Most people are indeed entirely unaware that they are suffering from trauma at all. Many put their symptoms and negative experiences down to stress which is often vague and unhelpful, particularly when trying to get to the core of the problem.
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.
At times, anxiety may trigger traumatic situations. For example, you may experience a panic attack in a public place. Perhaps you felt like you were suffocating or dying, and nobody came to help you. That experience can be traumatic.
Going through very stressful, frightening or distressing events is sometimes called trauma. When we talk about emotional or psychological trauma, we might mean: situations or events we find traumatic.
The brain can retain these sensory perceptions regardless of whether the trauma was chronic or acute. If the trauma is left untreated, one can experience nightmares, insomnia, anxiety, depression, phobias, substance abuse, panic attacks, anger, irritability, or hopelessness.
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.
Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Psychological trauma can leave you struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won't go away.
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.
Crying is not a bad thing. In fact, it's how your body releases pent-up energy after a traumatic or distressing event. During your recovery period, let yourself feel your emotions. After crying, you may feel like a weight's been lifted off your shoulders.
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.
No one type of trauma is “worse” than another. You can even experience the same type of trauma—or even the same event—as someone else and have different reactions to it. If something hurts you, it hurts, and your natural emotional reaction is valid. It can be helpful to think about “big T” trauma and “little t” trauma.
The effects of trauma may never completely go away, but we can help make them more manageable.
The symptoms of unresolved trauma may include, among many others, addictive behaviors, an inability to deal with conflict, anxiety, confusion, depression or an innate belief that we have no value.
Other symptoms may include hypervigilance and an exaggerated startle response as well as feelings of guilt or shame. People with unresolved trauma may also feel irritable or easily angered, have difficulty concentrating and making decisions, or be prone to self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse.
Unresolved trauma puts people at increased risk for mental health diagnoses, which run the gamut of anxiety, depression and PTSD. There are physical manifestations as well, such as cardiovascular problems like high blood pressure, stroke or heart attacks.
For some people, the tremors are big movements in the muscles. For others, they are tiny contractions that feel like electrical frequencies moving through the body. TRE® is not painful—in fact, most people enjoy the sensations.
Trauma is not physically held in the muscles or bones — instead, the need to protect oneself from perceived threats is stored in the memory and emotional centers of the brain, such as the hippocampus and amygdala.
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.
In fact, young children between the ages of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are still in the early formative years.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is the single largest cause of death from injury in the United States: 1,000,000 people with TBI per year in US: 230,00 hospitalized. 50,000 die (one third of all trauma deaths)
Perhaps one of the most common forms of trauma is emotional abuse. This can be a common form of trauma because emotional abuse can take many different forms. Sometimes it's easy for emotional abuse to be hidden or unrecognized.
Smiling is a way to “protect” therapists.
By downplaying their pain they are attempting to minimize the upset they believe they are causing. Laughing while recounting something painful says, “I'm OK, you don't have to take care of me. ' Instead, clients are actually attempting to take care of their therapists.
Experiencing the effects of trauma can be disorienting, distressing, and lonely. You might look at your reactions and feel as though you are crazy. In the dictionary, trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
Trauma Blocking: Driven to Distract After a painful experience, some people may choose to face their feelings head-on while others would rather forget. The latter can manifest as trauma blocking, where someone chooses to block and drown out painful feelings that hang around after an ordeal.