It cut a ram badly - that's distressing (9)
I believe the answer is:
traumatic
'that's distressing' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'it cut a ram badly' is the wordplay.
'badly' is an anagram indicator (letters in the wrong order).
'it'+'cut'+'a'+'ram'='itcutaram'
'itcutaram' with letters rearranged gives 'TRAUMATIC'.
(Other definitions for traumatic that I've seen before include "Emotionally shocking" , "Psychologically damaging" , "Direly shocking" , "Deeply disturbing" , "Psychologically painful" .)