With World Trauma Day taking place on 17 October, the ReStory Foundation is calling attention to the forms of trauma that cannot always be seen, but which can profoundly shape the lives of children, families and communities.
World Trauma Day traditionally focuses on traumatic injuries, their prevention, and the importance of timely emergency care. But trauma does not always leave a visible wound, and at the ReStory Foundation, the trauma encountered often looks very different.
“It is easy to recognise trauma when we can see the injury, but some of the deepest trauma is invisible,” says Natalie Naude, Empowerment Manager at the ReStory Foundation. “It can live in a child who has grown up surrounded by crime, instability, material poverty or family disruption. There may be no obvious physical wound, but the impact on that child’s development, relationships, behaviour and ability to learn can be profound.”
The World Health Organisation estimates that up to one billion children between the ages of two and 17 experience physical, sexual or emotional violence or neglect in a given year, and reports that children who experience any form of violence and trauma in childhood have a 13% higher likelihood of not completing their schooling.
For ReStory, these figures emphasise why trauma needs to be understood in the context of a person’s everyday reality. The organisation works with children, young adults and families living in communities where high levels of crime, material poverty, inadequate service delivery and other ongoing stressors can create conditions of persistent trauma.
Unlike a single traumatic event, repeated exposure to trauma can become part of a person’s everyday reality, with the body and brain remaining in a heightened state of alert, commonly described as fight, flight or freeze, because the individual does not experience a consistent sense of safety. The consequences can be significant. Unresolved trauma can affect concentration, emotional regulation, behaviour, relationships and the ability to engage meaningfully at school, work or home.
A child experiencing ongoing stress may struggle to concentrate in class, complete an assignment or write a test while their body is essentially focused on surviving rather than learning.
Trauma can also manifest physically, with heightened stress responses often accompanied by disturbed sleep, fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, stomach aches and other physical symptoms. For children in particular, distress is not always expressed through words and may instead manifest through behaviour.
“When we see a child acting out, withdrawing, struggling academically or making choices that concern us, we need to ask what might be happening underneath the behaviour,” says Sma Mlawu, Social Worker at the ReStory Foundation. “Behaviour is often communication. If we only respond to what we see on the surface, we can miss the trauma that is driving it.”
Trauma can take many forms, including acute and chronic trauma, complex and developmental trauma, relational and attachment trauma, grief and loss, community or societal trauma and intergenerational trauma. For many people, these experiences overlap. A child may experience the loss of a parent, grow up in an unsafe environment, witness violence and simultaneously experience instability at home. These cumulative experiences can influence the way that child understands themselves, other people and the world around them.
“Trauma does not necessarily end with one generation. Patterns of fear, unhealthy relationships, parenting practices and unresolved pain can be carried from one generation to the next. Without support and intervention, individuals can find themselves repeating patterns they never consciously chose,” says Naude. “This is why ReStory believes that trauma-informed support must be part of building stronger individuals, families and communities.”
When understanding changes a relationship
The potential for change is illustrated by the experience of one caregiver who participated in ReStory’s parenting interventions.
Through the process, she began to recognise that the harsh and authoritative parenting style she had adopted was rooted in the way she herself had been raised. She came to understand how her own history was influencing the way she parented her teenage daughter and how, despite her intentions, this was damaging their relationship and contributed to her daughter leaving home.
The mother made a courageous choice to reach out to her daughter, apologise and tell her that she wanted to rebuild their relationship and become a safe space for her. They reconnected, rebuilt trust and began to genuinely enjoy each other’s company again.
Not long afterwards, the daughter tragically died following a short illness. For her mother, the loss was devastating, but alongside the pain was a profound sense of gratitude that they were no longer estranged and had found their way back to each other while there was still time.
“It is stories such as this that remind us of the importance of addressing trauma,” says Mlawu. “Sometimes the work is not only about changing what happens today, but about changing what becomes possible tomorrow: in a family, in a relationship and potentially across generations.”
Understanding what is happening beneath the surface
ReStory’s work focuses not simply on identifying trauma, but on helping individuals and families understand and process its impact. The organisation uses approaches that include creativity, meditative and grounding exercises, together with other mechanisms that help people process difficult experiences in ways that are accessible and appropriate to them.
The objective is not to define people by their trauma, but to help them recognise that what has happened to them does not necessarily have to determine what happens next.
A broader conversation about trauma
This World Trauma Day, ReStory is encouraging a broader conversation about what trauma looks like and how it is recognised.
Preventing physical injuries and ensuring access to emergency care remain critically important, but addressing the less visible forms of trauma that can become embedded within individuals, families and communities also needs to form part of the broader conversation.
“If we want children and young people to thrive, we cannot only ask whether they are attending school,” says Mlawu. “We also need to ask whether they feel safe enough to learn, whether they have the emotional capacity to engage, and whether the adults around them understand what they are carrying.”
For ReStory, this is ultimately about creating the conditions in which people can move beyond survival towards healing, connection and growth.
“Sometimes the behaviour is the symptom, sometimes the silence is the symptom, and sometimes there is no visible sign at all. But the absence of a visible wound does not mean there is no trauma. We need to look beyond what we can see, because sometimes the trauma that needs attention most is the trauma that nobody can see,” concludes Naude.
