregiver Trauma
• Trauma and Perfectionism
• PTSD Treatments