What is Trauma?

This section is a very basic overview of trauma.  If you are interested and want to learn more about this topic, please visit the section on Trauma Modules.

Trauma is defined as being:

  • Deeply distressing or disturbing experience. 

  • Outside the scope of “everyday human experiences.”

  • A real or perceived threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity.

  • Overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope.

Trauma is deeply distressing, involves a real or perceived threat, overwhelms a person’s ability to cope, and is outside of the everyday experience. This is the definition for a single episode trauma – a car accident, an assault, or even a military deployment overseas.  All of these examples have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is why “PTSD” has a “P” for “post” - after the trauma is over a person is still having symptoms. 

What does trauma look like in human trafficking victims? For many victims, trauma becomes an everyday experience. When this happens, we are really talking about something else… We are talking about Complex Trauma.

Complex trauma is described as simultaneous and/or sequential forms of trauma. Complex trauma can be a result of:

  • Emotional abuse & neglect

  • Sexual abuse, physical abuse

  • Witnessing domestic violence, community violence

  • Traumatic loss

It can happen at an early age, at the hands of a close family member or caregiver; and can also happen later in life. Complex trauma is an important term because most people who have experienced trauma have experienced multiple traumas. It’s also important because complex trauma impacts the brain and body in a qualitatively different way than a single episode of trauma. 

Traumas can also be fostered through contextual features. Systemic Traumas are environmental or institutional traumas. Examples of systemic traumas are: living in a hostile cultural environment due to racism, systemic violence, sexism, extreme poverty, intergenerational traumas, immigration traumas, living in fear of you or your family being deported, etc. These systemic traumas combine with the interpersonal traumas to impact a person in a qualitatively different way than a single episode of trauma.   

Case Example: Here is a constructed profile for a sexual exploited youth. A child is born into a home without enough resources to meet basic needs, a parent who struggles with substance issues, and because of this stress and strain, domestic violence. In this home, the child experiences physical or sexual abuse at the age of four at the hands of an uncle or parent. As a result of this abuse and neglect, the child is eventually removed around the age of five and put into a kinship placement. However, in this home, the child is hard to manage and has tantrums, maybe wets the bed, has trouble sleeping, and may fight or engage in “sexually reactive behavior”. For these reasons the youth enters the foster care system and ends up bouncing through placement after placement due to these same behaviors. 

Then let’s say around nine or ten, the youth experiences another physical abuse in a foster home. By eleven, the youth may think they can do a better job of caring for themselves and leaves placement. Then out on the street, maybe at a bus stop, a person pulls up and engages the youth. They complement the youth, offer housing, attention, and then the youth becomes exploited. This is a very common profile although details vary case to case. Sadly, for this child’s brain and body, there has rarely been a time when there wasn’t traumatic stress.    

Trauma Bonding

For victims of human trafficking, bonding with their traffickers increases the chance of SURVIVAL. For these individuals, despite the harmful nature of their situations, this experience of bonding may fulfill: safety, love, care. This is a common experience that victims have, both as a survival mechanism and as a strategy to access emotional resources. 

 
 

Trauma bonding can be hard to overcome – it is a real connection and relationship. The victim may truly believe their trafficker is their best hope for survival. Sometimes referred to as “Stockholm Syndrome,” trauma bonding increases victims’ chances for survival because of its contribution to coping and resilience capacities. 

When hearing of experiences of bonding, it is important to note that this sentiment  is real and to honor its existence when you are supporting and engaging victims in support.