One’s person trauma can be shrugged off, perhaps with some effort, but shrugged off nevertheless. Why is that? Robert Stolorow, well known within the psychoanalytic community offers this:
It cannot be overemphasized that injurious childhood experiences in and of themselves need not be traumatic (or at least not lastingly so) or pathogenic provided that they occur within a responsive milieu. Pain is not pathology. It is the absence of adequate attunement and responsiveness to the child’s painful emotional reaction that renders them unendurable and thus a source of traumatic states and psychopathology.
So, what exactly does that mean? If someone is there for the child during or after a traumatic experience, and can demonstrate empathy and respond appropriately – then the child has a chance of processing the experience without it becoming traumatic.
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