Trauma

Delaying a response to a difficult situation happens often. Avoiding looking at your child’s grades online, looking the other way when you know your child’s behavior isn’t acceptable or respectful, and staying quiet when your spouse’s anger gets explosive, even though he or she isn’t abusive, are all ways a primary caregiver may be responding to trauma that was never fully processed or healed. A simple definition of trauma is a traumatic event or series of events that impacts a person’s sense of self, relationships with others, and everyday life. Trauma responses can be immediate or delayed, and they can be normal and temporary, depending on the individual. Trauma responses can also be detrimental to a person’s way of life in certain areas if not healed. When a primary caregiver isn’t aware of how his own trauma has impacted him, it can reveal itself in how he parents his children. The Difference Between Delayed and Timely Response to Trauma If you experienced trauma as a child or even as a young adult or teen, it can be difficult to discern whether you’ve processed the grief and other emotions that can coincide with trauma. Immediate physical responses to trauma may include restlessness or a feeling of not being sure what to do. You may have excess energy but struggle to know how to use it. Cognitive responses that are more immediate include an inability to concentrate or struggling to discern the time lapse during a traumatic event. However, delayed response to the same trauma may be that instead of struggling to concentrate, you detach yourself from responsibilities that would require concentration. You don’t go to work, struggle to eat and sleep, and experience thoughts that seem unwanted and intrusive related to the traumatic event. This keeps you in a perpetual [...]

When a person undergoes a traumatic experience, it can sometimes be minimized, depending on how and when the experience took place, how old the person is, or even their natural wiring and personality. However, there are some ways to identify if your struggles might be rooted in trauma. One way is to look at your everyday life in three categories: physical, emotional, and mental. We’ll look more in-depth at how your responses in body and routine, feelings and emotional reactions, and thoughts and patterns may be clues to how you’re really doing. Physical Clues of a Traumatic Experience Physical clues can include anything from practical, everyday life and habits to your physical body. First, let’s explore your everyday habits and routines. If you’re struggling with any of the basics of human existence (food, sleep, moving your body, feeling less than yourself), these alone won’t necessarily tell you that your body is responding to a traumatic experience. But it’s worth noting which of these are out of whack with what you’d describe as your normal experience. For example, if you’ve found that sleep isn’t something you typically struggle with, yet it’s been a weekly or every-other-day struggle since you went through something scary, hard, or unexpected that caused you trauma, add it to your physical record. You can do this by jotting things down on a Post-it note, keeping a journal of your physical health, or just making a note in your phone. It’s a good idea to record the sleepless patterns, however, so that you can give more details to your doctor if you decide to investigate further. Another physical cue that may go unchecked is your appetite. It’s easy to overlook a weight change when we’re stressed or too busy to take notice. However, pay attention to your [...]

Our bodies are designed and function in an amazing way. They help us to adapt to a wide range of situations and experiences, and we can operate even under hostile conditions. This means that we are quite resilient and can cope with enormous pressures. However, being resilient is not the same thing as being invincible. Our bodies and minds do take strain and can be overwhelmed in their ability to cope well. Many life circumstances can affect a person’s well-being, and some of these can significantly diminish a person’s enjoyment of life. Not only that, but their ability to perform daily functions can be significantly hampered by these experiences. One way that this happens is the result of post-traumatic stress disorder. What is post-traumatic stress disorder? It may not be a given in every situation, but after a person has witnessed or experienced a traumatic event, they could find themselves struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that can occur after a deeply threatening or scary event. Even if you didn’t directly experience it, the shock of what happened can make it hard for you to continue living a normal life. PTSD is a mental health condition that can affect a person’s mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being, and if it is severe enough, it can interfere with their ability to function well in daily life. PTSD can affect anyone, regardless of their age, gender, or cultural background. The good news is that it can be treated with psychotherapy and medications. It is not always the case that when a person experiences a traumatic event, they will develop PTSD. Experiencing war, a natural disaster, a motor vehicle accident, terrorism, violent crime, or other similar events may lead to PTSD, but it is [...]

Trauma responses that are a little outside of the “norm” often get made fun of or dismissed. What might feel silly to someone else might be your body remembering how it had to survive in a tense or dangerous situation. People might brush off your unusual actions with a roll of their eyes or even a chuckle, but those quirky little things you do might be more than just unique personality traits. They might be signs that you have unresolved trauma in your life and that your body is fighting desperately to protect you from perceived threats. Our bodies respond to trauma in different ways that show up uniquely to us. Maybe your hands sweat every time you hear your phone ding with a notification. While that might seem odd and a gross overreaction to those around you, it might be a learned response because your boss only texts when they are angry. Your friends might giggle a little when you get visibly angry at them for using your full name, but to you, it serves as a reminder of parents who spewed it out just before a verbal storm. The World’s View on “Silly” Trauma Responses The people around you might be critical or cruel about behavior they consider to be odd or different. Society as a whole can be harsh to those who suffer from trauma they do not understand and in ways they do not view as normal. If you did not grow up in a war zone or with obvious signs of abuse, people tend to assume you should be just fine to act in a way that fits their definition of normal. But what if you suffered years of emotional neglect, chronic bullying, or having to be the adult kid taking care of younger siblings? [...]

There comes a time in all of our lives when we must face the worst experience we could imagine. It might be anything from the death of a loved one to a chronic illness diagnosis, sudden poverty, or a relationship that turns toxic. Sometimes these things happen when we are too young to understand them, but they affect our lives for decades, nevertheless. Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do, we can’t get past a certain experience. It’s as if our lives took a screenshot of the traumatic moment, and now that picture is forever framed as a reminder of what we went through. Every time we look at it, we feel uncomfortable, but we don’t know what to do with those feelings. What does it mean to be stuck in trauma, and how can we get unstuck? The Great Escape from Trauma For many people, the most natural way of dealing with trauma is to intellectualize it. Whenever they encounter trauma, in whatever form it takes, they naturally respond by trying to think through it. They might become silent, withdrawn, and stoic, endlessly replaying events in their mind while trying to figure out how it could have gone differently. Alternatively, they might find a person with whom they talk about the life-altering events, only to go round in circles without ever finding a way past the trauma. Their attempts to cope with or process trauma are ineffective because we can’t think our way out of trauma. We must feel our way out of it, as uncomfortable as it is. The reason we find comfort in intellectualizing trauma and our feelings is that it distances us from the events. For example, a man who is navigating a messy divorce might talk to his therapist about the details [...]