Psychological trauma refers to the emotional consequences of living through a highly stressful situation (or “traumatic event”). There is no strict definition for traumatic events, but they’re usually situations where one has strong feelings of distress, fear, loss of control, or feeling trapped.
Traumatic events can be:
- Things that happen to you
- Things that you witness happening to someone else
- Things that you hear about happening to someone else
They can also be a single event (like an assault), or a long-term pattern of events (like abuse or repeated exposure to danger).