How to manage your mental health as traumatic events pile up

Originally posted on popsci.com by Alexandra Frost

As COVID-19’s Omicron variant waned and we took a second to catch our breaths, another anxiety-inducing and devastating event began: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. People in the area have suffered unspeakable traumas while trying to hunker down or flee their home country, and the world has looked on in terror and exhaustion. If dealing with an ongoing pandemic and the rippling effects of an overseas war seems like too much, it’s because it is.

While some of us might simply be stressed or concerned about the war, it can be clinically traumatic for others. To medically count as trauma, an event has to involve “actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Experiencing multiple traumas at once, or repeated trauma—as many are right now—is “complex trauma.” Such layered traumas are linked to increased emotional problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Complex trauma typically involves at least one interpersonal trauma, such as an assault, rape, or neglect, often as a child. A secondary traumatic event could be interpersonal, such as a natural disaster, serious accident, or exposure to war; or non-interpersonal, such as intense anxiety about world events. The level of trauma varies for everyone, and can obviously be much more traumatic for someone directly experiencing a situation, such as those enduring daily life within a conflict zone.

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