Traumatic Events

What are Traumatic Events

Every person’s life is filled with events; sometimes these are happy events like marriage, the birth of the child, a significant professional achievement or moving to a new house. Other times these are difficult experiences such as the death or illness of someone close to us, divorce, a significant decline in our economic situation or severe difficulties at work. Every significant event includes two types of stimuli:

(a) external stimuli, the components of the event itself and (b) internal stimuli, the way that we respond to the event. These stimuli knock on the doors of our mental system and demand that we deal with them. In the vast majority of cases, our emotional system is able to successfully deal with meaningful events, both happy and sad, without a major change in our daily functioning.

However, it can happen that people who encounter events in which they face immediate, serious danger to themselves or others are later overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness and fear. These events are called traumatic events. Typical traumatic events include severe physical assaults, automobile accidents, rape, war-related situations such as battle and captivity, terrorist attacks, fire or natural disaster. After a traumatic event, people are likely to experience difficulties that they did not suffer previously. If these difficulties are sufficiently severe and the person does not seek assistance, they can lead to a variety of problems in his professional, social and/or family life.

How do traumatic events affect people

People who have been exposed to traumatic events frequently suffer from symptoms and auxiliary difficulties. In Israel, approximately 9% of the population will develop post-traumatic symptoms during their life.

The intensity of these symptoms is dependent on many factors including the individual’s history, his natural ability to cope, the nature of the traumatic event and its intensity.

The intensity of the symptoms is also dependent on the degree of social and familial support that the person receives before and after the event and the amount of professional assistance he receives immediately thereafter.

Since people generally do not prepare for traumatic events, they are usually unfamiliar with and do not understand the phenomena that they can cause. Therefore, they are likely to feel guilty about their emotions, that they are going crazy or that they are unable to understand what is happening to them. As a result, they are likely to withdraw and distance themselves from families and friends at exactly those moments when they need them most.