I think I may have been traumatised by the number of times I am hearing the word trauma. You can’t look at television, listen to the radio or read a newspaper these days without bumping into the word.

Strangely, until 20 or 30 years ago, I would seldom have heard anyone talk about trauma and, until then, a good few of us might have had to look up what the bloody word meant.

It is true that words will always come and go, sometimes even change their emphasis and meaning, but at a time when mental health has become so central and concerning in both personal and communal living, trauma has taken on a significance that it certainly would not have had when I was growing up.

That Belfast man CS Lewis hit the same nail straight on the head. In one of his essays, he wrote: “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’. Otherwise, you will have no words left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

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Alex........

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