Understanding Trauma at Work: The Three Types of Trauma
Talking about trauma in the workplace can be confusing — the word trauma gets used interchangeably for all situations, but not all trauma is the same. The definition of an acute or single-incident trauma is “an experience or event that overwhelms our capacity to defend or protect ourselves.” The hallmarks of trauma are helplessness and fear.[1] A one-time trauma has a predictable physiological impact: our bodies gear up to fight or to flee. Our heartrate, blood pressure, and respiration increases, with the blood going to our major muscle groups. Our attention and focus narrows so that the only thing we are attending to is what we perceive as danger. Our bodies release so much adrenaline that our brain creates extra receptors to take up the adrenaline.
A single-incident trauma catches us off guard and breaks through our defenses. But what happens when trauma doesn’t happen once, but instead gets repeated as it does in many workplaces where trauma is a routine part of the job? When trauma is repeated, we don’t wait to get “caught off-guard” — we unconsciously, yet wisely, build a system of defenses against being overwhelmed and getting caught off-guard again. Building defenses to survive and experience the repeated trauma conserves our cognitive and emotional energy for survival. Instead of getting flooded with emotion — with terror, fear, and all the responses to it — we build walls, moats, and methods of escape. We go numb, we feel nothing, and we do whatever we have to in order to maintain our distance from ourselves and others.
Repeated trauma is really three forms of trauma: 1) What happened (the trauma that occurred), 2) What aided survival (the protections you use to survive), and 3) What didn’t happen (the growth and development that couldn’t happen while the trauma was occurring).
Most of the discussion of trauma in our culture focuses on the first form of trauma — on what happened. We are a culture obsessed with a “trauma story.” And being able to tell your story of trauma is important, but that alone ignores the full impact of repeated trauma, and therefore makes it difficult to heal from it.
In repeated trauma what happened is only one part of the trauma. If trauma gets repeated, a second form of trauma occurs. This second form of repeated trauma is the systems of psychological and physiological defense that one constructs to survive the trauma. People change themselves to survive trauma. The responses to trauma are no longer “symptoms” but instead these protective responses can get incorporated into your personality — into the way you function. These protections or defenses start off as an adaptation to the trauma that is occurring. They help you manage your day-to-day life the best way you can. But often, these same behaviors can eventually interfere in your life and relationships.
The third form of repeated trauma is what didn’t happen. It is the growth and development that couldn’t happen while the trauma was occurring. Consider a country at war: when a country is at war, it isn’t building roads or schools. It isn’t educating future physicians or leaders. It is in the “defense” business. Its only focus is on self-protection.
Recently, I met with a leader who was struggling with his team in the aftermath of Covid-19. He was proud that during that time they maintained productivity, but he felt that now his team members were distant from each other and lacking flexibility. It was hard to get them to problem-solve or to meet new or different demands.
This manager was from an urban center that was badly hit by the pandemic — given the three years that this team functioned during the pandemic, it’s helpful to look at his challenges through the lens of repeated trauma. Many of his team members experienced severe family illness or death in their families as a result of the pandemic. They lived with the daily fear of their health and the health of their loved ones. The trauma of this fear and loss is the first form of trauma: the trauma of what happened.
The second form of trauma for his team were the protections they used to survive the trauma. Many of his team members became more isolated as they worked from home. They stopped relying on each other or on him. They weren’t as able to use their old or previous coping strategies because they had to remain at home and often away from their support networks.
And while work remained stable on the team, despite all of the stress, there was no time or effort spent on professional development. This is the third form of trauma: what didn’t happen. While the trauma was occurring, all of the resources went to survival. There was no investment in the future. During the years of Covid-19, none of the team members got to develop their capacities or careers. And there was no time spent on team building or growing as a group.
As a leader, this manager can help his team talk about their experiences during these years, which will help them understand their own, and each other’s experiences. He can encourage his team members to acknowledge the ways they managed to cope and begin to assess whether these coping strategies are still serving them. And he can help them start to look at the growth and development they missed as individuals, and as a team, and start to implement learning goals into their work life. Trauma is a workplace issue and leaders can develop tools and frameworks to help their teams to heal and grow.
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[1] Schmelzer, G. (2018). Journey Through Trauma. NY: Avery.
© 2024 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD | Center for Trauma and Leadership