Understanding Trauma: A Course for Educators
What is Trauma?
How Can We Think About Trauma?
Populations at Risk
Clinical Trauma
Recent Public Stresses
Where to Go From Here
Course Syllabus
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What is Trauma?
- How Trauma Lodges Itself in the Body
- Get More
- Deep Dive
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How Can We Think About Trauma?
- The Spoon Theory
- Examples of Traumatic Events and Scenarios
- Resilience
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- Deep Dive
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Populations at Risk
- Populations at Risk
- Substance Abuse
- Military and Veteran Families
- Economic Stress
- Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
- LGBTQIA Youth
- Homeless and Highly Mobile Youth
- Refugees
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- Deep Dive
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Clinical Trauma
- Clinical Trauma
- PTSD
- Complex Trauma
- Get More
- Deep Dive
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Recent Public Stresses
- Recent Public Stresses
- Political Unrest
- Social Unrest
- Covid 19
- Get More
- Deep Dive
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Where to Go From Here
- Where to Go From Here
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What is Trauma?
Teresa Campbell · January 7, 2025
What do we mean by trauma?
Recent estimates show that around 35 million children in the United States are currently living with childhood trauma. And, amazingly, 70% of adults living in the United States have experienced some kind of trauma, either in childhood or adulthood. That’s around 223.4 million people.
But what IS trauma? What CAUSES trauma?
In general, trauma is a psychological or emotional response to an event or an experience that is deeply distressing or disturbing.
What is important to remember is that anything can be traumatic. What is deeply distressing or disturbing for one person can be quite benign for another. What often makes the difference is how many traumas we have recently gone through, what stressors are currently happening on top of the trauma, and even if we’ve gotten enough sleep or enough to eat.
Trauma-informed teaching invites us to be curious. It invites us to change the question from “what is wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?” And for us, and our students, this can change everything.
Watch the video below for a great explanation of trauma by Dr. Tori Olds.
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