# Have you personally experienced trauma? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 15, 2023, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-personally-experienced-trauma/990175 "2023-09-15T17:09:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2023, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-personally-experienced-trauma/990175/1 "2023-09-15T17:09:07Z")
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! 😉 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. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-personally-experienced-trauma/990175)._