Little Traumas, Big Traumas, and Why Both Impact Your Nervous System

Nov 14

Most people come into Anxiety therapy, Depression therapy, PTSD therapy, or Trauma therapy thinking their experiences “aren’t bad enough” to be considered trauma. But trauma isn’t defined by how dramatic the event looks on the outside. It’s defined by how overwhelmed your nervous system felt on the inside.

I hear it all the time:

“I didn’t have a terrible childhood compared to others.”
“It wasn’t a big trauma, so I shouldn’t still be affected.”
“Other people went through worse.”
“It was years ago — I should be over it.”

But your nervous system doesn’t judge, compare, or minimize. Every nervous system is unique. It responds to distress, fear, overwhelm, and lack of emotional safety — whether those moments were big or small. I have noticed that it is the chronic, smaller Ts that ar take longer to treat, especially when they occur early on.

This is why both big T traumas and little t traumas can impact your mental health and body in powerful ways.

Below is how I explain it to my clients in Palm Beach, Florida and those I support virtually throughout Connecticut and Florida

What Are “Big T” Traumas?

These are the experiences society clearly labels as traumatic:

Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
Car accidents or sudden medical events
Assault or violence
Natural disasters
Severe childhood neglect
Sudden loss of a loved one
Growing up in a chronically unsafe environment

These events can overwhelm your body instantly, pushing your nervous system into fight, flight, or freeze. In PTSD therapy and Somatic experiencing, I often see clients who feel stuck in this survival mode, even years later.

What Are “Little t” Traumas?

Little traumas accumulate over time and often go unseen or invalidated:

Being criticized often as a child
Not having your emotions acknowledged
Being the “parentified child” growing up
Emotional inconsistency from caregivers
Bullying or exclusion
Chronic stress at work
Relationship betrayal
Feeling unseen or unsupported
Growing up with high expectations or pressure

Individually, these may seem “minor,” but repeated over years, they reshape your nervous system the same way major trauma does.

Clients often come to Anxiety therapy or Depression therapy saying:
“I don’t know why I’m so overwhelmed.”
The answer is often: your body has been carrying too much for too long.

Your Nervous System Doesn’t Care Whether It Was “Big” or “Small”

Your body is wired to detect threat — not to evaluate the size of the threat.
This means your nervous system may react just as strongly to:

• years of emotional neglect
as it would to
• a single traumatic event.

Both can create:

Hypervigilance
Emotional shutdown
Anxiety or panic
Difficulty trusting others
Overthinking
Depression
Feeling disconnected from your body
Trouble regulating emotions

These symptoms often bring clients into Trauma therapy or PTSD therapy, but most don’t realize what they’re experiencing is trauma at all.

How Little and Big Traumas Show Up Today

Whether you’re dealing with big trauma or small trauma, your nervous system may express it in similar ways:

Feeling on edge or overwhelmed
Being easily triggered
Feeling numb, frozen, or checked out
People-pleasing or perfectionism
Difficulty resting or relaxing
Feeling unworthy or not good enough
Emotional flooding
Trouble focusing
Deep fatigue

In my work as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, I help clients begin to understand these patterns as survival responses — not personality issues.

How Somatic Experiencing® and Trauma Therapy Support Healing

Talk therapy helps you understand your story.
Somatic Experiencing® helps your body release it.

In sessions, we work together to help you:

-Calm your nervous system without overwhelm
-Build internal safety and capacity
-Complete stuck fight, flight, or freeze responses
-Reconnect with your body
-Reduce anxiety and emotional reactivity
-Feel more grounded, present, and steady
-Move out of survival mode and into regulation

Healing isn’t about forgetting what happened — it’s about freeing your body from carrying it.

You Deserve Healing — No Matter the Size of the Trauma

You do not need a “big trauma” to deserve support.
If something is impacting your life now, your relationships, your self-worth, or your nervous system, it matters.
You matter.

And you don’t have to navigate this alone.