What is trauma?

To heal from trauma, it helps to understand what it is.

These days, the idea of trauma is at the center of much mental-health practice, and healing from trauma has emerged as an urgent global need. But as familiar as the word “trauma” has become, it’s not an easy concept to understand. People experience trauma from a bewildering variety of causes, from genocide to childhood sexual abuse to police brutality. And the ways trauma affects people are equally varied, from quiet dissociation to violent rage to physical pain. Our clients at Trauma Healing Institute wondered: How can we teach everyone the basic facts about trauma, no matter where they live or what they might know already? In collaboration with Luminary Lab and Scope + Sequence, we used the touching visual language of THI to create this one-minute video to explain. (If it helps you, pass it on.)