How We Live With Trauma Without Realizing It

Psychological trauma is an experience that goes beyond a person's ability to control a threat at some point. It is accompanied by feelings of helplessness and helplessness and leads to a lasting shaking of self-understanding and the world.

In other words, in trauma you cannot use the individual abilities you have to overcome the danger you are exposed to and your integrity and even life are threatened.

The psychic mechanism of trauma

The feeling of helplessness comes when you feel that you and no one else can help. Against this background appears the dissociation, which means that you "break" from that part that hurts you, to abandon it a little, so that you can survive. In other words, our psyche knows that we are at risk, that we cannot defend ourselves and it needs to set in motion some mechanisms of survival.

The traumatized part remains in us, along with the healthy and the surviving part, and makes its presence felt through certain symptoms and sufferings. This traumatized part retains the "age" of the initial trauma. That is why our feelings and reactions today when we work from trauma, are similar to those of the moment when it happened.

What does emotional or psychological trauma mean?

The occurrence of trauma is determined by:

• situations or events outside of us that have marked us, which we find traumatic (being neglected by parents in childhood, the death of a dear friend, being a witness or the victim of abuse);

• how these experiences affect us.

The way a person internalizes and feels trauma is very personal. This aspect depends on the way the person is constructed, on his / her development process, on the significance he/she attaches to an event, on the socio-cultural factors.

What all forms of trauma have in common are fear and defenseless vulnerability. There is a fear of trusting other people, a fear of abandonment, of being humiliated; in a broader sense, he is afraid of the world around him.

There are several types of trauma, including:

• Loss trauma;

• Attachment trauma, symbiotic, love;

• Identity trauma;

• The trauma of an attachment system;

• The trauma of becoming an aggressor.

In trauma, there are several phases:

• Trauma exposure phase (panic reactions, intense fear, numbness, confusion);

• Invasion phase (memories of the traumatic situation that produce certain sensations, cognitions, thoughts, feelings related to the event);

• Coping with trauma and experiencing a personal reaction;

• The relative conclusion: the ability to remember the trauma in its essential points, but without thinking only about it.

Some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over time, but most people will have subclinical symptoms, so they will not receive a diagnosis because they have identified their coping mechanisms. Thus, the impact of trauma can be subtle or downright destructive.

Why do we have trauma?

Most traumas have their source in childhood. Children are the most vulnerable to trauma because they do not understand each other very well, they do not understand the world around them and they do not have the necessary resources to deal with possible dangers.

Part of what early trauma means is the lack of an active memory of what was traumatic - you don't know exactly when the trauma began and when reality began to appear so fearful and distorted to us.

How do we identify trauma in our bodies?

Traumatic experiences remain in the body, even without thinking about them, without realizing them. The mind sometimes blocks these memories as a form of defense. The mind does everything it can to avoid discomfort, to postpone the moment of confrontation.

The first step in overcoming trauma is to realize that we live with a trauma that distorts our reality. Thus, when you do not know where the ferocity of a particular place or situation comes from, the condition must be addressed, with the help of a few questions:

• What associations did your brain make?

• What signals does your body send at a certain time/place?

• When has this happened before?

• What methods do you use to avoid dealing with those conditions?

Thus, a sign of healing or a path to healing is to be careful about all these signals of the body. And be curious about them.

Asking for help is a sign of health. Instead of continuing to live with many unanswered questions, discuss them with a specialist, enrich your vocabulary of emotions, learn to describe your condition and needs.

Specialized help will help you find that optimal operating condition.

Last but not least, mental health professionals come to their clients with a message of hope: you are not alone, it is not your fault for what happened to you, and there are ways to recover so that life is no longer a scary place.