Beyond the Event: Understanding Trauma Through a Systemic Lens

Why understanding trauma requires more than examining what happened

Two people can experience remarkably similar events and carry very different impacts throughout their lives. For systemic therapists, understanding that difference begins with looking beyond the event itself to consider the person, their relationships, and the broader context shaping their experience.

In AAMFT’s new Systemic Therapy Certificate, Understanding Trauma in Context: A Systemic Approach for MFTs, Shae Chisman, LMFT, challenges clinicians to slow down before defining an experience as traumatic. Rather than judging whether an event was “bad enough” to qualify as trauma, Chisman encourages therapists to explore what made the experience traumatic for a particular person.

Developmental stage, attachment experiences, family dynamics, cultural identity, previous adversity, and available support can all influence how someone interprets and responds to an experience. These factors help explain why even siblings raised in the same household may be affected differently by similar circumstances.

For Chisman, this shift in perspective is central to systemic practice. The clinical question becomes not simply What happened? but What did this experience mean to this person, given the context of their life?

Distinguishing Stress, Adversity, and Trauma

Chisman introduces a continuum that helps clinicians distinguish among stress, adversity, and trauma without assuming that one necessarily leads to another.

Stress is a normal part of human development. Navigating a new job, learning a skill, or working through relationship conflict can require adaptation and may even strengthen confidence and resilience.

Adversity involves significant hardships or ongoing challenges, such as poverty, discrimination, chronic illness, community violence, grief, or persistent family conflict. These experiences can have lasting effects on individuals, families, and communities.

Trauma occurs when an experience or series of experiences overwhelms a person’s ability to cope, disrupting their sense of safety, functioning, or well-being. Its effects may extend to the nervous system, relationships, identity, and how someone understands themselves and the world around them.

These distinctions matter because treating all difficult experiences as interchangeable can obscure the unique circumstances and needs of each client. The continuum is not a prediction of how an experience will progress, but a framework for thoughtful clinical exploration.

As Chisman emphasizes, not every difficult experience becomes trauma, but every difficult experience deserves curiosity, compassion, and thoughtful systemic conceptualization.

Explore AAMFT’s new Systemic Therapy Certificate, Understanding Trauma in Context: A Systemic Approach for MFTs, offering 13.5 CEs and featuring perspectives from 10 MFTs highlighting recent research, case studies, and real-world clinical interventions.