Many people misunderstand trauma. Trauma is not just the event that took place, but the residue it leaves behind in your body. It is any experience - whether a single life-threatening moment or a chronic, stressful relationship - that overwhelms your capacity to cope, causing your nervous system to switch into 'survival mode' and, crucially, get stuck there long after the threat has passed. Much to the dismay of most people, traumatic things cannot just simply be "forgotten". We can work hard to push it to the  very recesses of the mind, but our body remembers and it will show up in myriad ways.