Trauma

Canonical definition

Trauma is a persistent, adverse alteration of an Individual's Self-Model in which a large or overwhelming update is retained as altered Bayesian priors that degrade calibration and raise threat-sensitivity, rather than being absorbed and released as ordinary experience is. Trauma arises through two pathways. The endogenous pathway is exposure to super-critical Conflict, in which the escalation generated during the Conflict (the hardened narrative attributing fault to the other party, the elevated Mimetic stake on having prevailed, and the raised Salience of threat) is retained rather than released when the Conflict ends. The exogenous pathway is an external life event not generated by a Conflict loop (bereavement, accident, serious illness, assault, disaster) that imposes an update of a magnitude the Self-Model cannot integrate without lasting distortion. In both pathways the signature is the same: the priors of the Self-Model are permanently shifted in an adverse direction, and because the Self-Model it distorts is the Belief structure the Decision Hub draws on to select action, that distortion is carried outward into behaviour toward others, which is the architectural reason persistent emotional damage and social dysfunction share a single mechanism. Framework-Specific Construct. Derived from the Bayesian Self-Model, Conflict, and Loop Gain.