Trauma symptoms and behaviour often look nothing like the original trauma, so it can be very hard to know they are directly connected, even when you know what your trauma was. When you are unsure if you have experienced trauma, but have a whole lot of distressing symptoms and behaviours, it can be especially confusing.
Each trauma symptom and behaviour represents the way your nervous system adapted to facing threats and danger when you were too young and powerless.
Below are six of the common ways that trauma might be showing up in your life.
- Disordered eating and eating disorders
When you were never given the tools to manage your emotions, and you’re also carrying past pain that makes those emotions feel even bigger, your feelings can start to seem too much, too scary, or too overwhelming. In those moments, food can become a way of coping. Whether it’s restricting what you eat, bingeing, emotional eating, or constantly dieting, these patterns are often attempts to manage those intense feelings and find a sense of control.
- Addictions
Addictions don’t just include alcohol and drugs. They can include work, shopping, gambling, gaming, exercise, social media, or anything that brings relief or distraction from emotional pain. When trauma leaves us feeling unsafe or disconnected, finding ways to numb or escape through addictions can be soothing.
- Anxiety and anxiety disorders
Anxiety comes in lots of different forms, including panic attacks, constant worries, social anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, phobias, and health anxiety. It may seem strange, but anxieties are usually ways to protect you from perceived threats. The roots of anxiety are often tied to earlier experiences of feeling unsafe.
- Dissociation
Dissociation happens when feelings or memories get too much, and your mind disconnects from the present moment. It can feel like being detached from your body, disconnected from your surroundings, lightheaded or dizzy, or as if you’re on autopilot. Dissociation often develops when people are quite young, and they experienced things that were too overwhelming for their minds but they couldn’t escape, so their minds found a way to escape instead.
- Depression
Depression isn’t just sadness. It can feel like a lack of joy, numbness, emptiness, exhaustion, or a lack of motivation. Trauma often underlies these feelings. It can show up as a chronic sense of loneliness, anger that was never allowed to be expressed, or a deep feeling of having no control over your life.
- Self-harming behaviours and suicidal thoughts
Self-harming behaviours and suicidal thoughts can be some of the most painful signs of unresolved trauma. They often arise from deep emotional pain, feelings of shame, or belief that relief is not possible. There can be ways of dealing with emotions that feel too overwhelming.
Why it’s so hard to make the connection
One of the most confusing things about trauma is that the problems don’t look connected to the original experience, even if you know what the trauma was, and especially if you don’t. It can feel like what is going on now, is completely unrelated to back then. For many though, the struggles now are representations of their nervous system’s response to earlier pain.