How do you know if you are suffering from grief and loss vs. trauma vs. traumatic stress?

• Grief can exist without trauma
• Trauma will also involve grief reactions from the loss suffered in the traumatic event
• You can work through grief –symptoms are not linear
• You process trauma—to do so the narrative must be linear.

Sadness vs. Terror

• “Sadness” is the word best used to define the experience of grief.
• “Sheer terror” is the best phrase to define the experience of trauma.
• Grief can stand by itself---one can feel sad without feeling unsafe or terrorized.
• When a person is traumatized the terror overpowers any grief reactions.
• The victim needs to become a survivor first by processing the trauma then grief can emerge.
• Sadness usually turns inward and weakens the person; therefore grief is not energizing or motivating.
• The terror of trauma usually renders a person powerless.
• Powerlessness turns into anger
• Anger is motivating- either in a positive way or a negative way.
• Trauma victims need to regain the sense of power taken from them by their trauma experience in order to become survivors themselves.
• Victim→ Survivor→ Thriver

Nightmares

• In grief the dreamer is usually dreaming about the deceased.
• In trauma nightmares, the dreamer, or someone else, is in harm’s way (being shot at, chased etc.)

Guilt

• Grief is usually associated with “I wish I…”
• The core of guilt in grief is sadness
• Trauma guilt is often survivor guilt.
• Survivors may feel powerless “I could have prevented it if …”
• It is easier for people to feel guilty (feeling that you have done something wrong) than to feel powerless

With thanks to Sheli Bernstein-Goff , Certified Traumatolgist