The Guest House founder Judy Crane defines trauma in her book The Trauma Heart: We Are Not Bad People Trying to Be Good, We Are Wounded People Trying To Heal. She explains that trauma is “…any life event or series of life events or ongoing life events that create a negative impact on your life that changes or distorts your vision of yourself and your place in the world.” One of the most important part of Judy’s definition is the use of the word any. The dictionary definition of the word ‘any’ refines the meaning to “…one or some of a thing or number of things, no matter how much or many.” When it comes to the experience of trauma, this distinction is critical.
Trauma is usually open for jurisdiction from others. For example the trauma experienced through emotional, verbal, or mental abuse is weighed as less significant than trauma experienced through terrorism, violence of war, and other grotesque events. However, the use of any highlights that trauma is not evaluated by how much or how many of life’s events or what happens in those life events qualifies trauma. Any life event that creates “…a negative impact” which includes changing or distorting your vision of yourself and your place in the world is trauma. The genuine definition of trauma is how you define it. Not everyone knows when they’ve been “traumatized” until symptoms of trauma, in any of its forms, start to “change or distort” their world. At the core, this makes trauma a shared experience rather than an isolating experience, which is how it is perceived by those who experience it.
Few people can fully identify with the experience of trauma which is part of what makes trauma feel like a polarized plane of existence. Once people come to treatment and engage with other trauma survivors, they learn they are not alone. Many different people experience trauma in different ways. Though the trauma may not look the same and the symptoms of trauma may not be the same, the experience of trauma is the same, making it a shared experience. Life events happen. Trauma happens. Reactions to trauma happens. Trauma is a shared experience because trauma is a human experience.
Recovery is also a human experience, one that everyone deserves and is capable of. Through the residential treatment program at The Guest House, you will rediscover the freedom, peace, and hope, of living without the self-defeating behaviors untreated trauma can result in.
Call us today for information on life at the estate and our healing programs of recovery: 1-855-483-7800