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Trauma is physiological, not just psychological.

Trauma makes it difficult to articulate and share one's story for reasons that are not always obvious.

Trauma does not eliminate the possibility of growth.

There's a lot of information out there about trauma these days. Worldwide, search interest for the word trauma tripled between 2015 and 2026 (Google, 2025). Surveys of the general population have also shown that almost 80 percent of adults living in the United States have experienced at least one major trauma (Briere & Scott, 2024).

In the broadening discussions that surround trauma, there has also been a semantic dilution of the word itself in mainstream social channels. But, for the purposes of this post, I'll lean on the definition provided by researchers Briere and Scott (2024), who define a traumatic event as one that overwhelms an individual’s internal resource state and yields extensive psychological distress.

Here are seven aspects of trauma that are commonly misunderstood.

1. Trauma isn't just psychological, it's physical ["They just need to change their thinking."]

Telling someone to just change their thinking is like telling someone with a broken leg to just decide to walk normally. Although the intention is there, the body won't comply. I understand through my encounters with clients how trauma isn't simply relegated to the mind, but can exist in the body. It disrupts the homeostasis of internal systems. For instance, the nervous system, the very mechanism that governs how our body processes and responds to the world around us, may be thrown into a state of tremendous dysregulation. Traumatic experience itself often gets "stuck" in the body. This is why trauma may manifest within the survivor with real physical symptoms (Josephson et al., 2025). Trauma can show up in the body as elevated cortisol levels, temperature spikes (psychogenic fever), body aches, and cardiovascular strain. Thus, reorienting the body to feel safe again is part of the healing journey.

2. Not everyone is ready to tell their story, and that is OK. ["Why aren't they saying anything?"]

Trauma is complicated in ways that go well........

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