Dr. Don Wood explains trauma as the mind "looking at old data in real time," illustrated by a childhood anecdote where a grandmother struck a six-year-old in church. He argues many live with unaddressed trauma but contends trauma responses stem from how memories are viewed and "resetting" those memories can alleviate symptoms more quickly than years of therapy.
Chapters
The best way to explain what trauma is your mind looking at old data in real time. I had a lady who said she really didn't have any trauma when she was a child. However, when I asked her, I says, can you think about an event in your lifetime that you feel emotional when you think about it? Well, she goes, oh, yeah. I remember one when I was six years old, I was in church with my family and I was talking, and my grandmother took out her hairbrush and hit me on the head and said, stop talking, you're in church. And then the waterworks started. Started. She said to me, I just lost my voice that day. I never realized that. I never stick up for myself. I never fight back. There's something that's happening when she was 6 years old that has affected her throughout her entire life, and that's what trauma is. A lot of people who have trauma, they'll sort of say, I just live with this. You know, it happened to me. Nothing I can do about it. They don't seek any help. I had one person tell me my father used to beat me up a lot when I was a child, and that made me tougher. That's not true. Your father is supposed to be a support system and be protecting you. He's not supposed to be the attacker. A lot of people think, oh, that's going to take years of therapy to go through. However, there's a faster way. You just need to reset that memory. The emotions and the feelings that you are experiencing are coming from the way your mind is viewing memory. That can actually be addressed much quicker than you would think and doesn't take years.