Human Beans Are Not Rabbits

So what is trauma? What does being traumatized really mean? Can we really decide whether or not to be traumatized as your father says?

The American Psychological Association (APA) is an association that is in charge of psychologists and their practice (social workers have another association that is called NASW, National Association of Social Workers). The reason I am mentioning this association is because in their manuals and important books that psychologists have to read, they define trauma as the emotional response to a negative event.

Hey, did you hear that? Trauma is not the negative event, it’s the emotional response! Now that must come as a huge surprise to you. Could it be then, that your father is right? Hang in with me and you can decide at the end of this article.

Okay, so here goes. There are three parts to our brain. The reptilian brain (yes,as in reptile; stuff that is automatic that we don’t think about just like animals don’t think  about how they react or behave), the limbic brain (the emotional and social part of us), and the neocortex (the thinking part of our brain).

I know, I know, you are impatient. You want me to answer your question. What has this got to do with trauma?

Let me ask you a question before I answer yours.

You ever saw a traumatized rabbit?

Any animal that lives in the wild does not experience trauma. If a fox is running after our little rabbit, the rabbit is either eaten (its trauma is definitely over) or it escapes back to the forest, going on with its merry rabbit life. It does not get depressed, it does not hide anxiously in its burrow crying it doesn’t want to go out with friends in case the fox comes after it again, it doesn’t refuse to eat because it lost its appetite since being chased by the fox. Nope. Our little rabbit goes about its merry life until the next fox sets off chasing it.

That is because the rabbit responds to negative events with its reptilian part of its brain. It doesn’t even have a neocortex. Only human beings have thinking brains. Lucky us, you are thinking. Well, yeah. Lucky us we are not rabbits being chased by foxes and almost getting eaten.

But here is the problem. If we would not have a neocortex, we would also not have trauma. We would be like the little rabbit, who after it gets chased by the fox, we would simply go on with our lives without a thought. Because if the rabbit would have a neocortex, its life would look very different after its fox scare. It would think about the terrible scare it got and then would run to his mother and say, “Can you believe what almost happened to me? I almost got EATEN!” and that would depress and scare the little rabbit so much that it would refuse, absolutely refuse to go out to play. And it is the thinking that would get the rabbit depressed and anxious, not the fox that is no longer there.

So let’s get back to what trauma is. Trauma is NOT the event of being chased by the fox, it is the emotional response the rabbit has to the fox. And rabbits do not have emotional responses because emotional responses are connected to how we think about things. And rabbits can’t think so rabbits don’t have trauma.

What do I mean? Let me tell you.

Say you come to school and a bunch of your friends are sitting in a tight little circle. You go up to them and want to say hello as you usually do, when suddenly, they all get very quiet and when they say hello to you, they sound funny as if they are hiding something from you.

What would be your response?

If you would be a rabbit, you would not think or feel emotional and you would just continue to hang out without any problem whatsoever.

If you are a regular teenager, it would depend.

If you are thinking, “Why are they ignoring me? Am I wearing the wrong clothes? Did I hurt someone’s feelings? Did I do something wrong?” then your feelings are hurt, upset, worried, or even angry.

Or, you could be thinking, “Haha. They think I don’t realize they are planning a surprise for me today because my birthday was yesterday.” And then you feel happy, excited, and tingly inside.

Notice how it is NOT the event that is causing your feelings, but your THOUGHTS. If you are thinking good thoughts, then your feelings are positive. If you are thinking negative thoughts, then your feelings are negative. You are either feeling hurt and insecure, or happy and popular. Based not on the actions of the girls in their tight little circle, but on the way your neocortex, your thinking brain is thinking about those girls!

Fascinating, no?

“Mindy,” you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking, “I am not a rabbit, and the stuff that happens to me are really traumatic.” Like, a mother’s sudden death, or cruel comments in the classroom.

Now, you are not going to like what you are gonna hear. Which is: the sudden death or cruel comment is only a trauma if you think it is.

Now, before you have my head and warn everyone off coming to that crazy Mindy Blumenfeld for therapy because she doesn’t know trauma from a hole in the wall, let me explain.

A death is a tragedy. Cruel comments are hurtful and wrong. But to define them as traumas, then the emotional responses need to feel overwhelming. If the emotional response is not overwhelming, then those things are terrible and awful, but not traumatic.

Originally, traumatic events were defined as events that were so overwhelming that anyone who would encounter those events would find them overwhelming. Like a death, a divorce. War. Terror attack. Earthquake.

Then the definition of traumatic events was expanded to include any event that is overwhelming to a particular person, regardless of whether or not anyone else would find that event overwhelming. A bullying incident in school, a bad mark on a test, stuck in an elevator for an hour, losing a friend, moving to a new country, getting fired from a job, getting rejected from camp or seminary. Stuff like that. Although nobody would like any of those things happening, some people would find those things also traumatic.

When I talk about trauma, and use the word overwhelmed, what do I mean? Overwhelmed, in context of trauma, means that the nervous system can’t handle what is happening. And then a person experiences symptom like insomnia, loss of appetite and sense of fun, feeling scared and in danger, unable to concentrate or work, interference with daily activites like taking showers, studying, talking on the phone, taking an interest in school or work activities.

This is all because the nervous system is veeeeery nervous. Or depressed. Or frozen. When there are the feelings of anxiety, depression, or frozen-ness for too long (too long is different for each person in each situation), that usually means system overload, overwhelm from a traumatic event.

Now we finally get to your and your father Your father says that you don’t need to feel traumatized by nasty comments. You say you don’t choose to feel traumatized, it just happens.

Before I choose a winner of this trauma contest (doesn’t trauma seem fun when I say that?), let’s look at one more thing.

Are both of you even using the word trauma correctly and in context?

When girls hurt you, as you say, or do something horrible to you, do you feel bad? Of course. It’s hurtful and shaming and very unpleasant. But is it traumatic? Does your nervous system feel overwhelmed? Do you have any of the symptoms of anxiety, depression, or frozen-ness I mentioned before?

Part of normal life is dealing with unpleasantness. There would be something terribly wrong with you if every time someone said somenthing hurtful or insensitive you would be overwhelmed. And if you are overwhelmed by the regular stuff of every day life, then you are experiencing trauma. And if you are experiencing trauma, then you would definitely need therapy to help you to figure out how to regulate your nervous system so you can lead a functional life. There’s a difference in between being sensitive and being overwhelmed.

Now, you mention that you are reacting in this way since your mother died. Somehow your email makes me think that these comments are hurtful because they are related to your mother’s death, or because they are happening after this terrible event that makes you sensitive to hurt on top of grief.

Still, is it trauma–overwhelm, or is it unpleasantness–painful feelings?

There is a normal amount of time in which any terrible event leaves us with feelings of overwhelm—but for a normal amount of time that decreases over time (normal is relative, dependent on the person and situation). That is not true trauma. True trauma is when a sufficient amount of time passes and a person’s nervous system is just as overwhelmed as it was when the event happened.

So, here is where I will agree with your father. Maybe it’s not your choice that a terrible event happened to you. And maybe the initial feelings of overwhelm are hard to handle. Nu. Okay. But after time, you are in charge of yourself. And if you keep feeling overwhelmed, then you need to figure out ways to change how you think about these events so that they are not traumatic anymore.

Self-help books can be useful. Therapy. Mussar. And even changing your thinking all by yourself.

Your friend’s mother’s death may have been a tragedy, but the trauma part is her feelings about it. Based on her thoughts. Things like, “The world is not a safe place anymore.”  Or, “Bad things happen out of nowhere.” Or, “I don’t think Hashem loves me anymore.”

So, if she can figure out ways that she can think differently, her feelings will change and so will her functioning.

(Don’t you hate it when fathers get to be right again? It’s traumatic, no? Nope! Only irritating.)

Originally published in Links Magazine