10 Most Common Types of Trauma

While nearly everyone experiences distressing or traumatic events at some point in his or her life, not everyone experiences what clinicians characterize as one of the types of trauma. Being bullied on the playground or making a major faux pas in public can be extremely difficult to get over, make no mistake. How one perceives these distressing events – regardless of their severity – often determines the extent of the trauma experienced.

Many individuals, however, undergo significantly greater levels of distress resulting from traumatic encounters such as assault, abuse, and violence, to name a few. Symptoms often follow in the wake of such traumas and usually provide the motivation to seek therapeutic intervention.

10 Different Types of Trauma

To help readers understand the various kinds of trauma and how they might be recognized, each has been outlined below.

1. Sexual Abuse or Assault

Any unsolicited or unwelcome attention or conduct of a sexual nature falls under the category of sexual abuse or sexual assault. Such behaviors include, but are not limited to, exposure to sexually explicit material, touching, kissing, caressing, genital stimulation, intercourse, child pornography, and forced prostitution. The key factor is not the form that the exposure or experience takes but that the victim neither wants nor seeks it.

Minors who are abused physically (e.g. – groping or fondling by an uncle) or exploited through digital means (e.g. – receiving pornographic photos through social media) are never considered to be consenting due to their age. All sexual conduct with or attention toward a minor falls under the umbrella of sexual abuse.

2. Physical Abuse or Assault

Sufferers of this category of trauma have been subjected to physical forms of violence such as beatings (e.g. – with a hand or an item such as a belt), burning, or assault with a weapon. A power differential usually exists whereby an individual (e.g. – parent or spouse) or group (e.g. – gang) who holds greater power or authority over the victim wields control over the other by force. Typically, the rivalry between siblings or normal roughhousing – though it may result in injury – does not constitute physical abuse.

3. Emotional Abuse

Trauma of this nature deals with abuse suffered from emotional rather than physical means. Verbal assault inflicts emotional pain by insulting the other with demeaning language or threatening the other with violence.

Other forms of emotional abuse include exercising excessive control over others, creating a double-bind scenario where the victim cannot “win” no matter what they do, and emotional neglect whereby the abuser refuses to acknowledge or affirm the victim under any circumstances.

4. Neglect

Failure to provide a dependent with the necessary care for survival is considered neglect. Trauma of this nature results from having the basic elements such as nourishment, housing, clothing or medical care withheld. While neglect typically involves parents not providing for their dependent children – something that is regularly reported to child protective services – it can occur to anyone of any age when they are not given the necessary care needed to survive.

5. Domestic Violence

Both threatened and actual violence of a physical, emotional, and/or sexual nature between two cohabitating or married adults constitutes domestic violence. Witnessing domestic violence can be just as traumatic as experiencing it first-hand. Children who grow up in homes where this type of abuse is prevalent often show signs of trauma as a result.

6. Life-threatening Illness or Calamity

Trauma of this nature results from experiencing serious or near-fatal automobile accidents, house fires, or sustaining significant injury from other accidents such as a fall (e.g. rock climbing, horseback riding). Painful medical procedures or treatments that induce fear in children or adults can be included in this category also.

7. War-Induced Trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, has become inextricably linked with veterans returning from war, but it can hardly be limited to that demographic alone. Anyone who has experienced an acute level of stress from exposure to great threat can be affected. Trauma from war-related or war-like experiences such as being under artillery fire, witnessing dismemberment, and torture fall under this category.

8. Natural Disasters

Individuals who live through natural disasters are particularly prone to experiencing symptoms of trauma. In 2017, global citizens have experienced unprecedented clusters of natural disasters around the world. Deadly back-to-back hurricanes, massive flooding, earthquakes, and wildfires are among the many disasters that leave its victims displaced sometimes for long periods of time.

9. Mass Shootings

Twenty years ago, mass shootings in public schools were relatively unheard of. Now, not only do America’s children fear for their safety in the classroom, but concert-goers and Sunday worshippers are equally targeted by those with the intent to do harm to large groups of innocent victims. The inability to foresee or avoid these circumstances can create high levels of anxiety.

10. School and Workplace Bullying

Whether occurring amongst children at school or adults in the workplace, overt or covert power imbalances can give way to forms of bullying, whereby the group or individual in power exerts control over the victim using psychological and emotional terror tactics.

Sophie Henshaw, in her article “Bullying at Work: Workplace Mobbing is on the Rise,” states that adults who bully others at work will gather around them colleagues who will “collude in a relentless campaign of psychological terror against a hapless target.” Victims of workplace mobbing are typically intelligent, capable, and strong women.

Trauma Recovery through Christian Counseling

Symptoms of post-traumatic stress can result from any number of traumatic experiences, as listed above. Victims do not need to suffer these symptoms indefinitely, however. Several treatment options exist today that target various sources and forms of trauma. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, or EMDR, is an evidence-based treatment protocol for PTSD and trauma-related issues like those defined here.

If you are currently suffering after experiencing a traumatic event, I’m here to help. As a Christian clinician with years of experience in treating trauma and utilizing EMDR therapy, I am confident that you will benefit from these services.