PRE-PRODUCTION; TRAUMA RESEARCH

'Trauma' can be defined as a 'deeply disturbing or distressing experience'. It is when something so distressing happens in a persons life and so it effects you in negative ways. Physical trauma can lead a person struggling with upsetting memories and emotions in addition to a crippling anxiety that doesn't go away. People who suffer with this feel completely disconnected from society and the people around them. Emotional and physical trauma is the result of stressful events that 'shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world'. There is some debate about what causes trauma but overall it is about the subjective emotional experience of an event that causes it rather than the fact of whether they have been physically hurt or not. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatised. Situations that can cause trauma include accidents injuries or violent attacks, illness's surgeries or death of someone close to you.

You can be more likely to be susceptible to trauma as a child because you're less likely to understand what is going on in your life. Examples of what can cause childhood trauma include being in an unstable environment, separated from a parent, sexual and physical abuse and domestic violence. Childhood trauma can have a long last effect, when it isn't resolved (because as a child they do not know to how to explain their feelings) 'a sense of fear and helplessness carries over into adulthood'.

Trauma can be summarised as the emotional response someone has to a negative experience in their life. It is the effects of trauma that are long lasting and have the most effect upon someones life. Symptoms and effects are as follows -
- Shock, denial or disbelief
- Anger
- Anxiety and feat
- Withdrawing from others
- Feeling sad or hopeless
- Insomnia
- Difficult concentrating
- Racing heartbeat

As a result of traumatic events that can happen to people, there can be some serious consequences to future life. Upon research I've found that the most common long-term symptom of someone experiencing trauma can be PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) - this is a type of anxiety disorder, it changes the hormones within a person to change their reaction to stressful situations. If someone experiences something traumatic, they can almost be triggered by other things to remind them about the previous traumatic experience they had, and from then react in a distressing way.

I also have researched how hallucinations can be relevant to traumatic experience; as this is a potential narrative point we may be looking at. Freud (1936) had a theory that linked hallucinations to to 'repressed traumatic experiences'. It has been known that if a person experiences many traumatic events, they can have 'schizophrenia' as well as PTSD. Hallucinations that they experience c
an then either be a result of schizophrenia, or a result of re-imagining experiences through PTSD. The content of which people experience in their hallucinations are quite often linked to childhood events, as I have seen in the previous research childhood events can have long lasting effects in adulthood and hallucinations can be one of these effects, as many theorists argue.

RESEARCH LINKS
https://www.psychguides.com/guides/trauma-symptoms-causes-and-effects/
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/coping-with-emotional-and-psychological-trauma.htm
https://www.healthline.com/health/traumatic-events#responses-to-trauma
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4569972/