What Is Trauma? – Understanding the True Nature and Impact of Traumatic Imprint
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Written by Danielle Bereziat, Executive Contributor
Dani Bereziat is a highly skilled Life Coach and Somatic Trauma Therapist, guiding others to overcome emotional distress, dysregulation and overwhelm, underpinned by unresolved trauma.
Dani is committed to safely transforming traumatic imprint stored in the body into growth, meaning, connection, regulation, self-mastery, and resilience.
In recent years, the term trauma has become increasingly common in everyday language. We often hear people describe seemingly minor life events and day-to-day stressors or inconveniences as “traumatic”. While this reflects a growing awareness of mental and emotional well-being, it also reveals a common misconception: that all stress is trauma. However, this is not the case.
Although it is true that all traumatic experiences are stressful, not all stressful experiences are traumatic.
Trauma occurs only when we as an individual experience overwhelming levels of stress, fear, threat to our safety or sense of self, and when we feel unsafe, or;
Are unable to access a resource of safety, or
Receive co-regulation from another person during the event, to be able to safely process the experience. World-renowned trauma expert Dr. Peter Levine describes this experience as "the absence of an empathetic other".
The crucial factor determining whether an experience becomes traumatic is the absence of safety. Without this support or internal resource of safety, our innate ability to process the impact of the experience through our body and nervous system “short-circuits.” The energy, emotions, and sensory information from the experience get stored in our body as an unresolved traumatic imprint.
Why do we develop trauma?
When we experience trauma, we move into a state of contraction, storing the unprocessed traumatic imprint in the body, subconscious mind, nervous system, and emotional memory, instead of processing and discharging the stress and emotions and returning to a normal (parasympathetic) nervous system state of ‘rest and digest’.
The undigested experience stored within the body and nervous system retains its charge and causes the body and subconscious mind go into a protective state of nervous system hypervigilance, resulting in dysregulation, trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) and survival patterns that continue to loop within the body, until safely processed and discharged.
These trauma responses are not maladaptive, but rather, innate survival mechanisms. They emerge to protect us from future perceived or real threats to our safety.
The impact of trauma can be profound, interfering with our ability to grow, connect, and function on every level. Yet trauma responses are not signs of weakness or disorder. They are, in fact, adaptive protective mechanisms, our body's innate way of protecting us from further harm.
Trauma is not a sign of dysfunction. It is the body’s perfectly intelligent response to overwhelm, lack of safety and threat to our survival and well-being.
Seen through this lens, trauma is not a flaw to be ashamed of, but a powerful indication of our nervous system's attempt to safeguard us into the future.
Types of trauma
Trauma may result from a single traumatic incident or ongoing exposure to traumatic experiences or environments. Trauma can take many forms, including but not limited to;
Acute (Shock) trauma: from a single traumatic event
Complex trauma (CPTSD): from repeated traumas or prolonged exposure to traumatic experiences or environments
Developmental trauma: resulting from abuse, neglect, unmet needs, unattuned care or insecure attachment in childhood
Relational / Attachment trauma: from disruptions or harm in key relationships, including primary caregiver attachment needs being unmet
Intergenerational trauma: passed down through epigenetics and familial relational dynamics
Pre-verbal trauma: occurring in early childhood before language development
In-utero trauma: developed pre-birth through physical or emotional distress or anxiety experienced by the mother during gestation
Mass / Collective trauma: When a group of people develops traumatic imprints as a result of a traumatic event that was experienced collectively
While abuse is widely recognized as a traumatising experience, it’s less commonly understood that environments where emotional or psychological safety is regularly compromised can also create trauma. This is particularly significant for children throughout the stages of early development.
When primary caregivers (the child’s resource of safety and co-regulation) are emotionally unavailable, unresponsive, not attuned to the needs of the child, or unpredictable in their behaviour, children develop long-lasting developmental trauma and lasting, insecure attachment patterns.
When a child is unsafe to express and explore their full range of emotions, personality or self-expression within the safety of their primary caregiver relationships or environments, they will eventually suppress and shut down the parts of themselves that are ‘unacceptable’ or unsafe to be expressed, resulting in developmental trauma, including fragmentation of their sense of self.
How trauma manifests
Every individual responds to life experiences differently, and trauma affects each person uniquely. However, unresolved trauma often creates lasting imprints that influence how we think, feel, and behave in relation to ourselves, others, and the world. It may show up as:
Physical symptoms: chronic illness, fatigue, exhaustion, insomnia, syndromes linked to stress, nervous system dysregulation, hypervigilance, holding patterns in the musculoskeletal system,m and body
Emotional symptoms: shame, anger/ rage, guilt, emotional dysregulation, relational challenges, low self-esteem, lack of self-love, overwhelm
Cognitive symptoms: limiting and false beliefs, intrusive thoughts, impaired executive functioning, avoidance
Psychological symptoms: anxiety, depression, dissociation, disconnection, fragmented sense of self, orphaned parts, addiction
Trauma responses: nervous system dysregulation & hypervigilance, survival stress, fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses
Survival patterns: being stuck in unhelpful, repetitive, looping patterns of thinking and behaving/unable to move forward in life
Trauma responses are triggered by real or perceived threats to our safety and override our capacity to respond from a place of aligned, authentic power, informing survival patterns which continue to loop in our bodies and subconscious mind, driving our thoughts and patterns of behaviour, until resolved.
The impact of trauma is inherently disempowering and can be completely disabling to a person with complex trauma when they are exposed to additional stress, resulting in sympathetic nervous system states of shut down, including dissociation, fragmentation of parts, functional freeze, and more.
The path forward
Once we understand how trauma forms and manifests, we can begin to recognize its impact and how it shows up in our own lives. Gaining insight into these patterns is a deeply empowering step. It invites us to move from survival to healing, from contraction to expansion, from disconnection to integration, towards wholeness and healing.
No one moves through life untouched by hardship. But when trauma remains unrecognized or unprocessed, it informs how we function on every level and shapes how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world.
When we gain insight into the nature of trauma, we can:
Begin to recognize how it affects us individually
Understand and begin to transform our behaviours and responses
Create space for healing and integration
Reclaim our capacity for joy, safety, connection and authenticity
Trauma healing
The truth is: everyone carries some degree of unresolved trauma. And yet, healing is always possible. As much as our bodies have the innate intelligence to protect us from future harm, our bodies also possess the capacity to recover and restore when offered the right conditions and environment to facilitate healing.
You are not broken. Your body is protecting you. And you are capable of healing.
It is necessary to allow ourselves the space, time, and permission to heal from the impact of trauma in our lives.
Trauma healing is not about erasing the past. It’s about safely reconnecting with our bodies and the parts of ourselves that were left behind during moments of overwhelm and trauma.
It is about growing in our capacity to understand, acknowledge, and resolve what comes up for us and safely process the traumatic imprint that lies at the roots of our triggers, to be able to respond from a place of authenticity, while practicing self-love, acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness for ourselves.
With a holistic approach, including skilled guidance and facilitation, we can begin to grow in our capacity to safely embody and explore through the felt sense of traumatic imprint stored in the body (somatic trauma therapy), enabling us to process and discharge trauma and return to emotional and nervous system regulation, connection, resilience, and wholeness.
We can step into our personal power with greater awareness, joy, and alignment. We can begin to reclaim our lives from the impact of trauma.
To learn more about how to heal from the impact of trauma, stay tuned for my next article in Brainz Mag, coming soon.
If you would like to know more about my work as a Somatic Trauma Therapist and Trauma-Informed Life Coach, or how to work with me to facilitate your trauma healing journey, please reach out to me via my website.
Read more from Danielle Bereziat
Danielle Bereziat, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dani has a profound understanding of the extensive conditions and environments that inform how trauma develops, stores in the body and subconscious mind, resulting in trauma responses, emotional and nervous system dysregulation, trauma responses and survival patterns, and impacting our functioning on every level until resolved.
Her holistic, somatic approach to trauma healing encompasses her lived experience, extensive professional knowledge and skill set and her expansive capacity to attune and co-regulate with her clients, as she facilitates personal transformation by gently guiding each person individually through the felt sense of traumatic imprint in the body, to safety, connection, self-mastery, authenticity and wholeness.
