What is Childhood Trauma?

Image of a teen in a dark fur hooded coat blurred out against a white background.

We think of Trauma as being an event or multiple events / experiences, but Trauma is much more than the event itself. It is the impact on us physically and emotionally. Trauma is a human response to an event or multiple experiences which take us out of a sense of feeling safe, and into feeling out of control and unable to cope.  Not everyone will find the same event or experiences traumatic, though there are a significant number where most would.

Trauma can be single event such as a car accident, or multiple experiences such as abuse or neglect.  It can also include experiences that to a lot of people may be perceived to be small but when combined, take a person repeatedly out of their ability to cope - building to toxic stress.

There are 3 types of traumas:  

o   Type 1 traumas can be considered as single events

o   Type 2 traumas as multiple traumas

o   Type 3 traumas as extensive, multiple and from an early age which continue over time. 

Complex childhood trauma is repeated negative and harmful experiences big and small where the child or young person is not appropriately soothed / supported by key adults in their lives.  This crushes a child’s sense of safety leaving them feeling powerless, helpless, unable to fully trust people, stuck and feel the loss of some of their childhood / innocence.

If a child or young person does not have consistently ‘good enough’ connections and attuned support with key adult figures in their life, this can be a defining factor in the level of impact trauma has throughout a child’s life and can be far reaching long into adulthood.

Children often don’t have the words to describe or share the trauma they have experienced and their struggle to vocalise often transfers into adulthood. 

This is often why Trauma is expressed in behaviours rather than words and why we need to understand more about its impacts so we can see what those behaviours are communicating.

This is one of the reasons Youth Trauma Allies came into being so that Parents/Carers, Teachers and working with children and young people can develop the understanding, language and trauma informed approaches to support and  nurture children who have experienced trauma allowing them to flourish and not re-experience past trauma. 

If you want to find out more about how Youth Trauma Allies can help you on your journey to becoming more trauma informed don’t hesitate to get in touch we are building a community with free and paid for training so check in regularly to stay up to day with opportunities to develop your understanding and knowledge base through our training etc.

A good book to support your understanding around trauma is ‘The Simple Guide to Child Trauma’ by Betsy De Thierry.  There are other great books in this series too and well worth a read.

Written by Liz Maskew

Youth Trauma Allies Community Interest Company.