Does EVERYONE have childhood trauma?

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As far as I know, most people can reflect on their childhood and pull out unpleasant memories that still have the power to alter our mood even decades after they occurred. And from a distance we might be able to put the events in that memory in a more accurate context, to the point that we can see they were utterly inconsequential, and that others involved (maybe an angry parent or whatever) would have discarded this memory almost immediately because it meant so little to them. But we can't escape the emotional impact that event had on us and if we dwell in that memory a little while, the emotions of it come back to us too.

Is that trauma?

My understanding is that it's more complex than that. Those memories are indeed formative but it's when our behaviour, or our ability to function, in the present is negatively impacted by the things we've felt in the past that we can really speak of trauma.



Psychological trauma is not that different from physical trauma. When you break a leg you spend that time while you're healing developing new movement patterns to compensate so you can continue to function. You will experience subtle bio-mechanical changes (increased muscle mass as the muscles around the wound have to work harder to keep you moving for example). When healing takes a long time, those newly learned movement patterns can become simply how your body works and you'll continue to move that way even after the broken leg has healed. The same is true psychologically. If something breaks, you try to find ways around it, self-protective coping strategies, and they can become your standard operating procedure. I don't know that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can be.

That's how I understand trauma anyway.