Have you ever wondered how to tell if you have trauma? Trauma is complex, as it can stem from various events and impact individuals differently. While we often associate trauma with severe conditions like PTSD, it’s crucial to recognize that untreated trauma manifests in diverse ways, sometimes subtly and unexpectedly.
Each person reacts uniquely to life’s challenges, leading to a spectrum of coping mechanisms and symptoms associated with trauma. Identifying key signs early on can help prevent deeper emotional impacts.
While initial reactions to trauma are normal, persistent symptoms in the aftermath may indicate unresolved trauma. When faced with adversity, recovering from the pain and regaining a sense of safety can be a gradual process. Therefore, we aim to highlight telltale signs that someone may be harboring undiagnosed trauma. As you read, take a moment to notice if you relate to any of these experiences or if you know anyone in your life who does.
How do you know if you are traumatized?
1. Resistance
What does resistance look like?
- Being stuck all the time and not being able to move forward in life.
- Severe procrastination and knowing we need to do something, but just not getting it done.
- Using common behavior change strategies such as goals, routines, and external accountability and having these not work or take a LOT of effort.
- Feeling passive, invisible, or like they can’t find their drive.
Why does resistance indicate that you might have trauma?
- Resistance is usually a sign that someone is living more or less in the freeze portion of their autonomic nervous system.
2. Healthy Eating but Still Unwell
What does eating healthy but still being unwell look like?
- Consuming a diet rich in unprocessed and whole foods, and/or engaging in regular exercise.
- Seeking advice from both traditional and alternative medical practitioners and adhering strictly to their recommendations.
- Continuing to experience digestive issues and various chronic health problems.
- Struggling to lose body fat despite efforts.
Why does eating healthy but still being unwell indicate that you might have trauma?
- Research suggests that many individuals in this situation have a physiological system operating in the freeze response.
- Their metabolism is significantly reduced, resulting in insufficient oxygen delivery to cells.
- The internal threat mechanism signals danger despite their health-conscious behaviors.
- Despite their active pursuit of better health, these behaviors are overridden by nervous system physiology geared towards hiding and hibernating.
3. Unexplained Anxiety and Panic Attacks
What does feeling anxiety and fear – and even panic attacks – for no apparent reason look like?
- Engaging in mindfulness or cognitive-based practices (e.g., positive thinking) but still experiencing anxiety or panic attacks.
- Establishing daily routines and strategies for success, yet feeling overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty.
- Sensing physical manifestations of anxiety such as butterflies, agitation, or tightness in various parts of the body, or conversely, feeling emotionally numb.
- Experiencing loud, predominantly negative, or obsessive thoughts.
Why does feeling anxiety and fear – and even panic attacks – for no apparent reason indicate that you might have trauma?
- The autonomic nervous system remains on high alert, scanning for threats and prompting fight-or-flight responses.
- These survival patterns persist until addressed because they stem from internal physiology stuck in past trauma rather than external present circumstances.
4. Being caught in a cycle of toxic relationships and self-sabotage
What does being caught in a cycle of toxic relationships and self-sabotage look like?
- Remaining in unsatisfying or toxic relationships despite recognizing their detrimental effects.
- Struggling to break unhealthy relationship patterns without understanding the underlying reasons.
- Difficulty establishing clear boundaries or making decisive choices.
- Feeling disconnected from gut instincts and struggling to discern what feels safe or unsafe.
- Engaging in self-destructive behaviors and facing obstacles in career advancement and self-expression.
- Finding it challenging to advocate for oneself effectively.
Why does being caught in a cycle of toxic relationships and self-sabotage indicate that you might have trauma?
- Living in a state of survival stress, the body and nervous system perceive constant danger and threat, impairing the ability to accurately assess safety.
- Often associated with experiences of early trauma or misattunement, manifesting as a combination of fight, flight, and freeze responses.
Related Reading: How to Tell If I Am In A Toxic Relationship?
5. Chronic Physical and Mental Health Conditions
What does having chronic physical and mental health conditions look like?
- Presence of chronic illnesses such as fibromyalgia, burnout, Crohn’s disease, IBS, autoimmune disorders, depression, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, and other sleep abnormalities.
- Persistent chronic fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome, CFS) and/or chronic pain.
- Overall lack of energy, compromised immune system function, and difficulty in recovery, regeneration, and repair processes.
- Consulting multiple health providers without receiving satisfactory answers or long-term solutions.
- Receiving dismissive responses suggesting that their symptoms are “all in their head.”
Why does having chronic physical and mental health conditions indicate that you might have trauma?
- A dysregulated autonomic nervous system resulting from stored survival stress physiology impacts physical systems.
- Often involves buried fight and flight responses overshadowed by the freeze response.
What are the sources of trauma?
Sources of trauma can be diverse, encompassing various life experiences that overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope. Here are four categories that trauma sources commonly fall into:
Shock Trauma
Shock trauma is what we tend to think of most of the time when we think of trauma. It includes accidents, such as a downhill ski racer crashing or a child falling off their bike and breaking an arm. Natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes can also lead to shock trauma, as can physical and sexual abuse. Even verbal abuse is considered shock trauma, particularly over the age of five years old.
Accumulated Stress
Accumulated stress, although not often recognized as traumatic, can significantly impact individuals over time. Simply living in industrialized cultures can contribute to this form of trauma. We accumulate stress from various sources, including our work environment, insufficient downtime, financial pressures, family responsibilities, and lack of sleep, among others. Similar to a swimming pool overloaded with beach balls, accumulated stress can gradually overwhelm the nervous system and adversely affect all body systems over time.
Medical and More Trauma
This broader category encompasses what I refer to as “medical and more” trauma, often overlooked as a potential cause of ongoing struggles in individuals’ lives, even long after the incident occurred. It includes medical procedures, anesthesia trauma, near-death experiences, and incidents occurring while unconscious, such as being drugged. Even seemingly routine medical procedures like tonsillectomies or setting broken bones, as well as interactions with medical professionals lacking empathy, can trigger survival stress reactions, including fight, flight, and freeze responses, which become trapped within us.
Early and Developmental Trauma
This category, perhaps the most prevalent in industrialized societies, encompasses experiences occurring during early development. Simplifying this vast category, we can think of it as frightening events that transpire before the age of 3 or even during pregnancy. Another significant aspect of early and developmental trauma, often overlooked, involves a lack of secure attachment and healthy attunement from a consistent parent or caregiver. This form of trauma profoundly influences our tendency to remain in survival mode and presents challenges in the healing process.
Related Reading: How Childhood Trauma Affects Us As Adults
Can you have trauma without knowing?
Absolutely, trauma can indeed occur without conscious awareness. During terrifying or life-threatening events, our memory functioning can undergo significant changes, leading to dissociative states and other trauma-related phenomena.
For instance, explicit memory, which involves conscious recall of specific details, may be blocked or not encoded properly during a traumatic event. This can happen due to increased activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing emotions, which can override input from the hippocampus, responsible for memory formation.
Meanwhile, implicit memory, which involves the unconscious recall of emotional reactions associated with the event, may remain intact, even though there’s no explicit memory of the factual context.
As a result, individuals may later experience disturbing emotions and bodily sensations without being able to pinpoint the exact event that triggered them. Additionally, they may experience dissociation, where they feel disconnected from their memories, making it difficult to recall explicit details even if they have them.
Understanding how trauma is encoded in memory is crucial for comprehending its lasting and damaging effects on individuals. This concept applies to both acute trauma, which occurs from a single event, and developmental trauma, which arises from ongoing or repeated experiences, as they both influence memory processes closely.
What happens when an adult has unresolved trauma?
When an adult has unresolved trauma from childhood, it can significantly impact their life and mental well-being. Alan Sroufe’s longitudinal study highlights how children with unreliable or unsupportive parents often develop an insecure model of autonomous life.
These individuals may exhibit an excessive need for attention, high levels of frustration, and chronic anxiety, even in minor challenges. This constant state of arousal can lead to difficulties in regulating emotions and exploring new things, contributing to unpleasant behaviors that may result in rejection from peers and caregivers.
Such early experiences of feeling unsafe, facing frequent disapproval, and struggling to accomplish tasks can shape an individual’s internal model of themselves and their world. This model influences how they perceive themselves and navigate relationships and situations in adulthood.
People with a disorganized-disoriented attachment style are particularly at risk of developing severe psychological issues or psychiatric conditions due to the absence of a secure base during early childhood.
The lack of a secure base can lead to profound loneliness, separation anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and a persistent search for a sense of internal goodness. One of the most significant consequences is a disorganized sense of self characterized by feelings of inadequacy, shame, and unworthiness.
Therapy can be effective in addressing unresolved developmental trauma by reaching memories of trauma and changing their impact on present functioning.
By understanding developmental trauma, therapists can tailor interventions to help individuals heal and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
What does unprocessed trauma feel like?
Unprocessed trauma can manifest as a range of intense and overwhelming emotional experiences and sensations. Allan Schore’s research highlights the impact of early trauma on the development of the right hemisphere of the brain, particularly the right orbitofrontal cortex, which plays a central role in processing emotional experiences, empathy, trust, and social signals.
During early development, the right hemisphere forms connections with the mother’s right hemisphere, fostering emotional and social attunement between the child and the caregiver.
This connection significantly influences the child’s sense of self and their experience of being. The right hemisphere processes social signals and integrates them with the individual’s sense of self, creating what Schore refers to as the ‘implicit I’ or sense of self.
In therapeutic settings with adult clients, the right orbitofrontal cortex becomes active, indicating its importance in addressing trauma-related issues.
Individuals who have experienced developmental trauma may have an impaired sense of self, accompanied by emotions such as shame, anxiety, anger, helplessness, and despair.
These emotions become intertwined with their sense of identity, as the memory of feeling them in the context of the caregiver relationship becomes encoded into their sense of self.
For individuals whose sense of self has been affected by long-term trauma, these emotions may dominate their internal experiences and shape their perceptions of themselves and the world around them. Unprocessed trauma can, therefore, feel like an ongoing struggle with intense emotions and a distorted sense of self, impacting various aspects of daily life and relationships.
Know that you can heal
The important message here is that healing is possible, regardless of how long ago the traumatic events unfolded—whether it’s been years or even decades. Moreover, you can equip yourself with strategies to navigate stressful situations more effectively in the future, reducing the likelihood of experiencing further trauma.
In my work, I’ve encountered individuals with diverse backgrounds and past experiences. While each person’s healing journey is unique, and the process unfolds at its own pace, everyone possesses the inherent capacity to activate their healing mechanisms and cultivate resilience.
