I find the existence of a “big T” vs. “little T” trauma distinction interesting. To me it suggests a kind of desire to moralize trauma, as if some of these are the real traumas that matter and these other ones are the made up ones that don’t really matter. But the finding seems to be that there is no difference between them to the person who experiences them; the distinction is one to make us feel better about saying getting picked last in gym is functionally the same as being molested if we react to those situations in the same way. As the patient we may feel bad about comparing our “little” trauma to a “big” trauma that others agree is morally bad whereas ours was morally less bad and want to reject even the implied equivalency of using similar techniques to resolve both. But our brains don’t seem to be able to tell these apart or care about the moral aspect, so at least from the perspective of treatment it makes a lot of sense to consider them the same.
I find the existence of a “big T” vs. “little T” trauma distinction interesting. To me it suggests a kind of desire to moralize trauma, as if some of these are the real traumas that matter and these other ones are the made up ones that don’t really matter. But the finding seems to be that there is no difference between them to the person who experiences them; the distinction is one to make us feel better about saying getting picked last in gym is functionally the same as being molested if we react to those situations in the same way. As the patient we may feel bad about comparing our “little” trauma to a “big” trauma that others agree is morally bad whereas ours was morally less bad and want to reject even the implied equivalency of using similar techniques to resolve both. But our brains don’t seem to be able to tell these apart or care about the moral aspect, so at least from the perspective of treatment it makes a lot of sense to consider them the same.