Trauma across the board - Part 2
Dear clients,
Trauma refers to any negative event that overwhelms a person's ability to cope with what is happening. Trauma affects people in different ways and each person will have their own way of processing what happened.
Trauma across the board highlights some of the main areas in which trauma exposure can occur. This blog will focus on the fourth and fifth areas namely crime-related trauma and emergency-related trauma.
1) Crime-Related Trauma
Crime-related trauma encompasses the various avenues through which a person can become exposed to trauma as a result of a crime. This can include home invasions, hijackings, armed robbery, sexual assault, physical assault, stabbings, shootings, being threatened with a weapon, hate crimes, being defrauded or scammed etc.
Crime-related trauma can be a complex process to navigate, especially since some people's trauma recovery journey demands that justice be served.
For instance, imagine you have just lost money in a scam. Some people may find it helpful to deal with the trauma by focusing on the only things they can change - namely their response to the trauma. Other people may view their trauma recovery as being dependent on receiving closure or justice, such as recovering the stolen money and seeing the offender locked in jail.
The difficulty in dealing with crime-related trauma is that it rarely only affects one person. In situations where the crime affected multiple people such as a family, different trauma responses may cause conflict amongst the family members. For example, one may be ready to forgive, another may pretend that nothing happened and the third will constantly speak about it.
2) Emergency-Related Trauma
Emergency-related trauma refers to any situation that requires external support from emergency services, first responders, or rescuers. This can include incidents such as crime, drownings or near-drownings, missing people, vehicular accidents, sporting accidents, natural disasters, house fires, snake bites, incidents that require you to be airlifted to hospital, incidents that require an ambulance etc.
Emergency-related trauma can also be viewed as the umbrella term for other trauma areas such as that of crime and medical. It further highlights the depth of trauma and the various aspects related to it by encompassing any location, not just work or home.
Closing thoughts
Crime-related trauma and emergency-related trauma affect both the trauma survivor (victim) as well as the people who respond to the scenes such as the police officers, paramedics, firefighters, armed response officers, etc. The impact of these traumas is broad and should not be ignored - whether you are the survivor, the family of the survivor, or the first responder on the scene. There is no shame in asking for help.
Although trauma can be categorized into different groups, it is clear that trauma in one area will inevitably result in changes across the board.
Be blessed,
Madeleine