Types of Trauma

Developmental Trauma

Developmental trauma is the impact of early life repeated distress and loss that took place within the child's important relationships and environment. These are experiences that arise from things that happened when it shouldn’t have happened such as abuse, separation, or medical interventions, and emotional and physical neglect due to parents who are emotionally unavailable and cold.

Other examples include:

• A baby or child relinquished by birth parents

• A baby or child removed or relinquished from birth parents because they have been physically/sexually/emotionally abused

• A baby or child who has been neglected

• A child who lives between harmful birth parents and safe friends/family over a long

• A child removed at birth and who goes on to experience multiple adverse experiences,

• A child living with a safe and loving family, but who suffers sexual abuse from outside the family from a young age

• A baby or child removed from safe foster care placed into a safe adoptive family

• A child who experienced severe health problems and multiple medical interventions

Acute Trauma

An acute trauma is a singular traumatic event that is brief in duration and narrowly focused such as a car accident or assault.

Examples of acute traumatic events:

• Combat

• Terrorist attacks

• Sudden grief (death of a loved one)

• Physical or sexual assault or abuse

• Motor accidents

• Natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, fires)

• Being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition

Preconscious/Precognitive Trauma

Preconscious or Precognitive trauma is how we develop given both our external and internal circumstances during our developmental stages while we were in the womb or early infant stages shortly after our birth. This means that even though experiences that happen during pregnancy or within the first four years cannot be explicitly remembered it can still shape our later development and well-being because the body remembers even when the mind cannot.

Scenarios examples:

• Mother was in a violent relationship with a partner, friend or family member

• Mother used alcohol and substances

• Mother has a history of trauma herself

• Mother suffered serious mental health problems or toxic stress

• Baby in an accident

• Baby born prematurely or with the umbilical cord around it’s neck

Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma is when ancestors or older relatives went through a very distressing or oppressive event and their emotional and behavioral reactions ripple through the generations of your family and affect you. This means that even though you did not directly experience the event you still experience the trauma symptoms and trauma responses since those were inherited genetically. With this said stress responses are linked to more physical health issues manifesting as medical issues including heart disease, stroke, or early death.

Examples:

• Family traits

• Family survival physiology of generations

Collective Trauma

Collective trauma is the distress that a group — an entire culture, community, or another large group of people — experience in response to a shared trauma. These events live in a group’s collective memory even after the actual trauma has resolved and impacts the decisions people make, the values they hold, and the way they live.

Examples of events that can cause collective trauma:

• War, occupation, and other military conflicts

• Terrorist attacks

• Pandemics and epidemics

• Recessions and depressions

• Genocide and religious persecution

• Racial trauma, misogyny, apartheid, and class-based violence

• Mass killings

• Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters