How Trauma Can Impact You, and How to Overcome It

In today’s post, I want to explore how the manifestations of and constellations of trauma symptoms are as varied, complex, and unique as the individuals who endure the trauma and what steps can be taken to heal from it.

I want to point out that those with trauma histories may not have memories, but rather only sensations that seem unrelated to any source of trauma. Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all definition of trauma to see yourself in.

Common signals and symptoms of trauma may include:

• Depression and or anxiety (including generalized anxiety)
• Irritability and being very short-tempered
• Loss of interest in things that used to bring you pleasure, or in life itself
• Numbing through substances and behaviors
• Trouble concentrating
• Insomnia and challenges sleeping (including nightmares)
• Feeling emotionally flooded and overwhelmed easily
• An inability to visualize a future (let alone a positive future)
• Hopelessness and despair
• Shame, a sense that you’re worthless
• Few or no memories, feeling like your childhood is a fog or a big blank
• Hypervigilance and mistrust
• Body symptoms such as aches, pains, headaches
• Substance abuse and eating disorders
• Self-harming or destructive behaviors
• Feeling like you have no true self, like you don’t know who you really are*

For now, though, the two most effective tools for relational trauma recovery work that we have are psychotherapy and EMDR therapy.

Psychotherapy—particularly with a trauma-informed licensed mental health professional—is a wonderful treatment tool, particularly for those who experienced trauma in the context of an early relationship and who, for their recovery, may need reparative relationship experiences.

There’s also a growing body of research that EMDR therapy, one of the two evidence-based modalities that the World Health Organization recognizes as efficacious for treating PTSD, is a wonderful tool to complement talk therapy in the treatment of complex relational trauma.

Regardless of how you decide to do the healing work, recognize this:

Trauma is not just something that happens in single, isolated, and terrible events.

Trauma can be something that arises from recurring, painful relational experiences early in life.

And, you can be high-functioning and still come from a traumatic background.

Your life can look amazing on paper and you can still be suffering inwardly.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

What’s important, though, is that you don’t dismiss your personal history or circumstances as unworthy of being deemed “traumatic” because of “how good you had it or how good your life looks now.”

Trauma is indiscriminate in who and how it impacts.

Source; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-the-whole-beautiful/202203/how-trauma-can-impact-you-and-how-overcome-it

Reflection;

Trauma is very complex and it affects everyone differently. Psychotherapy and EMDR therapy are useful tools that will help in coping with trauma. Everyone's path to healing is different, find out what works for you.

What are some ways you think would help cope with trauma?

#Trauma #PTSD #Healing #MentalHealth