Awareness is the first step to addressing trauma blocking—examining the ways trauma blocking negatively impacts your life. Keeping a log to help notice what is happening before engaging in blocking activities is a helpful way to begin the path towards awareness and changed behavior.
If your psychological trauma symptoms don't ease up—or if they become even worse—and you find that you're unable to move on from the event for a prolonged period of time, you may be experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
No, but with effective evidence-based treatment, symptoms can be managed well and can remain dormant for years, even decades. But because the trauma that evokes the symptoms will never go away, there is a possibility for those symptoms to be “triggered” again in the future.
Trauma memories are thought to be stored as fragmented pieces throughout the mind, perhaps as a way of buffering the overwhelming emotions associated with what happened. It is believed that repeatedly thinking about the event will help the mind understand what happened and eventually process it.
Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.
Unresolved trauma puts you at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder, which is characterized by intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and emotional instability. Dissociation.
People who have unprocessed trauma often report having commonly known symptoms, such as intrusive thoughts of the event(s), mood swings, loss of memory and more. However, some people may be struggling with unresolved trauma without even realizing it.
People often describe this experience with words like: 'I feel stuck at the time of the trauma', 'It is as if most of my energy stayed in that place', 'Everything in my life is clouded by the memory of the trauma'.
Cognitive Signs of Unhealed Trauma
You may experience nightmares or flashbacks that take you back to the traumatic event. Furthermore, you may struggle with mood swings, as well as disorientation and confusion, which can make it challenging to perform daily tasks.
It won't rid you of PTSD and your fears, but let your tears flow and you'll maybe feel a little better afterwards. 'Crying for long periods of time releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain.
In conclusion, posttraumatic stress disorder after the intense stress is a risk of development enduring personality changes with serious individual and social consequences.
Feeling jittery, nervous or tense.
Women experiencing PTSD are more likely to exhibit the following symptoms: Become easily startled. Have more trouble feeling emotions, experience numbness. Avoid trauma reminders.
Trauma is difficult to heal from. It's meant to be. Trauma is the way that our brains and bodies adapt to an experience or environment of life-threatening powerlessness: to situations of overwhelm that are extremely dangerous to our survival. If our brains and bodies don't take that seriously, we won't stay alive.
Smiling when discussing trauma is a way to minimize the traumatic experience. It communicates the notion that what happened “wasn't so bad.” This is a common strategy that trauma survivors use in an attempt to maintain a connection to caretakers who were their perpetrators.
Ages 5 through 8 identified as crucial period in brain development and exposure to stress.
Trauma bonds are bonds that commonly form as a result of abusive relationships. They are the surface-level feelings of attachment and intimacy that can result from an abusive cycle. In a trauma bond, partners think they have true love or connection even though the relationship is harmful.
Trauma dumping refers to sharing a traumatic story without thinking about how it will affect the listener, or oversharing in an inappropriate context.
Most people who go through traumatic events have temporary difficulty adjusting and coping, but with time and support, they usually recover naturally. For some, this recovery process is interrupted, leaving them “stuck in time” reliving old memories and fears months and sometimes years after the event.
When individuals talk about painful experiences with a safe, supportive, and attuned human; they learn that the trauma can be dealt with and difficult emotions can be tolerated. Memories can be organized in a healthy way rather than developing problematic beliefs and self-blame (e.g., “this is all my fault.”).