Understanding Trauma’s Ripple Effect
- Fortitude Psychological Therapy
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
What is Trauma’s Ripple Effect?
Imagine a stone being dropped into a body of water. First, there’s a big splash as the stone hits the surface and sinks to the bottom. Then, ripples or waves begin to spread outwards. The stone has disappeared, but the ripples continue for a long time afterwards. This ‘ripple effect’ is a useful analogy for trauma.
The stone represents the initial impact of the traumatic event itself. The waves spreading outwards represent the impact trauma has on other aspects of your life. For example, trauma affects the brain, your memory, your sense of self, and the type of person you become. It also impacts how you relate to others and your relationship with the world around you.
What Do These Ripples Look and Feel Like?
Sometimes the ripple’s impact is immediate. When this happens, it’s connection to the trauma is usually very obvious. For example, having nightmares or flashbacks in the days or weeks following the initial event.
Some ripples don’t show up until much later in life. When this happens, we might not even realise they’re connected to the traumatic event. For example, this could look like people pleasing and struggling with healthy boundaries.
This kind of response persists over time. When something triggers our trauma, the brain continues to respond in the same threat-based way. When this automatic response occurs, key parts of the brain such as the hippocampus (which holds our ability to contextualise threat) are inaccessible. We also know that repeated exposure to this threat-based response impacts formation of our prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that helps us regulate our emotions. Read What Does Trauma Do to Your Brain? for more on this.
The way trauma ripples throughout someone’s life usually means it’s not contained to one specific place. This can be challenging because it feels like the trauma is everywhere. The initial traumatic event was not only overwhelming and distressing at the time, it’s also seeping into every other part of life.
The Ripple Effect and Our Sense of Self
Our sense of self consists of beliefs, attitudes, relative memories, expectations and predictions which all contribute to our outlook on the world, our sense of who we are within it, and whether we’re good or bad.
As human beings, we derive meaning from things that happen to us. This means traumatic events can shape, shift, and change how we see ourselves. Some people who have experienced trauma do not have any sense of self. They feel like they don’t even know who they are. Or they might feel like their sense of self is fragmented. There’s a part of them that’s really capable and another part of them that feels very broken.
How we see ourselves usually influences how we relate to other people. Inevitably, these things also go on to impact how we exist in the world. They can influence the type of jobs we choose, the type of friend we are, or the type of parent we become.
What Does This Mean for Your Healing Journey?
Understanding trauma’s ripple effect can help you make sense of what you’re going through. Sometimes, people feel frustrated because a traumatic event is still impacting them many years later. Knowing the ripples are still spreading throughout your life, and that your body often relives the trauma as though it’s happening now, can be very reassuring. Seeing these ripples for what they are can also motivate people to seek help or focus on healing.
Therapy for Trauma
If you’re struggling with any of the things described in this article and you’d like an expert to help you heal and recover, please get in touch. Alternatively, subscribe to The Trauma Toolbox to receive my insights and tips straight to your inbox every month. I also share lots of mental health education via Instagram.
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