Trauma
Etymology
Straight from Greek “trauma” (wound), which for centuries meant only bodily injury — the sense kept in a hospital’s “trauma ward.” In the late nineteenth century, Freud and early psychoanalysis extended it to the psyche, naming the mind’s wounds by analogy with the body’s. The single word now holds both meanings, and their kinship is the whole point.
noun · /TRAW-muh/
A serious wound — either a physical injury to the body or a lasting psychological injury from a distressing event.
What it names
One of the few words that lives fully in two worlds at once, letting us speak of a car-crash victim and a grief-struck mind with the same underlying idea: a wound that overwhelms.
Example
The surgeons treated the physical trauma from the accident in a night, but the psychological trauma took her years to work through.
Related idea
Trauma is the wounding event or injury; a sequela is the lasting aftereffect it leaves behind. A concussion is the trauma; the years of headaches are the sequela — and in the psychological sense, the frightening event is the trauma while the flashbacks are its sequelae.