IMHO the death of a child was rarely traumatizing. Intense grief and trauma are different things.

Warfare however was more common or at least more unavoidable than it is now, and would have been a potent source of traumatic experiences.

Ditto attacks by wild animals.

Grieving heals trauma. Death of a child is traumatic but we allow room for this in society. We provide instinctive support to others going through this.

Death in general is an inevitable part of life that can be dealt with in a healthy way. It's still individual but generally there are outlets.

Traumatic disorders are specifically where the symptoms caused by trauma interfere with daily life and are measured in severity and longevity.

We should actively grieve traumatic experiences by paying attention to them where necessary.

When an animal is attacked, e.g., by a lion, it will sometimes completely freeze (which often causes the predator to lose interest). Many different species and families of animals do this, but according to Peter Levine writing a few decades ago, in no species except human is there any evidence that having undergone this freezing response has long-term consequences. There seems to be something about the human mind (or the human lifestyle in modern times) that makes the freezing response tend to have very persistent effects.

I would like to call this freezing response psychological trauma. I think many experts use the phrase that way. Certainly the OP is using the term this way. But if people are going to use "traumatic experience" to refer to any very aversive experience or any experience that makes the person very sad, like you just did, then that is kind of a drag because most very aversive experiences, e.g., death of one's child, do not cause the freezing response or do so only rarely. Must those of us who wish to discuss the human version of this freezing response come up with a different term?

I mean, most of human history sucked major ass and people were drinking themselves to death.

This is a big point that really blows my mind in the discussion. It is basically indisputable that we are exposed to less trauma than people in the past. To a laughable degree.

And it wasn't just children. Before the advent of antiseptics, a prick from a briar could basically kill you. Before modern supply chains, you almost certainly had parasites. Before modern vaccines... The list is remarkably large.

I suppose there is an argument that it is the reduction of traumatic events that makes them more traumatic? Feels like a shaky reason to think "focus more and make sure you fully grappled with how traumatic it was" is the default correct approach.

I think it’s exactly why we can now look at and face trauma because some of us are not as severely traumatized and in denial like previous generations. We can decide to work on it, rather than just passing it on by mistreating those around us and redirecting our rage towards imagined enemies and threats. Well, some us.

But not everyone reacted to trauma by going into denial? Some people had really crappy things happen to them. They did not deny this, necessarily. They just found a way to move to the next things.

And note, that it wasn't everyone. Some people did not find a way to move on. Worse, some people likely perpetuated their trauma on to others.

"Denial" typically refers not to the denial that something bad happened to you, but to not see how you act it out on others (or yourself). It is exactly those in denial that would claim that they "have moved on", and try hard to make it look like they did also to those around them. It then shows up in violent tendencies, lashing out against kids, enemy images, patterns of avoidance, psychosomatic symptoms, burnout, addictions, obesity, sports injuries due to overdoing it, inability to sit still and listen, etc. - not necessarily PTSD symptoms.

> It is basically indisputable that we are exposed to less trauma than people in the past. To a laughable degree.

And standards of living and life expediencies have gone up and to the right.

That 100 years ago people managed to cope with the traumatics of daily life doesn't translate to their coping being healthy or their lives being better (consider the massive drinking culture of the mid 1800s that ultimately led to prohibition)

True that standards of living have gone up. I'm... not clear where you were going with this, though?

You are using the word "cope" in a way that implies people did not grow after their trauma in the past. I do think I've been sloppy and said grown from trauma a few times. I meant that to be a time marker, not a cause of growth.

Do I think some people did not manage healthy growth after some events? Absolutely! But I also think many people did find ways to continue to grow.

I think, in the past, yes - most people did not grow, they just coped. They merely distracted themselves with working 12 hour days, drinking their lives away, and beating their wife and children.

Think about it this way - how many passion projects did people have back then? When they weren't working, what were they doing?