Disbanding the Trauma Police

So, so many of us have trauma. Ranging scales, for sure, but if there’s one thing (and there’s not, I’ve learned hundreds of things) that I’ve gotten from all the hours of reading about trauma and listening to videos on it, it’s this—

You don’t get to qualify or quantify another person’s trauma.

Ie—you don’t get to say, that’s not traumatic or bad enough to be considered ‘trauma’.

Trauma is entirely subjective and based on your own body and mind’s ability to process what has happened to you. And when it can’t, where there’s a disconnect—

That’s trauma.

I’ll give you an example:

When I taught at Pfeiffer University, during my last year there, I was in my office one day when a student popped in my office.

Their eyes were bug-eyed. They looked frantic. Panicked. Even their body postures and gestures tense with high alert. They were in hypervigilance, in flight mode. I could see it from one glance at them.

One, a student I had before, said in an unfamiliar tone, her voice reaching a pitch that I’d never heard:

“Dr. Donelson—there’s an active shooter on campus and we don’t know what to do!”

Now, as it turned out, there was a man who wanted to rob a bank in town and so created a diversion—diabolical but very effective—

The end result, for us, was a group of students, another colleague and I barricaded ourselves in the Writing Center, waiting it out.

The tiny campus swarmed with police officers.

I texted my best friend and my former partner, alerting them to the situation. Telling them I loved them. Unsure if it would be the last communication I had with them.

Afterwards, a few days later, when all had calmed, a few students made reference to how this event traumatized them.

I have no doubt it did.

Now, here’s the thing—no one was killed or injured. There was no active shooter.

But this is all too common of a story on college campuses, high schools, grocery stores, malls, concerts, in the U.S.

We know the story well and it usually isn’t such a ‘happy’ ending. We have collective trauma as a nation with active shooters.

And, it’s true that it wasn’t traumatic for me. It was scary, yes, but mostly annoying.

But, I had 20+ years of life experience on my students. I had lived through two suicides of my immediate family members.

My ‘trauma barometer’ is not theirs.

And theirs is not mine.

And there is no use in denying them their experiences, their trauma.

I get that we toss around the word ‘trauma’ and ‘traumatized’ in conversation, sometimes too flippantly, at times when it is not representative of a true trauma, as it is defined, when your body and mind can’t process what has happened.

But I also know this—we can’t get out of our bodies to experience the reality of another and their lived, embodied experiences.

This may be the single most powerful lesson to learn in order to practice compassion, to further understanding toward a more just society to fight against racism, trans/bi/homo-phobia, sexism, able-bodiedness, fat-phobia, and all the things—

But I also think that it is important to keep in mind—

Compassion for experiences that we don’t have and life experience that we may have that others don’t, is a very pivotal part of understanding trauma. Also important is halting the judgment with what deserves the title or to be in the categorization of trauma.

I feel very strongly about this because I have to tell you, many many times I hear this:

“Well—what I experienced is…nothing like yours.”

“My situation is nowhere near as bad as yours.”

“I feel bad even saying this compared to what you went through—”

I hate this.

It makes me sad, uncomfortable, and adamant to assert—

No, please don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. Validate and affirm and own your own experiences, own your stories, and how they affect you.

There is no need to compare.

I never want another to feel that they must compare their experiences to mine or to anyone else’s. Theirs is valid in their own right.

I don’t know theirs. I don’t know what it was like to be in their body. What it is to carry their grief.

And neither do you.

We don’t know what ‘trauma’ is to them. In their bodies.

We don’t get to make those calls.

Disband the trauma judgment, the trauma police.