What is Trauma? Understanding Big T and Little T Trauma (Complete Guide)

“Trauma is not the event itself, but the psychological wound it creates.”

– Dr. Gabor Maté

Most people think they don’t have trauma. Many presume that trauma only applies to those who’ve experienced horrific one-time events – a car accident, assault, or natural disaster. But this understanding represents only part of the picture. The fact is, emotional trauma is far more prevalent – and subtle – than most of us realise.

Redefining Trauma: It’s What Happens Inside You

Dr. Gabor Maté, physician and trauma expert, provides a precise definition: trauma is not the event itself, but the psychological wound it creates. As he explains, trauma is an experience of being emotionally wounded rather than simply an extreme external event. Drawing on the literal meaning of the word – ‘wound’ – Maté emphasises that touching this raw emotional wound can evoke intense pain, much like a physical injury.

Tim Fletcher, a pioneer in the field of trauma notes that traumatic events don’t automatically cause trauma. It’s when a person is affected because the experience is too overwhelming – too much, too soon – that their nervous system can’t handle it. The person then enters survival mode through the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.

The Mind-Body Connection: More Than Just Your Brain

When we think of trauma affecting the mind, we often think only of the intellect – our thinking brain. But the mind encompasses far more than logical thinking; it includes consciousness, discernment, memory and a deep sense of identification.

The heart itself has a nervous system with a knowing capacity. If you’ve ever said ‘I knew it in my heart’, you actually did. This nervous system in the heart connects to the brain and forms an essential component of the mind. The heart connects you to the external world in an open way.

Then there are gut feelings – another essential modality of knowing. The more disconnected you are from your gut feelings, the less you actually know. If your intellect conflicts with your gut feelings, your intellect will be wrong every time. The gut connects you to yourself in a fundamental way.

One of the impacts of trauma is that we close our hearts to protect ourselves because it hurts so much. We disconnect from our gut feelings. These closures and disconnections then have profound negative impacts on our lives. Understanding trauma requires looking at the mind in this broad sense – the intellect, the knowledge of the heart, and the knowledge of the gut.

“The more disconnected you are from your gut feelings, the less you actually know… the gut connects you to yourself in a fundamental way.”

Big T Trauma: Overwhelming Life-Threatening Events

Big T trauma refers to overwhelming, life-threatening events. These include physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, natural disasters, serious accidents, violent assaults, parental violence, or the death of a parent. These experiences can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and significant nervous system dysregulation. The symptoms are often recognised and validated by society.

Little T Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic of Childhood Trauma

This is where my understanding of trauma shifted. Little T trauma occurs when something good should have happened but didn’t. Rather than something bad happening to you, it’s the absence of something essential.

A child should be loved unconditionally, accepted for who they are, able to connect authentically. When these emotional needs aren’t met, that’s childhood trauma – the result of neglect. It seems invisible because ‘nothing bad happened’, but to the nervous system and brain, something terrible is occurring. This form of developmental trauma often goes unrecognised.

A child experiencing little T trauma internalises devastating beliefs: my needs don’t matter, expressing strong emotion is not acceptable here, I must be terrible, anyone who knows me will reject me, I’m alone against the world. This type of emotional trauma includes mundane experiences of stress and adversity or even ‘good things not happening’. Good parenting can still be affected by stress, emotional dismissiveness or a struggle to display unconditional acceptance. This is rarely, if ever, intended and could be a continuation of their experience.

Some studies show a huge 80% of people experience this type of trauma. In fact, someone without the marks of trauma would be an outlier in our society.

You’re not alone – between ‘Big T’ and ‘Little T’ trauma, around 80% of us are affected

How Childhood Trauma Affects the Nervous System

Tim Fletcher explains how chronic stress physically damages the brain. When a child never gets to safety and cortisol is constantly pumping, it erodes the corpus callosum – the bridge between the brain’s hemispheres. This creates memory gaps, emotional flashbacks with no context, or the ability to recite traumatic details with zero emotion. Most people with complex trauma struggle with these disconnections until they reach safety and nervous system regulation begins, allowing the bridge to heal.

The Long-Term Impact: When Childhood Adaptations Become Adult Prisons

What was surprising to me is that little T trauma affects the nervous system just as profoundly as Big T trauma, particularly because it’s often ongoing through childhood. Children adapt through people-pleasing, wearing masks, learning to manipulate to get their needs met, and never saying no. These adaptations enable survival in childhood but become maladaptations in adult relationships.

Fast-forward 20 or 30 years. You’re now in a committed relationship with children. If you live off those same childhood adaptations, you destroy your relationships and hurt the people you love. You don’t trust anybody. You manipulate to get your needs met. You wear masks all the time. You never say no. You people-please constantly. Those adaptations now become evident as maladaptations, destroying connections and creating the very abandonment and rejection you feared.

The problem with complex trauma in a child is that you don’t see the results until 20 or 30 years later when you realise this isn’t working, this is causing serious problems. Chronic stress keeps the brain’s limbic system – the emotion and survival centre – perpetually activated, preventing healthy development of the prefrontal cortex. Adults remain controlled by instant gratification and impulsive thinking, guided by feelings rather than long-term reasoning.

Trauma Therapy and Recovery: How Mind-Body Approaches Can Help

The most hopeful thing I’ve discovered is that it’s not the trauma itself, but the wound it leaves – and wounds can heal. Since trauma is stored in the body, trauma recovery requires more than talking. Many trauma-informed therapy approaches harness the power of ‘top-down’ (cognitive therapy, ‘thinking brain’ understanding) with ‘bottom-up’ approaches that calm the nervous system through breathing, somatic therapy exercises, mindfulness, exercise and visualisation.

Bottom-up somatic therapy works by calming the brainstem and limbic brain when they’re activated in survival mode. Through somatic exercises, you learn to regulate the limbic brain and achieve nervous system regulation, getting yourself to a grounded place so your thinking brain and emotional brain can work together harmoniously.

Most importantly, healing happens through connection with safe people. Mind-body therapies create the conditions for the nervous system to regulate itself, helping individuals reconnect with themselves in the present – with their heart’s wisdom, their gut feelings, and their authentic self. Trauma may have created disconnection from self, but therapeutic reconnection – whilst challenging – offers genuine hope for trauma recovery and wholeness.