Trauma vs trauma

Now, I know what you must be thinking, “you chose a career based off that conversation?”. Well yes, at the beginning, all I needed was an adult to tell me what to do. The very next day I started looking at programs and three months later I got into my number one program in Chicago (GO RAMBLERS!) To say I was intimidated though, is the understatement of my life. I found myself surrounded by some of the most intelligent and empathetic people I have ever and will ever meet. Folks who were truly made for this line of work and whose families had been preparing them for this. Who held BSW’s and had known this was their dream for years and I barely knew what social work was. But when I sat down that first day in my Human Behavior and the Social Environment class (HBSE), I thought to myself, “THANK F*CK I DON’T HATE THIS SHIT!”. And I didn’t! In fact, I thrived! I graduated 2.5 years later with a 4.0 GPA, a job, and a thousand other reasons I loved this work. But in order to explain those thousand other reasons, we need lay some foundation.

Let’s discuss trauma vs Trauma. Trauma itself is defined by Psychology Today as “a deeply disturbing event that infringes upon an individual’s sense of control and may reduce their capacity to integrate the situation or circumstances into their current reality.” We often think a lot about our Large-T trauma, which is an extraordinary or a significant event that leaves an individual feeling powerless or like they have little control of the environment. Helplessness is also a key factor of these traumas. Examples are: combat, natural disasters, sexual assault, or a vehicle accident. On the other hand, small-t traumas are events that exceed our individual capacity to cope and cause a disruption in emotional functioning. While these events are not inherently life or bodily threatening, they do leave the individual feeling helpless. Examples are: emotional abuse, divorce, financial issues, being bullied, etc (Psychologytoday.com).

Well, it seems most of us have trauma right. Something we have gone through that has shaped us into who we are today. When I left home at 18 for college, I truly did not understand why I felt that I was both abandoning and escaping. Now at 30 and after over a decade working with 5 different therapists, I can honestly tell you, that choosing social work was always going to happen. From the day I walked into that first (FREE) therapy office on my college campus at 19 and started telling her about my family and the first 18 years of my life. From the moment she looked at me with genuine curiosity and empathy and asked me “so when are you going to admit it was abuse?”.