If you’ve suffered from traumatic events, it’s normal to feel anxious and overwhelmed sometimes. But if you’ve been feeling these feelings for a long time, it could be something more serious.
It could be a sign that you have unresolved trauma, and it needs to be treated. Not only can it be a mental health issue, but it can also cause physical problems.
Symptoms
Unresolved trauma has the potential to take a toll on your physical and emotional health. This is because trauma can affect your brain's ability to process information and can lead to stress-related health issues such as depression and heart disease.
Symptoms of unresolved trauma vary from person to person, but can include flashbacks, anxiety, nightmares, and a high sensitivity to stimuli. These symptoms can cause a flood of stress hormones in the body, such as cortisol, which can negatively impact your overall physical health.
Children who have experienced traumatic events in their lives often show signs of distress from an early age. These include excessive clinginess, crying fits, irritability, temper tantrums and bed-wetting, among other things.
In severe cases, the individual may start to avoid people in his or her life. This can be a big problem, because it makes it hard to trust other people and to have healthy relationships. This can lead to isolation and a low sense of self-worth.
Causes
Symptoms of unresolved trauma can arise in response to any kind of threat, whether it be a one-time event or an ongoing, relentless stressor. Often, the events that result in trauma occur in childhood and continue to impact an individual’s lifelong sense of self.
As a result, it’s easy to understand how people with unresolved trauma can be more vulnerable to a range of mental health conditions. These include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide and self-harm, as well as other emotional and physical health problems that can require professional treatment.
When an individual is dealing with an unresolved traumatic experience, they are likely to have frequent triggers that evoke feelings of anger and fear, sadness and shame. They may also have a hard time identifying and processing these feelings. These can leave them feeling depressed and alone.
Treatment
Unresolved trauma can be a difficult thing to deal with, both physically and mentally. It can affect your relationships and overall well-being, which is why it’s important to seek treatment if you are struggling.
Survivors of traumatic stress often engage in a variety of behaviors to manage their symptoms. These include avoidance, self-medication (e.g., alcohol abuse), compulsive or impulsive behaviors, and self-injury.
The effects of unresolved trauma can be subtle, yet they can be very detrimental to your health and wellbeing. For example, you might have trouble sleeping, eat poorly or have mood swings.
Often, these issues are caused by memories that have been pushed down into a ’black box’ in the mind. Judith Zackson, PhD, founder and clinical director of the Zackson Psychology Group, says that this is a process that is very common.
Prevention
The impact of unresolved trauma can have lasting and detrimental effects on your life. It can influence your habits, relationships, family and decision making as well as cause physical pain or disease.
Traumatic experiences can affect your brain's ability to perceive the world as safe and secure, says Dr. Zackson. They can cause you to have irrational fears of people, places and things that were not there before the traumatic event.
Unresolved trauma can be hard to recognize, but you can watch for some signs that indicate it's time to seek professional help. It's also important to understand how to prevent re-traumatization.
Researchers and health professionals often use the term prevention to describe interventions that reduce risks or threats to a person's or community's health and wellbeing. They typically divide prevention into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.
