¶ … trauma? How is trauma acquired?
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), trauma denotes an individual's emotional response to a tremendously negative event. Trauma may be considered a very natural reaction to any awful occurrence, but its impacts may be so serious that the person's ability of leading a normal, happy life is hampered. Trauma may be brought about by a devastatingly negative experience, which leaves a long-term or lifelong impact on a person's emotional and mental stability. Although a large number of causes for trauma involve physical violence, others may have psychological elements involved. Trauma is most commonly caused by:
• Domestic violence
• Rape
• Acute injury or sickness
• Natural disasters
• Witnessing violence
• A family member's or close friend's demise
Usually, trauma is linked to a victim's presence at the place where the traumatic incident occurred. This, however, is not always the case. A victim can also suffer trauma after observing a shocking event unfolding from afar (Psychguides, n.d).
2. Taking your family as a case study, what are the individual family members' experiences of trauma?
Normally, grief and sorrow represents a household affair. Our whole family was deeply affected by the death of my grandfather. We felt as though a key familial link, the root of our family tree, was, all of a sudden,...
Everybody appeared to be struggling to regain this lost link, fix the family back together. All members mourned their personal loss differently.
Father
Following his father's demise, my father seemed to be channeling his hurt feelings into physical action. His grief was expressed via goal-oriented tasks, and not emotionally. Instead of constantly crying over or talking about his father's death, my dad devoted his time to time-limited activities like writing eulogy and planting a garden in memory of my grandfather. He expressed his grief in words only to his nearest pals. While he did cry occasionally, this was normally done in solitude (Tousley, n.d).
Mother
Meanwhile, my mother, as is typical of females, was a more spontaneous mourner. Women are characteristically more open when it comes to expressing how they feel. She didn't find it discomfiting to display strong emotions and felt better by talking about her father-in-law's demise with others. She was also more amenable to listening without judgment. While she wasn't very capable of intellectualizing and rationalizing her grief, and was more prone to appearing crushed and overwhelmed by it, she was sensitive enough to her feelings as well as to my own (Tousley, n.d).
Myself
Following my grandfather's demise, I faced a struggle with how I internally experienced grief and how I expressed it to the world. This gave rise to constant disharmony and discomfort within me. Conflict or "dissonance" can stem from familial, social or cultural traditions. While my sorrow was strong and deep, I struggled with concealing how I truly felt, to maintain my public image (Tousley, n.d).
3. Analyze the effects of trauma in your family using the Bio-ecological System Theory.
The theory propounded by Bronfenbrenner outlines complex environmental "layers," each of which impacts the development of a…
