"Trauma" and "traumatised" are buzz words of some sort nowadays. We go through traumatic break-ups, we face trauma after the hairdresser, instead of trimming our ends, made us spend part of the summer in a cap. Meanwhile, the word "trauma" has a very strict and very narrow definition, referring to a specific mental health problem. Why is the misuse of the term problematic?

The word "trauma" itself comes from ancient Greek, where it meant a physical wound. According to the American Psychological Association's definition, trauma is a sudden and drastic event or any disturbing experience that directly threatens one's life or results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behaviour, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events can be a car accident, war experience, natural disaster or rape.

Events that meet the definition of trauma go beyond "normal human experience". Situational crises, such as divorce, job loss or even the death of a loved one, are not traumas. They are common and inherent in human existence. Describing even less serious everyday "unpleasantness" in terms of trauma is already a serious abuse.

This is not just a matter of linguistic correctness. It is not bad if the term "traumatic" appears, as in the above film, as a deliberate exaggeration and joke. It is worse if, in the wake of "pop-psychology", which has taken a scientific term changing its meaning, we acquire the belief that we have been traumatised when this in fact has not happened.

Firstly, people who have actually faced literal trauma and its consequences may not meet with understanding due to the abuse of the term. Since "everyone has experienced some trauma", their experience may not be regarded as particularly difficult, even though it was.

Secondly, looking for traumas in ourselves and explaining our own difficulties with them can do more harm than good. As with any other mental health self-diagnosis, the danger comes when it is not followed up by contact with a specialist. It's a bit like saying we have diabetes based on our symptoms and then not going to a diabetologist to deny or confirm it and take treatment.

We may also come across people who will be keen to cash in on our "trauma". Social media and the shelves of online bookshops are full of people ready to "heal" our "trauma". We would like to remind you that mental health should be and is dealt with by psychiatrists, certified psychologists and therapists, and not by home-grown "healers".

This is where the theme of "traumatic childhood" comes in. This term in psychiatry is also only assigned to extremely difficult experiences at the beginning of one’s life. It is, in relation to "adult trauma", extended to include extreme neglect by caregivers (due to the fact that the child's survival is entirely dependent on them).

However, one shouldn’t and cannot describe every childhood that deviates from the ideal as "traumatic", which is a common occurrence nowadays. Even very difficult childhood experiences, such as physical or psychological abuse, are referred to as "adverse childhood experiences" (ACE) precisely to distinguish them from genuinely traumatic experiences.

A consequence of experiencing a traumatic event can be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This term is also currently overused. It does not help that the related word "flashback" means both a flashback to the past in a narrative (like a book or a film) and a specific symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric disorders as well.

Flashback in PTSD is the intense intrusion of thoughts and feelings associated with the trauma experienced into one’s consciousness. Flashbacks can occur both in response to a stimulus (e.g. image, sound, smell) associated with what has happened to us, and sometimes completely out of context too.

The person experiencing a flashback is "ripped out" of the reality around them and relives the stress of an extreme situation from the past once again. This can make life extremely difficult especially as, in untreated PTSD, the triggers of flashbacks can spread to other memories that are associated with a given event, exacerbating the problem.

Interestingly, not every person who has actually experienced trauma will suffer from PTSD. According to US National Institute of Health data, 6.8 per cent of the US population experiences symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder during their lifetime. It can be assumed that in countries without universal access to weapons and with a lower proportion of war veterans, this rate is even lower.

PTSD is more likely to happen to people with high rigidity of beliefs (either positive or negative) about themselves and the world prior to the traumatic event. In psychology, there is the concept of resilience, or mental flexibility which is related to the plasticity and resilience of our psyche. It allows us to face even the most difficult situations. PTSD can also be effectively treated.

There seems to be a very little chance of misused "trauma" being eradicated from colloquial usage. Perhaps the term "psychological trauma" will come into use to distinguish it from every day, more trivial annoyances.