Trauma Isn’t Intensity — It’s What the Nervous System Learns

When people hear the word trauma, they often picture something overwhelming: extreme fear, intense emotion, or a catastrophic event. And while trauma can involve intense experiences, defining it primarily by emotional intensity actually misses the heart of the matter. Trauma is not best understood as how big something felt — but as what the nervous system learned when survival was at stake.

From a nervous-system perspective, trauma begins with threat. When we perceive danger, the body mobilizes automatically to protect us through fight, flight, or freeze. This mobilization requires a rapid surge of energy — heart rate increases, muscles tense, attention narrows. This temporary dysregulation is not a problem; it is the body doing exactly what it is designed to do.

Under normal circumstances, that survival energy is spent. We run, resist, escape, or orient toward safety. Once the threat passes and the energy is discharged, the nervous system returns to its baseline rhythm of regulation and flexibility.

Trauma occurs when that process is interrupted.

When a threat cannot be escaped, fought, or fully responded to — because of powerlessness, overwhelm, developmental immaturity, or relational constraints — the nervous system is forced to cope rather than complete the survival cycle. The energy meant for action remains trapped in the body. This unresolved dysregulation is profoundly uncomfortable, and the system adapts in whatever way it can to endure.

Over time, this unfinished survival response becomes encoded as learning.

As Mark Solms explains in The Feeling Brain, affect is fundamentally tied to homeostasis — the body’s drive to regulate internal states. Trauma represents a disruption in this regulatory process. The system does not simply remember what happened; it remembers how it survived.

Similarly, Stephen Porges shows through Polyvagal Theory that our nervous systems continuously assess safety and danger beneath conscious awareness. When safety cannot be restored, the system defaults to defensive strategies — hyperarousal, collapse, shutdown — not as pathology, but as protection.

Crucially, the coping strategies used during the original threat often replace instinctive responses in the future. Instead of fluid fight or flight, the body replays learned patterns. This is why trauma can show up in two seemingly opposite ways: explosive emotional reactions that feel disproportionate to the present moment, or a puzzling absence of response when action would be appropriate. In both cases, the nervous system is responding to past threat in the present.

As Allan Schore emphasizes, trauma is ultimately a disorder of affect regulation. It is not the event itself that defines trauma, but whether the nervous system could return to regulated flow afterward — especially in the presence of attuned support.

Understanding trauma this way reframes healing. The work is not primarily about revisiting intense emotions or retelling the story in greater detail. It is about helping the nervous system complete what was once impossible: restoring regulation, releasing trapped survival energy, and relearning that safety and responsiveness are possible now.

Trauma is not intensity. It is unfinished survival — and the body remembering how it had to cope when there was no other choice.

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.