Everyone is impacted by stress to some degree in their daily lives. Some stress is healthy as it motivates you to challenge yourself and grow. However, prolonged or chronic stress can have a devastating impact on your well-being. Your health and well-being are also further compromised by unaddressed trauma. Thus, exposure to trauma in your daily life, such as experiencing digital trauma through the witnessing of digital media can contribute to individual and collective trauma.
Digital media and access to traumatic information and images are pervasive in most people’s lives. With advancements in technologies and platforms, digital media has become an integral part of daily life, from work and school to personal interactions. Therefore, addressing the impact of digital trauma can support learning how to effectively respond to digital trauma.
At The Guest House, we recognize that traumatic experiences can take many forms that impede well-being. When your brain and body are overwhelmed by the stress of deeply disturbing experiences, coping can become impaired. The desire to escape the pain of your experiences, especially when you continue to be triggered by prolonged trauma like digital trauma, can lead to maladaptive coping strategies. Meanwhile, long-term exposure to experiencing and witnessing trauma leaves no room to breathe or process those experiences.
With no space to recover or process your trauma, your resilience and capacity for hope progressively erodes. Therefore, we are committed to providing holistic care to address your individual experiences with digital trauma. Through an individualized approach to whole-person care, you can customize your treatment to match your specific needs. However, you may question how digital trauma can truly harm your well-being compared to other forms of trauma. Understanding different forms of trauma can provide insight into digital trauma’s impact on well-being.
Digital Trauma: Understanding the Impact of Digital Media on Well-Being
When people think about trauma, it is often limited to specific types of trauma. You may think of trauma as something that involves extreme violence and aggression like war, physical abuse, or sexual assault. Yet, a wide variety of traumas exist and can impede well-being in different ways for each individual. Thus, discussing trauma and its different types can provide insight into how different types of trauma can lead to mental distress and addiction.
In “The Association Between Type of Trauma, Level of Exposure and Addiction” Yafit Levin et al., authors note that different types of traumas can have different kinds of psychological effects and health outcomes. Trauma can be divided into non-interpersonal traumas and interpersonal traumas. Non-interpersonal trauma includes natural disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes, whereas interpersonal traumas include traumas that happen between people like physical assault. Some of the types of exposure to trauma you can experience are direct trauma and indirect trauma. Direct trauma is experiencing or witnessing trauma. Indirect trauma exposure can include:
- Workplace traumatization
- First responders
- Firefighters
- Police officers
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Mental health professionals
- Lawyers
- Judges
- First responders
- Learning about another person’s trauma
- Media coverage
Even when trauma is indirect, it can feel as if that trauma has also happened to you. Whether your distress is rooted in direct or indirect trauma, your sense of safety in the world is disrupted. Thus, much like other forms of trauma, digital trauma can have a detrimental impact on your psychological well-being. In particular, exposure to collective traumatic events and individual experiences with trauma online can lead to conditions like:
- Stress
- Fear
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
For many who have not experienced trauma directly, indirect trauma through digital media has grown rapidly. Yet, what is digital trauma? In general, digital trauma is a type of trauma that reflects a broad range of traumas that happen digitally or are captured and shared online. As a result, digital trauma can occur due to abuse from others or through self-exposure.
Some examples of digital trauma include viral content, news coverage, and online harassment like cyberbullying. Expanding your awareness of different ways to experience digital trauma can highlight the significance of its impact on well-being.
Trauma Triggers in Online Content and News Coverage
Viral content can come in a lot of different forms like images, videos, and text. Moreover, viral content gains significant popularity as it is shared widely across various technologies like social media and news sites. Viral content can be as well-intentioned as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge or as traumatic as graphic images of crime scenes. However, exposure to violent and graphic content extends beyond viral content to also include local, national, and global news coverage.
As the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) notes, advances in technology have made media coverage of traumatic events more readily accessible. It can be particularly difficult to look away from traumatic news coverage. Many people feel the need to be prepared for future disasters or attacks or to understand and process the event. While being informed is an important part of decision-making in your daily life, media coverage can lead to digital trauma. Meanwhile, according to Frontiers in Psychiatry, television and social media coverage of mass traumatic events such as natural disasters, large-scale attacks, and disease outbreaks can contribute to lasting psychological harm.
Some of the psychological consequences of digital trauma in viral content and news coverage include:
- Acute stress
- Depression
- PTSD
Further, as noted in the Frontiers in Psychiatry article, social media exposure in addition to television exposure of traumatic events can lead to a greater PTSD burden. Through the sharing of traumatic events on social media, PTSD prevalence increased. Although many examples of news coverage reflect indirect trauma, digital trauma can also be direct as seen in online harassment.
Online Harassment as a Source of Digital Trauma
Digital trauma in the form of online harassment can present trauma that invades your home and disrupts your sense of safety. As stated in “Social Media and Adolescent Health” from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, digital technology provides a sense of anonymity. Through anonymity, people in digital spaces are emboldened to perpetrate abusive behavior that unacceptable in person. However, what exactly is online harassment? What types of events, actions, or interactions are considered harassment?
In general, online harassment is unwanted verbal or nonverbal behaviors online. However, online harassment is complex and can be difficult to categorize in a definition that cannot account for the many ways harassment can happen. A few examples include:
Cyberbullying
- A form of bullying that takes place through digital technologies
- Using digital devices and platforms like cell phones, messaging platforms, social media, and gaming platforms
- Perpetrators engage in repeated behaviors designed to scare, anger, or shame others
- Spreading lies about an individual or group
- Posting embarrassing photos or videos
- Sending hurtful, abusive, or threatening messages, images, or videos
- Impersonating someone to send harmful or embarrassing messages to others
- Hacking social media or email accounts
- Creating fake accounts
Trolling
- Perpetrators attempt to elicit anger, annoyance, or other negative emotions from their targets by posing inflammatory messages on digital platforms and networks like comment sections and chat rooms
- In-person trolling through digital devices
- Repeatedly calling someone or spam texting
- Swatting: The deliberate and malicious act of falsely reporting a crime or emergency to elicit an aggressive response from law enforcement
- Perpetrators target people’s homes and or places of work to harass and intimidate
- Concern trolling: Perpetrators pretend to share the opinions and ideas of others
- They undermine and attempt to derail genuine discussions about a topic
- Their goal is to elicit confusion and conflict among people using a veneer of civility
- Flaming: Also known as roasting, perpetrators verbally attack others online to create conflict and engage in arguments with others
- Typically involves posting insults or extreme opinions with profanity or other offensive language
- Hate raiding: Multiple perpetrators work together to coordinate attacks on a target or targets
- Typically involves following an individual or group on sites like Twitch to flood their chat with abusive messages including slurs
- Marginalized individuals and groups like People of Color (POC), women, and the LGBTQIA+ community are most often impacted by hate raids
- Gendertrolling: Perpetrators attempt to silence women online by using gendered and sexualized language and threats like rape and death threats
- In-person trolling through digital devices
Technical Attacks
- Perpetrators try to interfere with an individual’s ability to engage with resources online
- Hacking social media accounts
- Denial of services: A perpetrator attempts to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with internet traffic
Doxing
- A target’s personal information like addresses and phone numbers are posted online
Threats
- Perpetrators make explicit and or implicit threats
Exclusion
- Perpetrators purposefully exclude an individual from an online group
Cyberflashing
- Perpetrators send sexually explicit photos without the recipient’s consent
- Often sent through direct messages (DMs) on apps and social media
- Can also be sent on video calling/chat apps
- Women experience a disproportionate amount of unwanted sexual messages and images
Grooming and Sexual Extortion
- Digital spaces are used as a medium for adult perpetrators to access sexual interactions with children
- Perpetrators work to gain, persuade, and engage children in sexual activity online and in person
- Deceiving minors about the age of the perpetrator and or that they share mutual friends
- An adult may provide emotional support, sympathy, and or gifts in exchange for sexual activity
- Sextortion: A form of blackmail threatening or coercing the target into exposing intimate images against a demand for money, more images, or sex
- Revenge pornography: The nonconsensual sharing of sexualized images of the target
- Is designed to intentionally hurt the target
- Cisgender and transgender girls and women are disproportionately impacted
- Perpetrators work to gain, persuade, and engage children in sexual activity online and in person
Sexual Abuse
- Digital media technologies like social media are used to help facilitate sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of minors and often women
- Sexual abuse is the actual or threat of physical intrusion of a sexual nature
- Can occur by force or under unequal or coercive conditions
- Sexual exploitation is the actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, power, or trust, for sexual purposes and or profiting monetarily, socially, or politically
- Sex trafficking
- Sexual voyeurism: Watching a person undressing, using the bathroom, or engaging in
sexual acts without the consent of the person being observed - Invasion of sexual privacy
- Sexually-based stalking
- Taking and or sharing non-consensual photos, video, or audio of sexual activity
- Sexual abuse is the actual or threat of physical intrusion of a sexual nature
Many different kinds of online harassment can impair your physical and psychological health. In particular, online harassment which disproportionately impacts marginalized communities can lead to:
- Higher levels of depression and anxiety
- Increased digital trauma
- Negative body image
- Increased sexual risk-taking
- Disordered eating
- Increased fear and feelings of rejection
- A loss of control or autonomy
- Decreased self-esteem, self-worth, and optimism
The wide variety of online harassment for digital trauma can be understandably distressing and overwhelming. Thus, access to holistic trauma-specific approaches to treatment is invaluable to healing digital trauma.
Benefits of Psychodrama for Digital Trauma
According to Plos One, psychodrama is an experiential psychotherapy in which clinicians use guided role-play to help clients. Through guided role-play, you work through personal and interpersonal issues with actions rather than only words. Psychodrama is particularly valuable for digital trauma because it can be difficult to think about and talk about trauma. The pain of trauma often gets stuck in the body and manifests itself in self-defeating thinking and behaviors like substance abuse. Moreover, you may engage in maladaptive coping like avoidance behaviors to suppress the physical and psychological distress of trauma.
Further, many forms of trauma including digital trauma can have a profound impact on your sense of self and disrupt emotional regulation and mood. When you engage in psychodrama therapy, you can use the insights you gain into yourself to address those difficult-to-reach thoughts and feelings. Some of the benefits of psychodrama for digital trauma include:
- Increasing your sense of self-competency and self-efficacy
- Supports greater self-understanding of your trauma and its impact on you
- Improves feelings of safety and self-image
- Increase adaptive coping skills
Therefore, psychodrama provides a safe reality where you can explore feelings, thoughts, and behaviors to gain insight into yourself. Additionally, mind-body therapies like brainspotting can also support healing digital trauma.
Healing the Mind-Body From Digital Trauma With Brainspotting
Brainspotting (BSP) recognizes the way the brain and body work in tandem together through the nervous system to function. Thus, therapeutic modalities like BSP work on connecting the eyes to the brain to address the pain body of trauma. Specifically, BSP focuses on observing the body’s response when a traumatic event is described. Moreover, BSP observes a specific or resonating spot within your visual field. That resonating spot is connected to your trauma as your body’s the stuck point. Therefore, by connecting the eyes stuck point in your visual field, BSP can access trapped traumatic memories.
With guidance from your clinician, you can process the trauma felt in the body. Thus, you can process the memory of the trauma through bodily connection. The mind-body connection of BSP highlights the need for mindfulness in trauma healing to give attention, understanding, and compassion to your inner experiences. As a result, of the value of mindfulness in trauma healing, attachment work can be another valuable tool for trauma recovery.
Value of Attachment Work in Trauma Recovery
According to Frontiers in Psychiatry, attachment theory is an approach that reflects on a collection of different patterns or attachment styles. These different patterns within attachment theory are based on the specific experiences that happen in attachment relationships. Moreover, different attachment styles provide various levels of security, coping strategies, emotional regulation, and attachment needs. Therefore, attachment work can give you deeper insight into how digital trauma influences your well-being and relationships. Greater awareness and understanding of your attachment issues can give you the safety and support to build a secure base for reflection and reevaluation.
Through the reflectiveness of attachment work, you learn how to recognize and address past traumas. By addressing the roots of your trauma, you can develop new cognitive and emotional coping skills. Furthermore, some of the other benefits of attachment work include:
- Greater emotional regulation
- Improved interpersonal problem-solving skills
- Increased quality in your interaction
Looking at the different therapeutic tools available for addressing digital trauma, highlights the fact that trauma is treatable. You are not alone in your pain, as holistic trauma-specific approaches can support your long-term recovery.
Navigating Digital Trauma at The Guest House
Everyone’s experiences with trauma and need for healing are unique. However, with support from your clinicians, you can find the path to recovery that makes sense for you. At The Guest House, we know maladaptive coping mechanisms often stem from traumatic experiences like digital trauma.
It is easy to be exposed to trauma and consumed by the pervasiveness of digital technologies. We are committed to treating the roots of your distress with holistic trauma-specific care that addresses your specific needs for healing. With a wide variety of experiential therapies in a safe and non-judgmental space, you can build the right recovery plan for you to support resilience in long-term recovery.
Trauma can come in many forms, including digital trauma. Moreover, digital trauma is as broad as the pervasiveness of digital technologies used in daily life. From traumatic viral content and news coverage to online harassment, digital trauma can harm the physical and psychological well-being of most people with access to the internet. Further, different types of digital trauma can increase your risk for a variety of health challenges like depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem. However, using therapies like psychodrama, brainspotting, and attachment work can support deeper self-awareness and understanding to dismantle self-defeating behaviors. Therefore, at The Guest House, we are committed to providing a variety of holistic trauma-specific approaches to support your long-term well-being. Call us at (855) 483-7800 today.