What Is Trauma? Understanding Attachment Trauma and Its Impact

As a psychodynamic therapist, I often talk with people about what trauma is and what it isn’t. Many of us picture trauma only as horrific events like serious accidents, assaults, or natural disasters. These are absolutely traumatic experiences, often called big T trauma, and they can leave deep wounds.

But trauma isn’t only about obvious events. Trauma is about how an experience feels and how our nervous system and psyche respond to it. An experience doesn’t have to be life-threatening for it to overwhelm us internally. What matters is the emotional imprint it leaves.

In this post, I explore the difference between big T trauma and a quieter but deeply impactful form of trauma called attachment trauma. Attachment trauma comes from hurt in our early relationships, such as emotional neglect or inconsistent caregiving, and it can shape how safe and worthy we feel even years later. My hope is to explain these ideas in a warm and simple way, and to show that healing is absolutely possible.

Big T Trauma vs Attachment Trauma (Relational Trauma)

Professionals sometimes distinguish between big T trauma and little t trauma.

Big T trauma refers to sudden, overwhelming events: a serious car accident, an assault, a natural disaster, or experiencing war. These moments often involve a real threat to life or safety. They tend to be clearly identifiable, and people generally recognise them as traumatic. Big T traumas can lead to conditions like PTSD.

Attachment trauma, on the other hand, is relational. It doesn’t usually happen in a single moment. Instead, it develops across repeated experiences in early relationships, usually with caregivers. Attachment trauma occurs when a child’s fundamental needs for safety, warmth, and emotional attunement aren’t met consistently.

Here are a few examples of how it shows up:

• A parent who is physically present but emotionally unavailable

• A caregiver who is loving one day and distant the next

• Growing up with emotional neglect

• A home where addiction, anger, or instability makes safety unpredictable

• Repeated misattunement, where a caregiver frequently misreads or dismisses the child’s emotional needs

These experiences don’t always look dramatic from the outside, but their impact can run deep. A child who grows up chronically unseen, unseen, or on edge is being shaped by relational trauma, even if there is no single event that looks “traumatic” in the traditional sense.

Research on childhood adversity consistently shows that ongoing emotional neglect or relational instability can be just as harmful as a one-time violent event. In other words, trauma is not defined by the size of the event but by the cumulative effect on the child’s sense of safety and worth.

Trauma Is About the Internal Experience

Trauma is not just about what happened. It’s about what happened inside you.

Two people can go through the same event and react very differently. One person might be shaken but able to move forward, while another may feel deeply destabilised. The difference often lies in how their nervous system processed the experience and whether they had support.

When something overwhelms us, the nervous system shifts into survival mode. The heart races, the muscles tense, the breath quickens. This is adaptive in real danger. But when stress becomes chronic or overwhelming, the system can get stuck.

For children experiencing attachment trauma, the nervous system may spend years in a state of subtle or intense alarm. They learn to treat emotional closeness as dangerous. They brace for rejection or criticism. Over time, this shapes the very wiring of emotional regulation.

Importantly, our nervous system does not strictly separate physical danger from emotional danger. A harsh tone, an unpredictable parent, or a missing soothing response can activate the same physiological alarm pathways that evolved to protect us from physical threat.

And because much of early trauma is preverbal, many of these memories are stored implicitly. You may not consciously remember the moment you felt alone or terrified as a child, but your body remembers. Adult triggers often bring up old emotional states without any clear narrative explanation.

How Attachment Trauma Shapes Self-Worth and Relationship Patterns

Early attachment experiences become mental blueprints, or internal working models, that shape how we see ourselves and others.

When things go well in childhood, we internalize beliefs like:

• I am loved

• My needs matter

• People will show up for me

• I can rely on others when I’m in pain

When childhood is marked by neglect or inconsistency, the internal messages tend to sound more like:

• I am not safe

• My emotions don’t matter

• I need to handle everything alone

• Love is unpredictable

• If I depend on someone, I’ll be disappointed

These beliefs often operate quietly in the background but can significantly shape adult relationships.

Common patterns linked to attachment trauma include:

• Fear of abandonment
A persistent worry that people will leave, even when relationships are stable.

• Difficulty trusting others
Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

• Chronic relationship anxiety
Overthinking interactions, reading between the lines, needing reassurance.

• Emotional numbness or overwhelm
Swinging between feeling too much and feeling nothing at all.

• Low self-worth and harsh self-criticism
Internalizing the belief that something is wrong with you.

• People-pleasing or distancing
Trying to keep others happy so they won’t leave, or staying emotionally withdrawn to avoid being hurt.

• Boundary difficulties
Either letting others overstep or keeping walls so high that no one can get close.

These patterns often get triggered by emotional closeness, conflict, vulnerability, or major life stress. They are not signs of weakness or pathology. They are survival strategies that made sense at one time.

How We Cope: Defense Mechanisms and Emotional Dysregulation

When a child is overwhelmed or unsupported, the psyche develops creative ways to survive. These are called defense mechanisms, and they operate unconsciously.

Common examples include:

• Dissociation
  Checking out mentally when emotions become too much.

• Repression
  Pushing painful feelings or memories out of awareness.

• Numbing
  Shutting down emotions to avoid hurt.

• Minimising
  Telling yourself “it wasn’t that bad” because the full truth feels too big to face.

These defenses are deeply adaptive in childhood. They protect a young person who cannot leave or change their environment. The problem is that these same defenses can persist into adulthood, long after the original threat is gone.

Attachment trauma also disrupts emotional regulation. Children learn to regulate emotions through co-regulation with caregivers. If that was missing, the ability to soothe oneself or ride emotional waves doesn’t develop in the same way.

As adults, this can look like:

• Strong emotional swings

• Feeling flooded by sadness, fear, or anger

• Shutting down completely

• Difficulty calming down after stress

• Feeling unsafe in moments of conflict or closeness

These reactions are not conscious choices. They reflect a nervous system shaped by earlier experiences.