This is a presentation out of the Rocky Mountain EAPA Chapter focused on Trauma. The presentation explores the following definitions of trauma and then applies them to clinical applications. 1) Trauma is a person’s emotional response to a distressing experience. Unlike ordinary hardships, traumatic events tend to be sudden and unpredictable, involve a serious threat to life—like bodily injury or death—and feel beyond a person’s control. Most importantly, events are traumatic to the degree that they undermine a person's sense of safety in the world and create a sense that catastrophe could strike at any time. 2) Trauma is specifically an event that overwhelms the central nervous system, altering the way we process and recall memories. “Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then, it's the current imprint of that pain, horror, and fear living inside people.” 3) Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.