Have you personally experienced trauma?

In My Humble Opinion
1

We were recently speaking with my wife’s sister who said something like, “Every person experiences 5 traumas in their life.” Well, if that is true, my wife and I are in for quite the traumatic next couple of decades! :wink: SIL also spoke of her mother’s death 5 years ago as traumatic (protracted dementia-related decline.) While my wife certainly wouldn’t call it a happy occasion/process, she certainly would not describe it as “trauma.”

I realize that some people are more fortunate than others, and I realize that different people perceive similar events differently. I hope everyone refrains from passing judgment on anyone else’s experiences/perceptions.

So I ask the simple question in the thread title: Have you personally experienced trauma? If yes, to the extent you feel comfortable, please provide a general description of the event(s) you consider to have been traumatic. Conversely, if you do not perceive yourself to have experienced trauma, perhaps you could mention the worst things you experienced and why you did not consider them to be traumatic.

Along the way, I imagine it might be useful for folk to discuss their personal definitions of “trauma.” And I would not consider it a hijack if folk wished to discuss “closure.”

Me - I consider myself to have been very fortunate. Looking back on what I can remember of my near 63 years, I would not call any of my experiences traumas.

2

Hell ya, I’ve experienced trauma. Ten-ish years ago I awoke at 3 am with horrible, crushing chest pain. I managed to make it out of bed without waking my gf and collapsed on the couch. I assumed I was having a heart attack and actually looked forward to death, as the pain would stop. After ten or so minutes the pain stopped and I was still alive. Soaked in perspiration, but alive.

I never told my gf. Then a week later it happened again. Same crushing chest pain, perspiration, etc. Once again it stopped after about ten minutes. Since I did not die, I thought it wasn’t cardiac. I had heard about GERD and I started drinking Mylanta at bedtime.

Over the next month the episodes happened more frequently. Finally, I mentioned what was happening to my gf. She, being a worry-wart, insisted I see my PCP. He freaked out on me and set up a cardiology consult. Turns out I had unstable angina and at least one of my episodes was actually a “small” heart attack. They put in a stent and I’ve been fine since.

In the hospital prior to the stent, I told my cardiologist that if I could be cured via stent(s), fine, but I refused to agree to bypass surgery. He explained that he thought I was making a bad decision, but I was prepared for death and would rather not face recovery from thoracotomy.

That was trauma.

3

Yes.
I had to tell the doctors to pull the plug on my daughter.

4

Whoa, and there goes my trauma as less than a scratch. I cannot even imagine without freaking.

5

I’ve never had major trauma in my life, as in a single huge incident. It was all tiny, repetitive stuff, more like a thousand cuts, such as having several stalkers stalk and threaten me for a period of 2.5 years, or the repeated pin-pricks of living with fundamentalist Christianity for 30 years, having a somewhat bipolar-borderline-ish mother who really knows how to press the needles into you emotionally, etc.

It doesn’t make for a single traumatic event but the toll feels somewhat the same, cumulatively. I often feel like half of a person rather than a whole.

6

Medical traumas my whole life.

The worst trauma was when my Daddy died. I was blindsided by it. I, of course, knew I wouldn’t be happy about him ever dying. I knew he would.
When he did I went down a dark hole. I couldn’t see anyway to resolve it or get up out of that place.
He had been my biggest champion and best friend for so long. It was just horrible.

But I came up and out. I still have days. Mostly I try to remember him and his ways and our good good memories.

7

Does this mean I’ve filled my quota?
Death of my brother, divorced twice, death of a friend(and my peripheral involvement with that), loss of a best friend due to the military stance on gays in the late 90s

As a nod to Saint Cad, he can’t be surpassed. I’m haunted by how my parents were and still are affected today by the death of my brother. I pray I never have to go through that.

8

I can think of two events that might qualify.

I got a call from my mom on a Saturday, flew across the country on Sunday, and she had surgery for a brain tumor on Monday. I wound up staying there through her chemotherapy and until her death about seven months later.

Was on a sailing ship that ran into a storm, and we lost a crew member overboard. Searched for four days with a Coast Guard plane overhead, but never found her. People say “all hands on deck” to try and encourage extra effort from their employees, teammates, etc., but I’ve heard it used for real. Not that I relive the event every time I hear it, but I do have sympathy for how small things can bring back bad memories for some people.

Do those count as traumas? Depends how you use the word, I guess. Some of the posts in this thread remind me how lucky I’ve been.

9

Life has been relatively gentle to me in this respect. I have certainly experienced days and events that have been more traumatic than most of the other days of my own life, but not nearly as traumatic as what so many other people have experienced.

10

Most of my trauma happened before the age of 18, and it was extensive. There was a lot of general instability due to a mentally ill mother (always a new guy, new house, new family, new school, until she met someone else, rinse repeat.) My mother had a violent temper and was egregiously emotionally abusive. There was repeated sexual abuse by two caregivers, one over the course of years, in which my mother was complicit, and some physical abuse that involved a lot of credible threats of grievous bodily harm or death. Then there was the whole debacle of leaving home at 17 and dealing the aftermath of abuse disclosure. That kind of dragged on into my twenties.

Closure? Well, it could be a lot worse. The worst part of my life ended around age 25 and things got steadily better with only a couple relapses. I do have PTSD and difficulty regulating my emotions, but I’m pretty empathetic, and I like people, and in many ways I am well-adjusted and successful. I have a BA and Master’s degree from two prestigious universities (but Jesus was that a lot of emotional labor.) I’ve been happily married in a stable, healthy relationship for 18 years, and now I have a son and I’m learning how to be a good Mom. In many ways I feel like I’ve had the best possible outcome. But it took a lot of work. I mean an incredible lot of work, and it is endless work. I accepted a long time ago that I would be sorting through this for the rest of my life, but every time I gain a new insight, my life gets better, so it is 100% worth it.

I try to define trauma the way it is described by the DSM-V: “actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence.”

I think it’s an overly narrow definition but I think current society’s definition is way too broad. I’m a fan of operationally defining things when we talk about them, particularly in how we interpret research about them (this is my husband’s influence.) I think the definition should maybe be expanded to include emotional abuse. Research bears out that emotional abuse is highly damaging, and while I’m not sure if the result has the exact same characteristics as PTSD, I mean - it sure does for me!

I wanted to mention that most people living on the planet have survived some kind of trauma. The issue is that most people who experience trauma don’t develop PTSD. Only about 13% of trauma survivors develop long-term PTSD. The likelihood of developing PTSD is highest if the trauma is sexual assault (I have my own theory for why), with relatively high rates for other events caused by another human inflicting harm, such as being physically assaulted. The risk is higher if it’s repeated trauma, and if the trauma occurs in captivity (POWs, childhood abuse, political prisoners, domestic violence.) If you were abused as a child, you have a higher chance of developing combat-related PTSD. One of the major factors that goes into whether or not a person will develop PTSD is how much social support they receive at the time of the trauma, what other things were going on at the time. Factors really outside of a person’s control.

Yet you will see many trauma survivors who didn’t have PTSD, look at other people struggling and say, “Well, I experienced that and I’m fine.” There are many potential reasons for different outcomes. If you experienced something horrible and are generally okay, that’s fine, it doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with you or you need to dredge up the past. And if you are really falling apart, don’t be ashamed of that either. It’s all part of the spectrum of how humanity responds to trauma.

In my case, I had two major protective factors: my grandmother and my Aunt, both of whom loved me unconditionally from the day I was born, and my Aunt endured years of abuse from my mother just so I would have one person in my life I could count on. My Aunt now suffers PTSD from those years, a sacrifice she made for me. Who knows where I would be if not for them? I also had teachers who encouraged me because I was an excellent student. I can think of many positive role models throughout my life.

Some people have absolutely nobody.

11

My biggest trauma was/is the death of my older brother when I was 20. He was 25 and my only sibling. His ex-girlfriend, who had been part of our family for years, shot him and then killed herself. My parents and I were up in Wisconsin when we found out and I had to drive them home. This was 25 years ago. It took me about 8 years to speak to a therapist. I wasn’t able to let anyone new into my heart for a long while because I couldn’t stand the idea of getting close to someone and then losing them. Then I met my, to this day, best friends and slowly but surely started climbing the mountain of grief. I’m still climbing to this day, one foot in front of the other, but now when I look back to see how far I’ve come, it’s really quite amazing.

12

Wow, Saint_Cad. There are no words.

Trauma is experienced in different ways for different levels. But that has to be the worst.

How do you describe it? I donno.

I had 130 stitches in my head from a motor cycle accident when I was 11. That was traumatic. I nearly died.

My mother died a year ago, but it was expected. Unfortunately she would not wear her “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” button. I chastised her again and again to wear it, but she would not. She was 92. Still working on her estate.

A call from my Wife that she fell on a bike ride was a bit traumatic. I left work, picked her up and took her to ER.

A fall my wife took on the last part of an Ironman and broke two fingers. That was traumatic. The idiot ambulances (always there at the end of an Ironman) turned on ALL their lights at the finish line and blinded the participants. They couldn’t see the course. They fell.

I could go on. And on. A good week is when there is no trauma.

13

I’m so sorry.

14

Thank you all for sharing.

To state the obvious, no part of this is a competition.

I guess I might be overly stoic, in that I’ve experienced my share of stitches and fractures, and loved ones who died too young. But I don’t personally consider those “traumas.” (By one definition, each of my stitches/fractures could be considered a traumatic event.) Certainly nothing that isn’t readily “gotten over.” But, the possibility exists that I could just be a heartless, unfeeling asshole! :wink:

I’m reminded of my mom, who consistently commented near the end of her life how fortunate she had been. This is a woman whose closest sibling died on the household couch at the age of 13 from what should have been readily treatable internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. Her mom died of cancer in her 50s and her dad went off the deep end, such that my mom had to leave college to go home and care for her 3 younger brothers. And when she got a virulent strain of breast cancer that quickly killed her in her 70s, she said [paraphrase] “I lived 75 full years. Getting cancer at this age is not bad luck. The young mother in her 20s on the chemo bed next to me, THAT is bad luck.”

15

I used to feel a bit guilty that I was just sailing through life, especially when I saw the things some of my friends had endured. Even when something that might be considered traumatic happened, it always turned out fine and (I think because I had a solid, supportive parent throughout my childhood) I didn’t really experience it as trauma.

Most of us, given the average age of the SDMB habitués, have experienced the death of at least one parent. I suppose whether or not that is traumatic by the DSM-V definition depends on the circumstances. My MIL had a suspected abdominal aortic aneurysm and died on the floor at home in front of my FIL and BIL, who felt guilty ever after that he couldn’t make their AED work in the confusion, even though it wouldn’t have helped; that was really traumatic for them, but I just got the phone call after the fact. My own mother had a cerebral hemorrhage and I found her unconscious on her living room floor after my brother and I got a bit worried that neither of us had been able to reach her for a few days. She died without regaining consciousness, and I was tormented by the thought that if I’d just found her sooner, maybe she could have been saved. I can tell that this was actual trauma, because now I get excessively anxious if my loved ones don’t answer their phones or texts. Luckily, my exceedingly independent brother also has this, so he understood completely when a friend of my daughter’s who lives near him knocked on his door to make sure he was okay after he forgot his phone in the car for most of a day.

16

Most of us, given the average age of the SDMB habitués, have experienced the death of at least one parent. I suppose whether or not that is traumatic by the DSM-V definition depends on the circumstances.

I think there needs to be a word or way of describing experiences like this that don’t minimize the very real impact it has on people without diluting the definition of the life threatening experience that sometimes leads to PTSD. There are competing ideas about trauma that I’m still working on teasing apart, but there are a lot of differences of opinion even among mental health experts about what constitutes trauma or whether there are distinct kinds of trauma or what trauma even is. That argument has been going on forever. All the DSM-V really represents is the views of the people most influential to the creation of the DSM-V.

All I know is that if I suffer some negative event, I want my treatment to be proven to help with that specific type of negative event.

17

Yeah, there is a world of difference between an experience that makes you sad and even gives you nightmares and one that triggers PTSD, and it’s very important to be able to distinguish between them so people can get the appropriate treatment.

18

The first time would be in 1964, when Anchorage was struck by a 9.2 earthquake that devastated parts of the city. I was 16 at the time.

Second: nearly drowning in a boating accident.
Third: mortar attack in Vietnam that hit very close to our bunker
Fourth: rocket attack that sent five of our guys to the hospital
5th- xth: other more distant incoming attacks that occurred sporadically over my 12 months there.
Xth + one: capsizing in a boat on Lake Victoria

19

I will define trauma as something that had me emotionally screwed up for a year or more. 1st, was the loss of a dog. I was 22 yrs old and I had gotten my first hunting dog. I trained him to perfection and everyday when I got home from work we would head to the field. He went everywhere I went. I had him in a locked kennel and the lock was cut off and he was stollen. For the next 2 years I kept thinking I heard his bark, I obsessively drove around looking for him and checking the shelters.
The next was about 12 years later, I was 34, I was head of a dept that I was very proud of and got transferred to another dept over politics. That bothered me a lot but worked out to my advantage.
The next was a divorce from a 20 year marriage at 40, it just hit me harder than I expected and took me about a year before I was really myself again.
The last was about 4 years ago, I fell madly in love with a cheating narcissist. Looking back I am glad I got out but it was 3 years of pure hell that I should have recognized from the start. My fault!

20

As a 40-year-old in a 20 year marriage I think losing my husband in any way would feel like suddenly missing a limb. I’m not surprised it hit you hard. That’s someone you were with almost your entire adult life.