Emotional trauma and mental health are not a strange concept for any of us. Most people are familiar with these terms, although they don’t know the extent of them. I’m Jen Stuart and, in today’s post, we will explore together the definition of emotional trauma, often called psychological trauma as well, and its ramifications.

• What is emotional and psychological trauma?

In order to understand this concept better, let’s break it down. 

• What are emotions? 

There are two main scientific approaches to explain what emotions are. The first one is the cognitive appraisal theory, and it connects emotions to personal goals. Emotions, according to this theory, are evaluations that we internally make about in what degree has an event met our goals. The second theory, physiological perception theory, states that emotions are perceptions of the different changes the body experiences. Although a paper about emotional consciousness considers that these two theories are interlaced and the interaction between them is what’s able to explain the complexity and versatility of emotions. 

The bottom line is that, regardless of what theory we grab to approach emotions, we all experience them in our own personal way, multiple at the same time or one after the other, and in different degrees. There are as many emotions as colours (like happiness, sadness, frustration, hope, etc.), and it’s okay to open ourselves to feeling and dealing with them. 

• What is trauma?

Trauma is a response from the mind and the body to an overly stressing situation, also called traumatic stressor, which overwhelms our capacity to cope and respond. The responses are completely personal because the perception of stress is subjective, and we can all respond differently to the same ‘event’.

• So what is emotional trauma?

Emotional trauma is an experience that is originated when a person goes through, what they perceive as, a traumatic event(s). It is characterised by two main elements: one cannot cope with the event and is overwhelmed by it, and the aftermath is that the person fears death, annihilation, mutilation, psychosis, or another intrinsic fear. The intensity and complexity of emotional trauma are determined by the person who suffers it and by the frequency of the traumatic event. A repetitive traumatic stressor can have a more devastating effect on the person. 

• Types of emotional trauma

Psychological trauma can be categorised in the following classes:

• Child mistreatment
• Domestic violence
• Sexual assault
• War-related trauma
• School violence and community violence
• Medical trauma
• Traumatic loss – grief 
• Catastrophes
• Accidents
• Perpetrator trauma

• Emotional trauma victim

Some people are more aware of their condition as an emotional trauma victim, which allow them to take action, while others are not. One of the fundamental parts of trauma-sensitive yoga is the taking of action. This therapeutical activity requires the client to be determined to move from a discomfort stage into a comfort stage and gives them the tools they need to be able to take the decision and make the transition.

Sometimes, the first step into recovery is to ask yourself: am I suffering from trauma? Symptoms are both psychological and physiological, such as denial, anxiety, guilt, mood swings, fatigue, insomnia, muscle tension, among others.   

• Yoga practice for healing emotional trauma

Yoga for Trauma has been acknowledged as a successful way to address trauma and overcome it. Healing trauma with yoga is possible because it operates on both mind and body, teaching you to be more self-aware and exercise control over your thoughts and the responses of your body. 

The ability to feel bodily responses, such as spasms, headaches, shivers, and more, is a sense itself. It’s called interoception. This vital sense, experienced by each person in a unique way, allows us to recognise when our body is functioning right or when it’s failing, and trauma-sensitive yoga can bring awareness about the connexion between bodily signals and emotions. To measure interoception, one set of criteria propose considering:

• Awareness.
• Coherence between psychological and physiological states.  
• Attention tendency: Discover what interoceptive signals tend to be more noticed and ignored by a person.
• Sensitivity: Discover what the threshold level for an interoceptive signal to be noticed by a person is.
• Accuracy: Ability to discriminate one specific interoceptive signals from others.
• Sensibility: Refers to the intensity each person experience an interoceptive signal.
• Regulation: Ability of each person to bring an interoceptive signal to a personal and desired state. 

On Journey with Jen, you can find trauma-sensitive yoga lessons to discover how mindfulness and relaxation can help you deal with trauma and find new joy in your life. One of the main axes of Trauma Sensitive Yoga is to teach people how to regulate their bodies and minds through the usage of multiple techniques, being one of them the experience of interoception.

In my classes, you will be able to learn how to stabilise irrational behaviour, being in control of yourself, find out what you love or re-find pleasure doing the things you used to love, and more. Yoga for trauma is a mental and body health treatment, that will provide you with a complete set of tools to deal with the emotional effects of trauma.