Trauma Isn't Always What We Think It Is

July 01, 2026

When you hear the word trauma, what comes to mind?

For most people, it's something catastrophic. A major accident. A natural disaster. Violence.

As physicians, I think our definition gets even narrower.

We think about trauma in terms of trauma activations, life-threatening injuries, and medical emergencies. We see terrible things every day, so it's easy to compare experiences and decide what "counts."

I know I used to.

I remember patients telling me they had a traumatic birth, and I'd read the delivery note thinking, Really? The documentation might say there was one prolonged deceleration, they chose to have a C-section, and everyone was healthy. On paper, it didn't look traumatic.

But that's not the point.

The chart tells me what happened medically. It doesn't tell me how she experienced it.

Trauma isn't defined by what I think should have been traumatic. It's defined by how someone's mind and body experienced the event.

That realization changed the way I thought about my patients, but it also changed the way I think about myself.

As physicians, we minimize our own experiences all the time.

"It wasn't that bad."

"Other people have it worse."

"I should be able to handle this."

Maybe.

But your nervous system doesn't care what you should be able to handle.

It responds to what you're experiencing.

In this week's episode, I share the story of one of the worst calls I've had as an OB/GYN. I was in the middle of a fight with an anesthesiologist who was refusing to take a hemorrhaging patient to the operating room. I was furious. I was scared for my patient. My head was pounding, my neck was tight, and every muscle in my body was clenched.

The difficult part was that I couldn't just stop.

I still had laboring patients.

I still had deliveries to attend.

I still had to show up for the next woman, even though my body was still carrying everything that had happened with the last one.

A few hours earlier, I'd sat in on a coaching session with my friend Rashmi, who was talking about how we hold trauma in our bodies. She described imagining your body as a hollow vessel and allowing those difficult experiences to move through you instead of getting stuck inside you.

That image stayed with me.

Standing on Labor and Delivery, I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and imagined that tension moving through me instead of staying in me.

Then I went back to something I'd been teaching patients for years.

I breathed out the tension.

I imagined myself melting, the same way I ask anxious patients to do during pelvic exams. Then I slowly worked my way through my body. My scalp. My forehead. My jaw. My tongue. My shoulders. My arms. My abdomen. My legs.

One breath at a time, I let a little of the tension go.

Not because I suddenly wasn't angry.

Not because the situation had changed.

The patient in the emergency room was still there.

The conflict was still there.

But I was able to become present again.

A few minutes later, one of my patients reached down and delivered her own baby. It was one of the most beautiful deliveries I've ever been part of. I'm grateful I was able to give her my full attention instead of bringing everything from the emergency room into one of the biggest moments of her life.

That's why I wanted to share this technique.

Not because it's magic.

Not because it's the only way to regulate your nervous system.

But because I think physician moms underestimate how much we carry from one moment into the next.

We leave a difficult patient encounter and walk into another exam room.

We finish a stressful shift and walk into our homes.

We move from work to motherhood without ever giving our bodies a chance to catch up.

Over time, all of that tension accumulates.

The next time you notice your jaw is clenched, your shoulders are tight, or your mind is replaying the same conversation over and over again, pause for a minute.

Take a deep breath.

Imagine your body as a hollow vessel.

As you breathe out, let the experience move through you instead of settling into you.

Then notice each part of your body, from your scalp all the way down to your feet, and with each breath, allow a little more tension to leave.

The goal isn't to pretend the hard thing never happened.

The goal isn't even to stop feeling stressed.

The goal is simply to help your body let go of enough of the tension that you can be fully present for whatever comes next.

Sometimes that's exactly what we need.

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