Page 118 - Biblical Counseling II-Textbook

1. a deeply distressing or disturbing experience: "a personal trauma like the death of a child"
(google.com)

2. physical injury: "rupture of the diaphragm caused by blunt trauma" (google.com)

3. an experience that produces psychological injury or pain (dictionary.com).

The third definition is the one we will focus on in this course. It is interesting to look more in depth at
the word trauma. Some synonyms, or words that mean the same, for trauma are injury, damage, hurt,
wound, wounding. An antonym, or word that means the opposite, for trauma is healing. This word is
critically important as we think of counseling those who have experienced trauma. When I taught at
IBCZ in the past, students shared stories of people in their communities who had experienced trauma
from things like witnessing violence, seeing a friend drown, rape, being in a serious car accident, the
death of a parent, the death of a friend. Students shared how these situations of trauma had impacted
them or those around them. Trauma is a complicated, in-depth subject. It is one we could spend an
entire course on. To summarize it into one chapter was difficult for me. First, we need to understand
what happens to the brain and body when trauma occurs.

According to psychologist De. Odeyla Gertel Kraybill, a trauma expert, “Psychological trauma is a
response involving complex debilitation of adaptive abilities—emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual
and social—following an event that was perceived by our nervous system as threatening to oneself or
others (especially loves ones). Trauma can be a one-time event, a prolonged event or a series of events.
Trauma that affects a community or a country is called collective trauma” (Kraybill, p. 1, 2019).
(Collective trauma could occur after a war or natural disaster.)

“Trauma shocks and changes all systems. These include:

1. Cognitive: The trauma affects the ability to process thoughts and make good judgments

2. Emotional: Looping with emotions of shame, guilt, fear, anger, and pain

3. Physical: It affects muscles, joints, digestion and metabolism, temperature, sleep, immune system,
etc.

4. Spiritual: The trauma affects our worldview, the lenses with which we see reality (typically so we see
it as unsafe), our understanding and meaning of life, society, and the world

5. Social: The trauma affects relationships with spouses, family, friends, colleagues, and strangers
(because it affects so many so deeply, it affects structures of societies)” (Kraybill, p. 2, 2019).

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