About Trauma Explained

The Elephant Parable

There's an old story about blind men encountering an elephant for the first time. Each man touches a different part—the trunk, the leg, the ear, the side—and describes what he's found. The man with the trunk says it's like a rope. The man with the leg says it's a tree trunk. The man with the ear says it's a fan.

None of them agree, yet none are wrong either. They're just standing at different positions around the same animal, describing what they can perceive from their limited vantage point.

How This Applies to Trauma

Trauma is like that elephant. The trauma field is like those blind men. Different disciplines have discovered genuine truths about trauma, but from incompatible vantage points.

The neuroscientist describes dysregulation and threat response. The developmentalist describes arrested growth and interrupted trajectories. The relational therapist describes attachment injury and rupture. The trauma specialist describes fragmented memory and dissociation. The social theorist describes systems of oppression and the political dimensions of invisibility. All of these people are saying true things about what it means to be traumatized, but little of it appears to cohere.

The result affects everyone: Traumatized people receive conflicting advice. Therapists work with frameworks that appear incompatible. Researchers and clinicians talk past each other. Clinicians feel pressured to choose between training in somatic approaches or relational ones, between individual healing or systemic change, between addressing symptoms or addressing development.

But just as the elephant doesn't actually look like a rope or a tree trunk or a fan—it has its own unique and complex shape that those who put in the work can perceive—you don't need to choose between these competing visions of trauma. You can learn to see how they all fit together. For clients, this means integrating fragmented pieces of their own experience into coherence. For professionals, this means seeing how separate disciplines describe a single reality.

What I've Observed

I'm Dr. Mark Dombeck. I'm a psychologist who has spent thirty years thinking about and working clinically with trauma.

In my clients: I've watched something lovely happen repeatedly—the moment when a person's understanding suddenly integrates. When they stop seeing fragmented pieces and start seeing a coherent whole. When someone understands that their fragmented consciousness isn't broken—it's adaptive. When they see how their developmental arrest relates to their nervous system response relates to their relational patterns relates to their survival strategy. When they recognize that healing isn't about eradicating those adaptations but about restoring capacity and choice. Such integration meaningfully changes how people are able to approach their own healing.

In the field: Over three decades, I've also observed something troubling. Trauma researchers, clinicians, and theorists have developed genuinely useful frameworks, but they rarely recognize how their work connects to the others'. A neuroscientist's discovery about how the amygdala processes threat doesn't get integrated with a developmentalist's insight about how interrupted growth creates vulnerability. A relational therapist's understanding of attachment injury doesn't connect with a social theorist's analysis of systemic trauma. Each discipline advances, but the field itself remains fragmented.

I've become convinced that nobody's stepped back sufficiently from the elephant to describe how it all connects. That gap is what prompted me to create this series—both to offer traumatized people the integrated understanding they deserve, and to invite professionals to recognize how their work relates to the whole.

What This Series Is

This series is my attempt to stand back sufficiently from the elephant. To describe how neuroscience connects to development, how development connects to relational patterns, how those patterns connect to dissociation, how all of it relates to social systems, and how healing involves the integration of all these dimensions.

I'm not offering a competing theory. I'm offering a synthesis. One that is grounded in research and clinical observation and organized for accessibility without loss of rigor. Made for people who want to understand trauma at a clinical level of sophistication without first needing to get a PhD.

What You'll Find Here

This series offers an integrated map of how trauma works. Not competing fragments, but a coherent framework that ties together:

• How neuroscience describes what actually happens in the brain and nervous system under threat.
• How developmental theory explains why certain experiences have particular impacts.
• How relational patterns show up in our connections with others.
• How dissociation makes sense as an adaptive response.
• How trauma is embedded in social systems.
• How healing actually works—not symptom elimination, but the restoration of capacity and choice.

Each of these perspectives is true in isolation. Together, they contribute to a sophisticated understanding of trauma that's more complete and more true than any of them alone.

The series is organized to move from foundational (how the mind works) through explanatory (what trauma does) to practical (how healing happens). You don't need to read the material linearly. Each post stands alone, but they also build on each other in the manner of a staircase. There's a structure beneath the surface.

Throughout, you'll find references to the researchers and clinicians whose work shaped this synthesis. Not because academic citation is my goal, but because it's important to give credit where it is due, and because their work is genuinely worth exploring if any particular piece resonates with you. Trailheads to go deeper.

My Professional Foundation

I'm a psychologist and trauma specialist with thirty years of clinical experience. My training is grounded in contemporary behavioral and cognitive approaches, but my actual work has evolved to integrate these with psychodynamic concepts, developmental theory, and neuroscience in ways that create practical coherence across disciplines. The integration came from needing it—from encountering patients whose needs demanded that I make sense of observations that didn't fit into single theoretical frameworks.

Over three decades of clinical work, I've studied the field's major contributors: researchers like Porges (polyvagal theory), Siegel (neural integration), van der Kolk (embodied trauma), Kegan (orders of consciousness), and many others whose work is referenced throughout this series. I've also observed thousands of hours of clinical patterns—what actually helps people, where frameworks break down, where different approaches surprisingly align.

This series draws on both: the research literature and clinical observation refined through practice. When something appears in this work, it's because both sources support it.

My Commitments to You

Evidence-informed, not evidence-dogmatic. This series is grounded in decades of solid research by brilliant scientists and clinicians. It synthesizes across disciplines, integrating theories that weren't designed to talk to each other. I'm transparent about what's established science versus emerging theory versus clinical observation refined through practice. That clarity matters—you deserve to know the difference between what's well-supported and what's my best interpretation of patterns I've observed.

Pattern-first, mechanism-second. Observable patterns—how consciousness fragments under threat, how development arrests, how healing involves restoration—have been recognized across cultures and centuries. Our current best understanding of how these happen is grounded in modern neuroscience, but that understanding will inevitably evolve. By anchoring in patterns rather than mechanisms, I keep these insights timeless and grounded in observable reality, even as the explanations get updated.

Integration over fragmentation. I'm not adding to the fragmentation of the trauma field by introducing yet another competing theory. My whole commitment is synthesis—trying to stand back sufficiently from the elephant and describe how the different perspectives I've encountered connect. This requires integrating frameworks not typically in conversation with each other, and doing so without oversimplifying.

Nervous-system literate. Understanding trauma at this level of depth can activate your nervous system. And honestly? That's not a bad thing. To change something, you need to see clearly how it works—and that requires looking at painful realities. But activation without support is just retraumatization. Since I believe good trauma education meets people where they are, I've organized this series with your nervous system in mind. Challenging sections include grounding prompts. You have full permission to pace yourself.

Politically conscious. Trauma doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's shaped by power, oppression, and social systems. I'm not bypassing those systemic realities to focus only on individual healing. Nor am I suggesting that all trauma is "about" systemic oppression—that's its own kind of oversimplification. Both are true: individual trauma is real, and individual trauma is embedded in larger systems. Healing involves practical pathways forward that account for both.

Clinically grounded. Throughout this series, theory meets real people facing real challenges. The frameworks described here work in practice, not just in theory. They've helped people who've survived terrible things begin to make sense of their experience and build genuine capacity for choice, connection, and meaning.

A Note on Approach

Decades ago, Carl Sagan brought the universe out of academic institutions and into millions of living rooms, making comprehensible information about reality that had previously been confined to specialists. In that same spirit, I've created this series to illuminate the inner universe of trauma, development, and healing—making rigorous understanding accessible without losing accuracy.

This is different from academic work, which serves specialists and uses different standards. If you're looking for academic citations and peer-reviewed journal articles, you'll want to chase down the sources I reference. But this series is designed for something different: accessibility and integration. The ideas here are already complex. Adding the apparatus of academic citation would only get in the way of clarity and coherence.

If understanding how trauma works—at every level from neurons to relationships to societies—helps you move from confusion and fragmentation toward clarity and integration, then this series has done what I set out to do.

A Limitation Worth Naming

This series draws primarily from Western psychological research and clinical traditions. That reflects my training and the literature I've spent three decades studying.

Here's what I can say with confidence: The core patterns described—how consciousness fragments under threat, how development can arrest and then resume, how healing involves integration—appear across cultures and throughout history. People have understood these realities, worked with them, and created healing practices around them for centuries.

But they're understood and approached differently in various cultural contexts. I'm working from a particular epistemological framework. That's a limitation worth acknowledging.

I'm genuinely interested in how these frameworks might be adapted, expanded, or challenged by other cultural understandings. If you find places where something important is missing, or where material conflicts with your own cultural framework, please consider contacting me, as I want to know about it. This work will be improved through diverse perspectives.

Why This Matters Now

We're in a moment when more people are recognizing trauma as central to understanding human suffering and human possibility. That's good. It's also created problems: competing frameworks that don't talk to each other, oversimplifications that miss the complexity, and information that's sometimes contradictory.

People deserve better. You deserve to understand your own experience at a clinical level of sophistication, without needing a PhD. You deserve a trauma framework that sufficiently integrates what we know from multiple disciplines rather than forcing you to choose among them. You deserve to know that what your nervous system is doing is adaptive rather than broken—and that healing is possible.

That's what this series is for.

About These Recommendations

Throughout this series, when I recommend books or resources that have shaped my thinking, I sometimes use Amazon Associate links. If you purchase through these links, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps support the ongoing development of this educational work.

I only recommend books and resources I genuinely believe are valuable. The commission structure never influences which resources I suggest—it's always based on clinical and educational merit. You're welcome to purchase through regular Amazon links or your preferred bookseller instead; the content of this series remains freely available either way.

Thank you for supporting this work.

Working Together

A few of you reading this might be looking for a trauma psychologist and psychotherapist, and like what you see here. If that's the case for you and you reside in California, you can reach out to speak with me and we can discuss your needs. I see clients in-person in Alameda, CA and work virtually throughout California. Currently my practice is full, but I periodically accept new patients. More details about my practice and how to contact me are available at psychtools.com.

I also work with other clinicians and therapists who are interested in learning how to think about doing trauma psychotherapy in this more integrated manner. If that's you—whether you're interested in consulting, teaching, webinars, or classes—I'd like to hear from you as well.

Welcome! Thank you so much for being here!