Are we overusing the word trauma? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with the point.

In a recent article, Lexi Pandela Vox notes that current cultural references to the word trauma

have become a mess of tongue-in-cheek and casual mentions mixed with serious confessions and

interrogations of the past. Now, of course, trauma is a reality, which is why overusing the word

is so problematic. The undiagnosed

shell shock among World War I veterans is a tragic example. When unaddressed, emotional wounds

caused by injury, violence, or assault, can have terrible consequences. But for a culture that

lacks moral consensus, it's so tempting to overuse the word. Pandell writes that its current usage has created a

tidy framework within which to understand our lives and roles. An event happens to us, an aggressor

attacks us. We're born into generations of suffering. And this telling, we are powerless. It's

beyond our control. Another expert put it a bit more cynically, that the word trauma has currency so people

broker in it. But the only way forward is to recover two truths. First, that people have agency.

And second, that our definitions matter. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.