Trauma Repetition: Intervention in Psychologically Safe Places

In my early exposure to the psychological disaster field, I learned about two kinds of psychic traumas. The first being Trauma with capital "T" in which there is "a strong overwhelming event that renders an individual temporarily helpless and unable to use ordinary coping and defensive operations of ego in the face of intolerable danger, anxiety or instinctual arousal" 1• The second being a small trauma that consists of several smaller stressful events that might produce, with their cumulative effects, destabilization of the individual's psychic equilibrium and stimulus barrier. My experience taught me that these definitions could be an oversimplification of reality. But it also led me toward a couple of questions: what happens when a big Traumatic experience, a strong overwhelming event, is recurring just as much as the small ones? And what can a mental health professional do to be supportive in such occurrences?