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When we’re working with trauma it can be useful to categorise it as ‘big T’ and ‘small t’ traumas. ‘Big T’ trauma is often the type of event we might recognise as being traumatic, eg war, combat, natural disasters, physical or sexual abuse, terrorism and catastrophic accidents. It’s usually this type of experience that leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, the symptoms of which include nightmares, flashbacks and hyper-vigilance. But it’s important to recognise that ‘small t’ trauma events that are highly impactful, but not necessarily life threatening are often the origin of severe emotional problems in both children and adults. Small-t does not mean that the experience was minor or small in its impact. According to Teicher, Samson, Polar, and McGreenery (2006) parental verbal aggression during childhood contributed more to adult psychiatric symptoms -including anxiety, anger-hostility, depression and dissociative symptoms than physical abuse occurring within the family. The combined effect of parental verbal aggression and domestic violence can contribute to  psychiatric symptoms as much as or more than familial sexual and physical abuse. Many childhood life events that were disturbing but not do not met the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD can be equally or more impactful on life than identified PTSD. Emotional disturbance and behaviour problems in the present are often rooted in prior events that were not life threatening, but were very damaging to an individuals sense of self, their relationships and view of the world around them.