Compounding trauma occurs when a person experiences more than one traumatic event in their lives. For example, one person may experience grief and loss, physical abuse and sexual abuse in the course of their lives and all of these would compound their effects.

Vicarious or Secondary trauma happens when one person transfers their emotions to another person or verbally shares their traumatic experiences with another person. An example of this would be someone who listens to a very traumatic story and becomes traumatized as a result, even though the story did not involve them directly.

Intergenerational trauma occurs when the children of parents who have experienced trauma are born and grow up with the effects of trauma from their parents lives. The largest example of this in Canada is the generational impacts of residential schools on the indigenous communities.