19 Types of Trauma

Shock – Car accidents, head injuries, falls, physical abuse, etc.

Developmental – In the first years of life, infants and toddlers need safe, predictable,
accessible, loving, and attuned caregivers. In this environment the brain is able to develop in a
healthy, normal sequence of growth.

The brain develops from the bottom upwards. Lower parts of the brain are responsible for
functions dedicated to ensuring survival and responding to stress. Upper parts of the brain are
responsible for executive functions, like making sense of what you are experiencing or
exercising moral judgement.

Development of the upper parts depends upon prior development of lower parts. In other
words, the brain is meant to develop like a ladder, from the bottom-up. When stress responses
(typically due to consistent neglect or abuse) are repeatedly activated over an extended period
in an infant or toddler, sequential development of the brain is disturbed. The ladder develops,
but foundational steps are missing and many things that follow are out of kilter.

Children exposed to alcoholic parents or domestic violence rarely have secure childhoods; their
symptomatology tends to be pervasive and multifaceted, and is likely to include depression,
various medical illnesses, as well as a variety of impulsive and self- destructive behaviours.
Approaching each of these problems piecemeal, rather than as expressions of a vast system of
internal disorganization runs the risk of loosing sight of the forest in favour of one tree.

4 main types of developmental trauma

Lack of holding - The primary source of developmental trauma. The “cry it out method”
proposed by Dr. Spock and Dr. Ferber have had devastating consequences on people’s ability to
self-regulate their nervous systems. Rather than make a person less dependant it has had the
opposite effect. Being born with an underdeveloped nervous system, the child relies on the
attunement and co-regulation with the caregiver to build and develop a resilient nervous
system. If the caregiver’s nervous system is dis-regulated the child will not learn to self regulate
even when held.

Unrealistic developmental expectations - Pushing kids to walk before their bodies do it

naturally, expecting them to learn to read before they are ready, expecting them to emotionally
regulate without help, expecting them to now how to behave without teaching them, punishing
kids for normal age-appropriate behaviours are all examples of unrealistic developmental
expectation developmental trauma.

Lack of emotional intelligence – Due to a school system and a society that has become severely
emotionally retarded, most parents are shutdown and lack emotional intelligence. They will
often punish children for having emotions. This causes children to shut down their emotional
bodies and is a major source of depression.

Blaming – Some caregiver’s defense pattern to blame other’s instead of taking responsibility for
their own dysregulation. Children who have been blamed for their caregivers’ emotional states
and for things that go wrong that were not even their fault will carry this type of developmental
trauma. It is characterized by feeling of shame, a lack of self worth, and feeling like a burden.

Attachment - Attachment trauma, an early form of relational trauma, occurs when there is
some disruption in the healthy bond formation between a baby or child and his or her primary
caregiver. Healthy attachment occurs when the caregiver provides comfort, affection, and basic
needs on a regular basis and with consistency.

Poor attachment, inappropriate responses to a baby’s distress, lack of affection, abusive

behaviors, and the absence of the caregiver can all cause a traumatic experience for the child.
The consequences of attachment trauma can be far-reaching, because a positive caregiver-child
bond helps to establish healthy development, self-confidence, self-regulation, and a pattern for
developing other relationships. Trauma associated with this important bond can lead to a wide
range of issues from poor social development to serious mental illness.

Most often attachment traumas relate to one’s attachment to other humans but there are a
few that relate to our attachment to place and to Mother Earth, they are:

Solastalgia and Displacement- Solastalgia is the pain experienced when there is recognition
that the place where one resides and that one loves is under assault. It is manifest in an attack
on one’s sense of place, in the erosion of the sense of belonging to a particular place and a
feeling of distress about its transformation. Refugees often experience this type of trauma.

Environmental - Environmental devastation is form of attachment and vicarious trauma where

one is witnessing the violation of their mother. Every cell in our bodies is made of Mother
Earth, we are the walking earth.

Discrimination – Around age 6 there is an attachment wiring that wires to tribe or community.
Most people who grew up in nuclear families still have this part of their attachment system
incomplete. If this important attachment wiring is incomplete people will register
discrimination as a type of attachment trauma that is characterized by feelings of loss and
separateness.

Ancestral – Your ancestors and you have an energetic web that connect you together.
Traumatic events, especially of a family nature, such as incestuous sexual abuse, suicides in
which family or family members are blamed, tragic deaths in the family, kids being taken from
their parents such as residential schools. These traumatic imprints may have occurred many
years prior to the current generation and the affect one’s ability to cope with, and heal from,
trauma; unhealed issues of prior generations being expressed in current generations.
Ancestral trauma often shows itself in repeated patterns of personal healing issues from one
generation to the next. Understanding the patterns can give us a doorway to enter into the felt
sense of those patterns and to process what was previously stuck in the family system. This
process can have a positive affect on relatives and on future generations.

In the larger scheme of things, this process helps bring peace to regions of the world where
cultural stories of communal trauma and victim identities inhibit the peace-making process.
The affects of ancestral trauma also include epigenetic imprints; they are survival adaptations,
which may have been helpful for your ancestors, and have been epigenetically imprinted into
your DNA sequence.

Unconscious voluntary physical processing of soul group trauma and suffering

 Always has physical symptoms

 Physical symptoms will mystify medical analysis
 Some trauma presentation will always be present
 Esophagus and lungs or kidney and bladder will manifest symptoms

This type of trauma manifestation is rare. There is nothing you can do on a physical level that
will help. This type of trauma energy manifests asymptomatic transient symptoms and the
arising and passing of energy contractions. These contractions may be experienced as tight
muscles alternating with week ones, pain that tends to move around, irregular heartbeat and
breathing patterns, etc.

Depending on where in the physiology the energy contraction arises, symptoms relevant to that
part of the body will arise and pass. For example, if the energy contraction manifests in the
pancreas, temporary diabetic symptoms may arise. If the contraction arises in the heart,
random irregular heartbeats will occur.

Treatment steps-

1) Bring as much focus and awareness into the symptoms as they arise and allow the energy to
discharge through the rest of the body.

2) Then expand awareness to feel the whole body at once and let energy discharge through the
body.

3) Then hold the awareness at the base of the skull and allow energy to discharge through the
body until there is no more discharge happening in the body.

Continue following the above guidelines throughout the day as you notice the appearance of
symptoms. You may need to lie down for 5-10 minutes to complete the 3 steps. Then you may
need to do it an hour or 2 later. Continue to practice the above guidelines until all of the
symptoms have dissipated.

Medical – Circumcision, emergency medical procedures, operations, etc. Often accompanied

with sedation, this type of trauma can be quite dissociative. In treatment it is helpful to speak
loudly and continually remind people to stay in and feel their body experience.

Vicarious – witnessing or being present during a traumatic event.

Instinctual – Animal body instincts which failed or have had to be suppressed. The most
common is the “pre-fight” warning instinct which has had to be suppressed due to living with a
perpetrator.

Existential Incarnational – often arises in “unwanted” children. If the gestational imprint is one
of rejection and the relational holding environment is lacking during and after the birth process,
a portion of the soul with hold back and wait in the astral realm until a strong sense of “being
wanted” is made available. Usually between 5 and 15 percent of the soul will not fully seat into
the body. Also arises from not being held after birth or being stuck in an incubator for more
than a few hours. Will often manifest as suicidal ideation in later life, particularly in
adolescence. During treatment, a bright white light know as Luciferic light will appear.
Important to hold a presence of non-duality and unity until the Luciferic light resolves. Soul
retrieval and having a welcoming committee can be extremely healing for this type of trauma.

Existential Rejection – If a person experiences immense cruelty such as torture, execution, long
term abuse, ritual abuse, intense betrayal, or slavery there can, from that time onward and in
subsequent incarnations, be a deep rejection of life itself. It can manifest as environmental
sensitivities, relational and spiritual mistrust, and an unwillingness to participate in life.

Psychic – A person who has been severely abused from a young age will usually have a
damaged and permeable etheric field. These openings allow astral demons to bully and
psychically attack the psychically defenseless being. Can manifest as schizophrenia and
paranoid delusions.

Past Life – Most commonly this type of trauma stems from the energy of a traumatic/tragic
death that follows a person from one lifetime to another. Many people will label early
childhood trauma as “past life” because they do not have any explicit memory of it and yet
there are implicit memories and symptoms that keep expressing themselves.

Birth – A type of shock trauma that can greatly affect a person’s whole life. Usually untreated
due to lack of memory. Forceps delivery, being stuck during birth, nuchal cords, emergency
medical interventions, etc. Can be mitigated with a good holding environment after the birth.
Or somatic therapy that processes it through the implicit body memory.
Inter-generational – It is exceedingly difficult as a parent to transmit what you did not get.
Humans are born with an underdeveloped nervous system and rely on their caregiver’s nervous
system to teach their system how to regulate. If the caregiver’s system is traumatized and
dysregulated the infant will never get the biological experience of co-regulation needed to learn
self-regulation. If you yourself have not received adequate parenting you will have to work to
learn how to parent your children. If you were never held as a baby, and then you have one,
unless you have processed and resolved your developmental trauma, it will be difficult for you
to hold your screaming child because their screams will trigger the child in you who still needs
to be held. We call this intergenerational trauma because it is transmitted, due to a lack of
biological capacity, from one generation to another.

Complex Trauma – If a person has 3 or more of the above types of trauma, we refer to it as
complex trauma because it is difficult to treat. Complex does not refer to the intensity of the
traumas but rather the complexity that arises when the different types of trauma interweave.
A common experience, that often tends to mystify people, is when a small trauma like, for
example, a minor car accident occurs and suddenly they start to experience complex trauma
symptoms.

Common symptoms of complex trauma:

 Trouble sleeping
 Digestive issues
 Constant mental agitation
 System and therapy “let down”
 Relational issues
 Chronic fear or anxiety
 Depression

Must be treated using a “layer by layer” approach. If you have five pieces of yarn tangled up,
pulling on one piece for too long will cause a tightening of the system.

PTSD – mostly refers to the quantity and intensity of the trauma energy trapped in a person’s
nervous system and the relentlessness of the subsequent symptoms. (see criteria for PTSD)

Complex PTSD - When there are 3 or more types of trauma present and the total combined
trauma imprints trapped in a person’s system is high enough to be classified as PTSD.