Trauma is like a car accident-  different factors  affect how big of a deal it is.

For example, Two different people have a Chevy Malibu.  They both get into a big accident.

Person A’s car has some other dents in it. Person B’s car has been well-cared for and is worth thousands more. However, person B has another car and a friend to give them a ride.  They have good insurance.

Person A has just deductible insurance.  Their friends do not have a car.  Person B is a manager.  Person a works at Walmart and one more tardiness results in being fired.

Same accident,  different effects.  Person A will remember the accident for a long time.  Person B will move on.  Its not that important.  It is the same way (as I understand it) with trauma. The amount of help you have determines how much it affects your internal life.

This is a chart to hopefully show what the hell I am trying to say:

	Car totaled while parked		Attacked
	Person A	Person B	Person a	Person B
situation	Works at Walmart, is a single parent	Is an executive	Comes from a broken home, parents are alcoholics	Comes from a home where she was nurtured, without strife
support	No money for rental, no friends that have cars, no money for deductable	Has a second car and a friend she can commute with. Boss lets her work from home, has a savings account	Has no one to talk to and only knows what parents would do which is drink	Has someone that she can talk to, and is encouraged to get counseling. Takes defense training
Outcome	Fired and goes on welfare, now does not have a job to get a car	Car pools for a week and then picks out a new car	Is in a bad place, does bad things out of desperation	Is slowly able to see all the good things still in life
Effect	This becomes a major incident in her life, has stress and worries about it and thinks about it often	Is able to laugh about it a month later- glad for the new car	Has long term problems, thinks about the attack and feels all the bad things that resulted from it.	Stabilizes and has worked through the incident

This is not to negate people’s feelings when Trauma happens.  I am not say that just because someone has a good support system, they don’t have pain. I validate all they go through.  I am tryingto explain (in terms I can understand) protective factors.  We need them in our life because the more good, the less important the bad is.

When bad things happen we need to reach out.  When we see someone going through bad times, we need to reach out.  The bigger the trauma and the bigger the ripples in your life, the bigger that memory will be.  Which crowds out happier memories.