Emotional Trauma Symptoms Not everyone responds to trauma in exactly the same way, but here are some common signs: Cognitive Changes: Intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks of the event, confusion, difficulty with memory and concentration, and mood swings.
Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.
If you can recall times when you've overreacted, and perhaps have even been surprised at your own reactions, this may be a sign of trauma. It's not uncommon for people suffering from emotional trauma to have feelings of shame and self-blame.
A traumatic event is time-based, while PTSD is a longer-term condition where one continues to have flashbacks and re-experiencing the traumatic event. In addition, to meet criteria for PTSD there must be a high level of ongoing distress and life impairment.
Emotional Trauma Symptoms
Not everyone responds to trauma in exactly the same way, but here are some common signs: Cognitive Changes: Intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks of the event, confusion, difficulty with memory and concentration, and mood swings.
Someone with PTSD may struggle to follow instructions because they're preoccupied with intrusive memories, but their behaviour looks like the distractibility of ADHD. Hypervigilance practised by someone with PTSD may look like inattention, typically associated with ADHD.
When Symptoms Occur Without a History of Trauma. It is important to understand that trauma can be inherited independently of difficult family circumstances. A child can develop anxiety, depression, or other stress-related issues such as PTSD as a result of an inherited vulnerability rather than direct trauma.
Women with PTSD may be more likely than men with PTSD to: Be easily startled. Have more trouble feeling emotions or feel numb. Avoid things that remind them of the trauma.
According to recent studies, Emotional Trauma and PTSD do cause both brain and physical damage. Neuropathologists have seen overlapping effects of physical and emotional trauma upon the brain.
If you're asking why do I feel like my trauma isn't valid, you might be spending too much time comparing your trauma to other's. Some people can handle a single event better than a long-term situation.
Not remembering trauma can be a coping mechanism, which is when the brain protects someone from experiencing the intense feelings associated with memory. So instead of a clear, detailed memory, someone may have gaps or only remember vague sensory aspects, like a color or smell.
People who go through a traumatic experience go through a lot of mental and physical stress that can make it hard for them to recover without professional help. Drama on the other hand consists of our personal reaction to things and the way that we interpret events that aren't objectively painful.
Signs of Trauma. “Trauma is different for everyone,” Choi says. But two of the more common reactions, she says, are feeling very strong emotions or feeling little. “You might have overwhelming negative emotions or not be able to stop crying.
Among the most common examples of psychological trauma is the loss of a family member, friend, or loved one. Whether their death is accidental, results from disease, comes with old age, or is by suicide, the people around that person may feel traumatized by the event.
Understanding emotional & psychological trauma
Psychological, or emotional trauma, is damage or injury to the psyche after living through an extremely frightening or distressing event and may result in challenges in functioning or coping normally after the event.
Regardless of the extent of the trauma, untreated trauma will manifest in physical, psychological, emotional, and social problems. Many individuals will find that alcohol and drugsrelieve the symptoms experienced, however, over time this could develop into more serious and detrimental issues.
You can develop PTSD after any very stressful, distressing, or frightening event, or following a prolonged traumatic experience. Symptoms may appear shortly after the traumatic event or they may take months or even years to become apparent. Because of this, you could be experiencing PTSD without even knowing it.
People struggling with PTSD may experience flashbacks, nightmares, intense anxiety or panic attacks long after the moment of trauma has passed. This is because neural pathways in the brain have been damaged and reformed by that experience. Some of the additional symptoms of PTSD include the following: Sleeplessness.
Trauma happens to everyone.
It can be physical, mental, or emotional. Many do not realize they have had a traumatic experience because most believe “a trauma” is only something dramatic or changes their world entirely.
If someone is already thinking about and ruminating on their traumatic past all the time, without trying to avoid or block it out, doing exposure work of talking about it more will actually make it worse and keep them stuck.
It could be due to a physical impact on your brain, which impairs your ability to create memories. It also could be from your brain's attempt to cope with the emotional and psychological impact of the trauma. Sometimes you can develop dissociative amnesia.
One reason that PTSD can be confused with generalized anxiety disorder is the intense anxiety you experience with both conditions. Intrusive thoughts and a tendency to feel angry or on edge are also fairly common with both.
PTSD and C-PTSD are now considered by many to be within the umbrella of neurodivergence, but fall under the category of acquired neurodivergence.
While ADHD is a completely separate condition, it still shares several symptoms with PTSD—symptoms that are easily masked by a PTSD diagnosis. Some of the shared symptoms include: Difficulty concentrating. Trouble with memory.