Is This Trauma or Just Stress? How to Tell the Difference.

Many people in Kansas City come to therapy unsure whether what they’re feeling is stress, burnout, or trauma. With trauma being talked about on podcasts and social media, it can feel like everything counts as trauma now. Commentators like Scott Galloway even argue that therapy tries to “explain everything with trauma” on The Prof G Podcast (Galloway, 2025).

There’s a real point here: when clinical words leave the therapy room, they often get stretched and lose their meaning. Trauma is one of those words.

A Simple Way to Compare Stress and Trauma

Here’s a helpful way to picture the difference. Think of reactions like money:

• A $10 reaction to a $10 problem → normal stress

• A $10 reaction to a $1 problem → a bad day

• A $100 reaction to a $10 problem → old experiences may be involved

• A $100 reaction to a $1 problem → often trauma residue

Not all distress is trauma, and not all trauma looks like the size of the situation you’re in.

So What Actually Counts as Trauma?

Clinically, trauma is not defined by the event.
It’s defined by what happens after the event.

Somatic researcher Peter Levine describes trauma as what happens when the nervous system can’t complete its stress response and return to normal (Levine, 1997; 2010).

In plain language:

Trauma is not what happened. Trauma is what stayed in the body afterward.

Two people can go through the same experience and have different outcomes:

• one returns to baseline → stress

• one stays stuck → trauma

This difference is about physiology and survival, not personal weakness.

Stress Is About Now. Trauma Is About Then.

A simple way to tell the difference:

Stress

• has a clear cause

• matches the size of the problem

• fades when life calms down

Trauma patterns

• show up in different situations

• feel too big for the moment

• don’t automatically go away even when life improves

Stress is your nervous system responding to today.
Trauma is your nervous system responding to back then.

How Trauma Shows Up (Even If You Don’t Call It Trauma)

Unfinished stress responses can look like:

• shutting down during conflict

• panic around feedback

• feeling “on alert” in relationships

• expecting the worst in small situations

• people-pleasing to feel safe

Affective neuroscience shows these reactions begin in deeper emotional circuits (Panksepp, 1998; Solms, 2021), which is why you can’t simply “think your way out” of them.

Trauma Therapy in Kansas City

If you’re asking “Is this trauma or just stress?” a more useful question might be:

Am I spending today’s money — or yesterday’s?

At Analog Counseling in Overland Park, we help clients from across Kansas City complete unfinished stress responses and return to regulation. We use trauma-informed approaches including Somatic Experiencing, psychodynamic therapy, and neurobiological models.

We see clients from:

• Overland Park

• Kansas City, MO

• Leawood

• Olathe

• Prairie Village

• Lenexa

• North Kansas City, MO

• Lawrence

• Gardner

• And more!

A Note on Worthiness

You don’t have to wait for things to “get bad enough.”
Trauma therapy is about helping your nervous system settle and feel safe again — not proving that something happened.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). DSM-5-TR.
Galloway, S. (2025). The Prof G Podcast.
Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger.
Levine, P. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience.
Schore, A. (2012). The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy.
Solms, M. (2021). The Hidden Spring.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.