5 Things Everyone Should Know About Trauma

Dr. Melanie Noel's research is changing the way we understand the relationship between trauma and pain. But what is trauma, and how can it impact our health and daily lives?

Described as a lasting emotional response that comes from living through a distressing event, trauma can have long-term effects on our sense of safety, sense of self, how we manage our emotions, and relationships with others.

According to Dr. Noel, whose expertise is on children’s memories for pain and co-occurring mental health issues and paediatric chronic pain, there are 5 things about pain and trauma that everyone should know.

We all remember painful experiences from our childhood, and those memories are not like a tape recorder. They can become distorted in positive or negative ways over time.
How we remember painful experiences is one of the most powerful predictors of how we cope with pain into adulthood.
Our memories can be changed simply by the ways in which we reminisce and talk about these past painful experiences.
Trauma and pain go hand in hand. Early life trauma can lead to pain problems later in life.
The trauma our parents experienced as children can present risk for our pain and mental health before we are even born.

Is there an upside? People are incredibly resilient. The antidote to intergenerational trauma is social and community support, having adults who care and who we can talk to about negative emotions. We can foster this to prevent problems in children and foster optimal growth and development.

How can we manage pain and trauma?

Understanding trauma can help us address how we remember and relate to painful experiences and how we manage our pain later in life. Our brains and bodies are so intricately intertwined that it’s often necessary to understand both our physical and emotional pain to improve our quality of life.

Services such as Clinical Psychology and Counselling (eg. trauma focused CBT and prolonged exposure) can help to recognize and address feelings associated with our past traumas and provide patients with skills to recognize and react to negative triggers or stressors.

People can feel a range of emotions when they experience a negative trigger, but a common one is anxiety. Understanding the impact that anxiety has on our bodies can help us develop skills to navigate and manage feelings of anxiety and focus our attention on growth and self-actualization.

Psychology approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy can also help us work on modifying our thought patterns and reducing our painful memories’ emotional impact.

To learn more about trauma, including how traumatic events in childhood relate to the development of chronic pain and how new findings are informing advances in how we treat pain and trauma, join us for a special speaker series featuring Dr. Melanie Noel and Tall Tree’s Dr. Bianca Bucarelli.