06/01/2026
When you hear the word “trauma,” what comes to mind?
Combat. Car accidents. Assault. The kind of experiences that make headlines.
So when you think about what you’ve been through, you tell yourself it doesn’t count. Other people have had it worse. You weren’t in danger like that. You should be over it by now.
But here’s what nobody told you: trauma isn’t defined by the event. It’s defined by how your nervous system responded.
Trauma is any experience that overwhelmed your capacity to cope. Any moment when your body went into survival mode and never fully came back. Any experience that still lives in your body, even if your mind has “moved on.”
You don’t need a war zone to have trauma. You don’t need a diagnosis to be affected. If your body is still responding to something that happened, that counts.
This is PTSD Awareness Month. And I want to start by expanding what we think trauma looks like.