Trauma and How We Cope

 

Trauma is something that is inevitable to humans, something everyone has to go through in their lifetimes. Big or small, trauma has an impact on everyone’s life. After reading about the horrific PTSD that affects war veterans, I started wondering what other kinds of trauma men and women have to go through daily and how they cope with it.

Women are actually more likely to develop PTSD during their lifetime (although it is not a competition and we should never try to diminish someone’s trauma). Unfortunately, as we probably all know, women are most likely to develop trauma from rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse as a child. Something that plays a large role in this devastating fact is actually gender and culture roles. Women in this type of culture feel more emotionally vulnerable, which could be the reason why for the high prevalence of PTSD. Women, interestingly enough, use the “tend and befriend” coping strategy with trauma. This means reaching out to others and tending those around them to feel less abandoned when recovering from trauma. 

Men, on the other hand,  are more likely to experience a large traumatic event than women. Men are more likely to encounter trauma such as physical assault, accidents, disaster, combat (as we read in class), or to see death and injury. Of course, there are sadly still cases of sexual assault pertaining to men. Men are also more likely to cope with the usual “fight or flight” survival mechanism in response to trauma. This means they either decide to stay and fight or run and take flight in dangerous situations. 

After reading a little bit about the different kinds of trauma men and women go through and how they cope with it, I have learned one common theme. Women are not more weak than men because they are more likely to develop PTSD and traumatic events that happen to men are not less traumatic because they have not developed PTSD from them. Everyone’s trauma is valid and we should ALWAYS believe what people have to say about the trauma they have experienced. Having someone to confide in is an extremely important part of recovering from any type of trauma, which is why we should always listen.