What Is Trauma?

What is trauma? In everyday language, the word is often used to describe something out of the ordinary and emotionally painful: when a website crashes just before you can buy your ticket, when your local coffee shop stops selling your favorite coffee, or, more seriously, when friends talk behind your back, when you lose your job, or when a good friend dies. Any of these experiences could potentially be traumatizing, but this is not, in itself, what trauma is.

Trauma is not the external event that happens to us—whether war, an accident, a death, an illness, either our own or that of someone close to us. It is not simply being close to death, surviving a terrorist attack, or being kidnapped. All of these experiences can certainly be traumatic, some more than others. But what ultimately determines whether an event becomes traumatic is how the body, mind, and spirit respond to it. In other words, trauma is not external; it is internal. Trauma is in the brain, even more than it is in the mind.

What Happens When We Are Traumatized?

To understand what happens to people who are truly traumatized, let us first consider what happens to the mind when it encounters danger.

A very long time ago, in response to the dangers of the natural environment, humans and other animals developed an essential survival mechanism: the fight-or-flight response. Its evolutionary purpose is simple—to keep us safe and help us survive in the face of a real or perceived threat.

Survival requires decisions to be made in a split second. Reactions must be fast, pain may need to be reduced, and attention must be directed toward potential danger. Everything is organized around survival. There is no time to assess the situation calmly and logically; no time or energy to think about the present in any way other than asking: Do I need to run, or do I need to fight?

This response is not merely an instinctive psychological reaction. It is deeply embedded in the physiology of the brain. Among the brain’s many interconnected systems are two broad pathways through which information can be processed.

Under ordinary circumstances, information is processed more slowly and deliberately, with the amygdala—central to the processing of fear and other emotions—working together with structures involved in memory and contextualization, such as the hippocampus, and with the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision-making, planning, and complex thought. We can reflect on what we are experiencing, remember similar situations, compare alternatives, and make considered decisions. This is often referred to as the “low road.”

When the brain perceives danger, however, it can rapidly activate what is commonly called the “high road.” Information reaches the amygdala through a faster, less elaborated pathway, producing an intense stress response and mobilizing the body’s resources for survival. Other forms of mental activity—daydreaming, planning, reflection, and metacognition—are pushed into the background.

This process narrows what is known as our “window of tolerance.”

The window of tolerance describes the range of nervous-system arousal within which we can effectively regulate emotions, think clearly, and manage the ordinary stresses of daily life. When we perceive danger—whether real or imagined—we can be pushed outside this window into either hyperarousal or hypoarousal.

Hyperarousal and Hypoarousal

Hyperarousal is a heightened state of readiness characterized by anxiety, fear, nervousness, vigilance, and an exaggerated sensitivity to potential threats. Anything that reminds us, even unconsciously, of danger can reactivate this state: the sight of the sea after a tsunami; the smell or color of clothing associated with someone who harmed us; the sound of a motorcycle that resembles an approaching siren; or even the sensation of an elevated heartbeat while watching an action movie.

The body becomes jumpy and “on edge.” The heart races, the body may sweat or shake, and the mind becomes transfixed by the possibility of threat.

Hypoarousal is almost the opposite: the body and mind attempt to minimize stimulation. A person may become numb, detached, emotionally shut down, or profoundly depressed. Avoidance often accompanies this state. People may avoid places, people, thoughts, memories, or situations that remind them of the traumatic event, attempting to reduce emotional activation as much as possible.

The problem is that avoidance and forgetting do not work. In order to forget something, we must first remember it. The more we struggle not to think about something, the more powerfully it can remain present.

How Trauma Changes Memory

Another important aspect of trauma concerns the way memories are organized in the brain.

Our brains continuously catalogue our experiences, and fear becomes an important organizing principle within that catalogue. Once a memory has been marked as dangerous, it can become associated with many other memories, sensations, and situations, increasing the distress that accompanies its recall.

Fear can therefore become generalized. Situations that were previously stressful but manageable may suddenly evoke the same fight-or-flight response. The brain begins to respond not only to the original danger, but to anything that resembles it.

Trauma occurs when an event overwhelms a person’s psychological resources—the capacity to cope with life’s challenges and vicissitudes—to such an extent that the usual resources available for dealing with the situation are no longer sufficient.

Among these resources are our fundamental assumptions about reality. Trauma can shatter these assumptions. It can destroy the vital psychological illusion of predictability, justice, and personal control that allows most of us to move through life with a basic sense of safety.

Survivors may suddenly experience the world as chaotic, unfair, and dangerous, where outcomes feel random and uncontrollable. The future, which once seemed relatively secure, becomes uncertain. The result can be an overwhelming sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

These ruptures can leave a person with a broken sense of self, a shattered identity, and, more often than we recognize, a damaged relationship with the body or body image. Trauma can also produce a profound sense of dehumanization: of not being understood, of carrying an “invisible wound,” as in post-traumatic stress disorder, and of no longer feeling that one belongs in the world.

Rebuilding these fractured assumptions is therefore at the heart of psychological recovery.

Dissociation and Reintegration

Rebuilding them is particularly difficult because the emotional intensity of the traumatic event can be unbearable. The person may therefore need to dissociate from aspects of the experience—to distance themselves from memories that would otherwise make ordinary life impossible.

As a result, parts of the traumatic memory may remain unintegrated within the person’s broader understanding of themselves and the world. Yet these memories are not gone. They remain alive, returning through flashbacks, dreams, and emotional or physical reactions whenever the person comes too close to the original experience.

Psychological recovery—which should not be confused with resilience—therefore involves reintegrating these fragmented experiences into the body and mind in a way that allows the person to reorganize their life in a healthy and active manner.

The Importance of Resources and Community

Reintegration requires resources. Treatment is one source, although many people suffering from trauma never seek or receive it. Equally important are the resources available in everyday life: friends, family, communities, and the state.

Social resources are not merely supportive; they can be central to recovery. Reintegration occurs through support, understanding, empathy, and relationships that allow the body and mind to gradually re-establish a sense of safety—the healing of being.

Effective therapeutic approaches generally help people cope with negative self-images, fear, and emotional upheaval, while enabling them to understand—physically, emotionally, and cognitively—that they are no longer in the threatening situation they experienced.

Cognitive behavioral therapies, emotional-support therapies, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, somatic therapies, group work, mindfulness, and, in appropriate clinical settings, emerging psychedelic-assisted treatments such as psilocybin and MDMA, have all shown therapeutic potential. Psychiatric medication mostly do not address the deeper process of reintegration.

Alongside therapy, the importance of community cannot be overstated. My own research has shown that the way individuals respond to potentially traumatic events is significantly buffered by community. During the 2000–2002 period of terrorist attacks, Sderot had a reported PTSD prevalence of approximately 25%, compared with around 1% in the surrounding rocket exposed Gaza region—significantly lower even than in towns such as Ofakim that were not directly targeted during that period, despite roughly comparable levels of exposure.

Social bonds and support networks, both formal—health services, neighborhood watch systems, and recognition and assistance from the state—and informal—neighbors helping one another and the feeling that one is contributing to the community—are critical to recovery. They matter both for the general population living under prolonged stress and for those so profoundly affected by trauma that they can no longer function normally within society.

Community-Level Intervention

Beyond the most frequent forms of trauma, particularly those involving abuse and sexual violence, I have participated in interventions around the world following major disasters, including wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. I have learned that interventions at the community level can often be extraordinarily effective.

In Haiti, for example, we helped communities re-establish basic infrastructure, including toilets and kindergartens. In Sri Lanka, we provided schools filled with orphaned children—and their caregivers—with therapeutic tools in the form of games. In Israel, major efforts are now being made to rebuild and reorganize the many yishuvim affected by October 7 and to support these communities so that they can once again function as cohesive, loving, and supportive entities.

Trauma and Responsibility

One of the major failures during the most recent war has been the government’s inability to respond adequately at the civilian level—functionally, emotionally, and, above all, in taking responsibility. Fortunately, Israeli civil society stepped in. Civil organizations and NGOs provided much of the practical and emotional infrastructure that should have been provided by the state.

Yet recovery from collective trauma requires more than practical assistance. Victims need to feel that the danger is being addressed by the institutions responsible for protecting them. They need accountability, a coherent narrative, and confidence that those in authority recognize what went wrong and are committed to preventing it from happening again.

The absence of clear governmental responsibility for October 7, the failure to fully identify institutional and military failures, the absence of a coherent national narrative, and the continued political division led by the current government have all deepened the psychological burden of the war. So too has the unequal distribution of sacrifice and the sense that some sectors of society are carrying far more of the burden than others.

Collective trauma cannot be healed through individual treatment alone. It requires trust, responsibility, solidarity, and a shared sense of belonging. If Israel is to recover, it must restore the social bonds that hold it together—and rebuild not only its security, but its sense of itself as a united and responsible society.

Prof Marc Gelkopf

Department of Community Mental Health

University of Haifa