I listened to a National Public Radio segment about the connection between playing NFL football and brain trauma.
One retired running back said that each time he was hit when carrying the ball it was “like being in a high-impact car accident”. What a tremendous cost to pay, I thought.
For many of us, daily life is so demanding and stressful that it’s like being in a series of high-impact “stress collisions”. The word “stress” doesn’t even seem to do justice the corrosive experience of so much stress. “Trauma” is more like it.
This trauma isn’t the type inflicted by bone-jarring hits during a football game — it’s psychological, though no less real.
Psychiatrist Mark Epstein, M.D., author of the book The Everyday Trauma of Life, writes in a recent New York Times article,
“Trauma is not just the result of major disasters. It does not happen to only some people.