The Actual Definition of Trauma, and How to Stop Using It as an Excuse

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]And I want to use the the actual definition of trauma here. All right?

[00:00:04]Rather than the social media influencer uh fufu, whatever. All right? The actual definition here is that you have a permanent change in behavior as a result of an aversive stimulus. And I'll translate that in a second. All right?

[00:00:18]So that means that you changed how you acted from something bad that happened to you. So just think about that. So whenever you hear people be like, "Ah, she traumatized me." I would then respond, in what way did you change your behavior as a result of the bad thing?

[00:00:34]And if someone doesn't have an answer, it's like, no, she just did a bad thing, but guess what? You showed resilience.

[00:00:40]You showed fortitude and you showed adaptability. So, it didn't actually permanently change your behavior. Now, I'm going to give you an example of trauma, bad thing that creates a positive change in behavior. Is it still trauma? By my definition, yes. But was the trauma bad? Ah, interesting. So let's dive in. So if the behavior change is positive, then it means you got better from a traumatic experience. That seems antithetical or against what more most people would say about trauma.

[00:01:10]Trauma only makes you worse, right? It happens to you. You're a victim, right?

[00:01:14]What if it happens for you and you get better for it, right?

[00:01:19]Now, if it's against your long-term goals, then you got worse from it.

[00:01:23]That's how we would that's how we'd think through this. If you some bad thing happens to you and then you have this goal of who you want to become, how you want to behave, where you want to go, but you it becomes less likely that occurs. It traumatized you. It did. And you had low adaptability. You got worse from it.

[00:01:38]Now, I want to be clear here. Both outcomes mean you were traumatized. You had a permanent change of behavior from a bad thing. You learn to do something different going forward. And so people who take my words out of context make it seem like I justify trauma when it couldn't be further from the truth. All right? I hope no one has bad things happen to them, right? Um but I see bad things, things happening against our preferences as a fact of life.

[00:02:07]The only thing we have is our response to those bad