Emotional reactions to trauma shock – difficulty believing in what has happened, feeling detached and confused. feeling numb and detached. not wanting to connect with others or becoming withdrawn from those around you. continuing alarm – feeling like the danger is still there or the event is continuing.
Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.
Symptoms of negative changes in thinking and mood may include: Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world. Hopelessness about the future. Memory problems, including not remembering important aspects of the traumatic event.
There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'. The freeze, flop, friend, fight or flight reactions are immediate, automatic and instinctive responses to fear. Understanding them a little might help you make sense of your experiences and feelings.
Emotional Trauma Symptoms
Psychological Concerns: Anxiety and panic attacks, fear, anger, irritability, obsessions and compulsions, shock and disbelief, emotional numbing and detachment, depression, shame and guilt (especially if the person dealing with the trauma survived while others didn't)
Reactions to trauma
Common reactions include: feeling as if you are in a state of 'high alert' and 'on watch' for anything else that might happen. feeling emotionally numb, as if in a state of 'shock' becoming emotional and upset.
BPD as a sequela of childhood traumas often occurs with multiple comorbidities (e.g. mood, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, eating, dissociative, addictive, psychotic, and somatoform disorders).
Posttraumatic stress disorder after the intense stress is a risk of development enduring personality changes with serious individual and social consequences.
When trauma impairs your ability to develop full emotional maturity, this is known as arrested psychological development. Trauma can “freeze” your emotional response at the age you experienced it. When you feel or act emotionally younger than your actual age, this is known as age regression.
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.
Symptoms. PTSD symptoms get grouped into four types; avoidance, intrusive memories, adverse changes in mood and thinking, and negative changes in physical and emotional responses. Symptoms include: Flashbacks about the event (can feel like reliving the experience all over again)
A feeling of shame; an innate feeling that they are bad, worthless, or without importance. Suffering from chronic or ongoing depression. Practicing avoidance of people, places, or things that may be related to the traumatic event; this also can include an avoidance of unpleasant emotions.
Adults who have experienced childhood trauma often have heightened anxiety levels. They may worry excessively and have trouble managing their anxiety. Childhood trauma can lead to persistent feelings of sadness, lack of interest in activities, and difficulty experiencing pleasure.
Physical Symptoms of Trauma
Psychological trauma often leads to physical complaints such as problems with eating and difficulty falling or staying asleep. People who experience childhood trauma may also have low energy levels and unexplained aches and pains or other physical sensations.
Brain areas implicated in the stress response include the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. Traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in these brain areas. Traumatic stress is associated with increased cortisol and norepinephrine responses to subsequent stressors.
Trauma can interfere with regions of the brain that govern fear and stress responses, emotion regulation, and executive functions. These neurological effects increase the risk of developing emotional, behavioral, and mental health problems, especially when trauma occurs in childhood.
Narcissism and its Origins
Narcissism tends to emerge as a psychological defence in response to excessive levels of parental criticism, abuse or neglect in early life. Narcissistic personalities tend to be formed by emotional injury as a result of overwhelming shame, loss or deprivation during childhood.
A central trait of BPD is struggling with one's sense of self and knowledge of who they are, which is at the root of many of their outbursts and emotional troubles. People with CPTSD will tend to have a much more stable sense of self, their emotional issues surfacing as guilt, shame, or low self-esteem.
Childhood traumatic events are risk factors for developing bipolar disorders, in addition to a more severe clinical presentation over time (primarily an earlier age at onset and an increased risk of suicide attempt and substance misuse).
While venting can be a natural part of working through our negative emotions, does it become toxic at a certain point? It turns out, it can. And that's when venting becomes trauma dumping — the act of oversharing your emotions in a way that becomes harmful to the other person.
If you often feel as though your life has become unmanageable, this could be a sign that you have some unresolved emotional trauma. Emotional overreactions are a common symptom of trauma. A victim of trauma might redirect their overwhelming emotions towards others, such as family and friends.
But repetitive, nearly constant apologies for every little thing—or, what Psychologist Paige Carambio, PsyD calls, “apologizing for existing”—can actually be an after-effect of trauma, a self-preservation technique survivors may think they still need to utilize in order to protect themselves.