What is trauma or a traumatic event?

We can differentiate between a physical and a psychological trauma. A physical trauma describes damage to our body like a broken bone or injured organ.

A psychological trauma is described as an emotional response to an encounter outside our normal life experiences.

In Havening we work with the psychological aspect of trauma.
 

Although a single mechanism in our body is often easy to explain, the complexity of all the added single mechanisms at any given moment in time in the body is absolutely fascinating and almost impossible to grasp.
 

When we experience a situation which causes our body to store this situation as a trauma in our memory, consciously unbeknown to us our body collects all the information of the circumstances around this situation. And it is here where our senses come into the picture. In a traumatic event our body unconsciously stores all the impressions it notices through smelling, hearing, seeing, tasting, and feeling.
 

When you look back at a trauma you will have a very distinct collection of impressions specific to this moment, what it felt like, the smell, what you heard, or what the light was like. These sensory impressions or memories become triggers. It is the body’s way of reminding us of what is unsafe for us.
 

In Havening we work with these triggers.
 

What might be a response to trauma?

People living a prolonged time with trauma might experience depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobia, auto- immune diseases, disassociation, gut problems, fibromyalgia, reoccurring unexplained physical pain, flash backs, addiction, the urge to self-harm and more.