My unpopular opinion: I think we need to use the term ‘trauma’ more, not less

In the last decade, the use of the word trauma has proliferated on social media. It is used by influencers, appears in everyday conversations, and is increasingly used by people to make sense of their own experiences: childhood trauma, relationship trauma, attachment trauma, betrayal trauma, religious trauma.

This has led many health practitioners to question whether the term is being overused — and whether its popularisation risks diluting the meaning of trauma or delegitimising the experiences of people who have been profoundly affected by it.

I understand this concern. But I have a somewhat unpopular opinion: I think we need to use the term trauma more, not less.

One word is doing a lot of work

Part of the difficulty is that we are using one word to describe an enormous spectrum of human experience. There is a difference between experiencing a distressing event, developing trauma-related symptoms, meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and living with complex PTSD and absolutely debilitating symptoms. Those distinctions matter.

Of course, people can also misuse the term. Someone describing an experience as traumatic on TikTok is not the same as a clinician conducting a comprehensive assessment and formulation. Social media self-diagnosis does not replace clinical assessment, and sometimes another word may more accurately describe what someone has experienced.

But I don't think the solution is to become so cautious about the word trauma that we stop recognising it where it exists. The fact that we are using one word to describe a broad spectrum of experiences is, in part, a limitation of the word itself — not an indication that we should stop naming experiences that are causing people significant distress.

Trauma isn't only about what happened

Here is the hill I will die on: we cannot understand trauma simply by looking at the event itself.

Some experiences are clearly recognised as potentially traumatic, but two people can experience the same event and have very different psychological responses. Trauma is not simply a property of an event. It is also about what happens within the person — how an experience is processed and stored, how the nervous system responds, what meaning is made of it, what resources were available at the time, and whether the person was able to integrate what happened.

An experience that one person can process and recover from may profoundly disrupt another person's sense of safety, trust, autonomy, connection or control. This is why asking only “Was the event bad enough to count as trauma?” can sometimes be the wrong question. We also need to ask: “What happened to this person as a result?”

Naming trauma can change treatment - and the outcome

Identifying that someone's symptoms are connected to trauma can be life-changing. Not because giving something a label magically fixes it, but because recognising the origins and function of symptoms changes how we understand and treat them.

A person may have spent years wondering why they react the way they do, why they can't “just get over it”, why their body responds when they know they are safe, why they shut down during sex, or why they become overwhelmed by something that seems so small. When we understand these responses in the context of trauma, they can begin to make sense.

Hypervigilance may have developed to detect danger. Avoidance may have helped someone reduce overwhelming activation. Dissociation may have helped them survive experiences they could not escape. Sexual difficulties may reflect the nervous system attempting to protect the person from vulnerability, threat or loss of control.

These symptoms are not occurring in isolation. They exist within the context of a person's experiences. When we recognise that context, we can provide treatment that addresses the underlying processes rather than only trying to eliminate the symptom. This doesn't just change how someone understands themselves; it can fundamentally change the treatment they receive and, ultimately, their outcomes.

I think we still under-recognise trauma

This is the part that can get lost in conversations about the “overuse” of trauma language. Yes, the term is sometimes used imprecisely. But trauma is also still missed.

People can spend years receiving treatment for anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, sexual dysfunction, emotional dysregulation or other symptoms without anyone meaningfully exploring how those difficulties developed. In fact, I don't think we have gone far enough as a profession in recognising some symptoms as potential trauma adaptations, or in understanding them within the context of the broader person.

This is particularly important in sexual health. Sexual symptoms are often treated as isolated problems: low desire, pain, difficulty with arousal, avoidance of sex, difficulty experiencing pleasure or feeling disconnected from the body. Sometimes those symptoms have physiological causes. Sometimes they are relational. Sometimes they reflect broader psychological processes. And sometimes they are trauma adaptations.

If we never ask about trauma, we may never understand the function of the symptom. And if we don't understand the function of the symptom, we may be trying to treat it without addressing what is maintaining it.

So yes, let's be precise. But let's not become afraid of the word.

We should absolutely distinguish between distress, adversity, trauma responses and diagnosable trauma-related disorders. We should challenge misinformation. We should be cautious about diagnosing ourselves or others based on a 60-second video. And clinicians should use trauma terminology thoughtfully, based on assessment, formulation and evidence.

But I don't want the backlash against the popularisation of trauma to take us backwards. Because historically, our problem has not only been that we sometimes call things trauma that may be better understood another way. Our problem has also been that we have failed to recognise trauma at all.

We have treated symptoms without understanding their origins. We have pathologised adaptations without asking what they were adapting to. And we have sometimes asked whether someone's experience was “bad enough” instead of asking what impact it had on them.

So my unpopular opinion remains: I think we need to use the word trauma more - when using it helps us accurately name the roots of someone's suffering, understand their symptoms in context, and provide treatment that actually addresses what happened to them and supports the resolution of their symptoms.