Understanding Types of Trauma

Addiction is almost always tied to unresolved emotional trauma. Sex addiction and other intimacy disorders are no exception.

Understanding the different types of trauma that people may experience is knowledge that's integral for healing.

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Understanding Emotional Trauma

Emotional trauma is the lasting emotional response to experiencing a large-scale traumatic event or a series of smaller traumatic events. These are known as Big T or Little T traumas. 

A traumatic event is a death or near-death experience or a happening that makes you feel emotionally or physically under attack or unsafe.

These events can occur as a child or an adult, but they leave you feeling unsafe and ready to defend yourself. 

Traumatic experiences may include:

• Physical or verbal abuse
• Sexual assault or rape
• Neglect
• Loss of a loved one and grief
• Car wrecks or other accidents
• Serious or chronic illness
• Racism or other discrimination
• Bullying
• Natural disasters
• Witnessing a crime or death
• Military and combat experiences

Trauma that occurs to children is known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). It can profoundly impact their development and carry into adulthood.

Regardless of when it happens, these experiences can bring on various emotional trauma symptoms that affect your emotional, mental, and physical well-being. It can impact every part of your life, including your feelings and behaviors.

Everyone is exposed to various traumas in their lives, but their responses aren’t uniform, even when they experience the same traumatic event. That’s because people process trauma differently. 

Understanding emotional trauma can help you better identify your feelings, automatic responses to those feelings, and how to cope with the trauma you’ve experienced.

What Are the Different Types of Trauma? 

In addition to being either Big T or Little T trauma and happening in childhood (ACEs) or as an adult, trauma can be labeled in other ways, depending on the person’s experience and response. 

Acute Trauma

Acute trauma is just as it sounds — a single traumatic event or occurrence. While almost every person has suffered some form of acute trauma, those who survived ACEs may experience emotional dysregulation afterward.

Common types of acute trauma include:

• Natural disasters
• Car wrecks
• Sudden or expected loss of a loved one or pet

When you experience acute trauma, your brain goes into self-preservation mode. This mode can cause nonsurvival systems to “go offline” until the event ends, leaving you to process it afterward. That process is driven by endorphins, which activate to allow you to escape or survive a dangerous situation. 

Symptoms of acute trauma reactions may include:

• An unreasonable lack of trust in others
• Difficulty having restful sleep or difficulty sleeping at all
• Irritability, rage, or anger
• Excessive anxiety and panic
• Feeling disassociated or disconnected from others or your surroundings

Chronic Trauma

Chronic trauma is the result of ongoing trauma in your environment. 

Examples of chronic trauma include:

• Ongoing sexual abuse
• Racism
• Bullying or harassment
• Chronic illness
• Domestic violence

Those who experience chronic trauma may show similar symptoms as acute trauma. Some chronic trauma manifestations include flashbacks, unpredictable emotional outbursts, fatigue, nausea, and several other somatic symptoms.

Complex Trauma

Complex trauma is an accumulation of trauma or various traumatic happenings over time that can cause severe psychological and emotional distress. Complex trauma is often interpersonal, meaning it usually involves complex interactions with other people.

People who experience complex traumas such as domestic violence, childhood neglect, war, poverty, neglect, bullying, or other similar events may experience lifelong and debilitating symptoms. While chronic and complex trauma may result from the same types of traumatic happenings, the difference is that complex trauma is often interpersonal and is the result of multiple types of traumatic experiences.

How Trauma Can Lead to Sex Addiction 

When you experience trauma, the only way to get out of fight-or-flight mode — to regulate your emotions — is to find a source of dopamine, the natural pleasure chemical in your brain. Sex, masturbation, and pornography all release dopamine.

When you release dopamine too frequently, like during attempts at maladaptive coping, you can experience dysregulation. Dopamine dysregulation is when the brain floods with dopamine and cannot process it. This flood of dopamine causes receptors to shut down, meaning you need more of the pleasurable behavior or increasingly intense versions of it to get the same positive feelings.

This need results in seeking out higher-risk or higher-dopamine-producing behaviors. You’ll become dependent on those behaviors to feel normal, needing dopamine to self-regulate. In other words, an addiction develops. 

Using dopamine release to cope with negative emotions is the link between trauma and sex addiction.

Getting Help for the Types of Trauma at BAI

At Begin Again Institute, we understand that trauma is often the basis of sex addiction. During sex addiction treatment, we seek to uncover what events lead to your addiction. Doing this means that your recovery starts at the cause rather than the symptoms. 

To heal from trauma and sex addiction, we offer a 14-Day Men’s Intensive and a 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive for those seeking a more faith-based environment.

If you or a loved one may have a sex addiction, contact Begin Again Institute to start your healing process.