Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Emotional & Psychological Trauma - Lake Behavioral Hospital (2024)

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Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Emotional & Psychological Trauma - Lake Behavioral Hospital? ›

Emotional Trauma Symptoms

2. Unexpected Physical Symptoms. Physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or dizziness can often accompany the release of trauma. These symptoms may arise seemingly out of nowhere and can be perplexing to those experiencing them.

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Psychological trauma can leave you struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won't go away.

Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.

Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.

Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Most people who go through traumatic events may have temporary difficulty adjusting and coping, but with time and good self-care, they usually get better.

What does unhealed childhood trauma manifest as? ›

Unhealed trauma can lead to a variety of mental health challenges in adulthood, including depression, anxiety, and addiction. By understanding the link between childhood wounds and mental health in adulthood, we can learn how to start the process of healing trauma and achieve a healthier, happier life.

In other words, fawning is a trauma response where a person behaves in a people-pleasing way to avoid conflict and establish a sense of safety. When faced with trauma, fawning serves as a coping mechanism. By developing a fawn trauma response, trauma survivors attempt to avoid conflict by pleasing their abuser.

Feeling horror, helplessness, or extreme fear. Having little or no social support after the event. Dealing with stressors after the event, such as the loss of a loved one, pain and injury, or loss of a job or home. Having a personal history or family history of mental illness or substance use.

Trauma triggers can also produce feelings of sadness, shame, or stress (feelings which can be triggers themselves). In some cases, these feelings may lead a person to engage in addictive or destructive behaviors (substance abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, etc.).

Seeking therapy, practicing self-care, and engaging in activities that bring you joy can all help promote mental health and well-being. By adopting healthy lifestyle habits, you can help promote healing and recovery after trauma.

When you release trauma, you will feel less tension throughout your body. You may clench your jaw, hold your shoulders tight, and have other physiological reactions to the trauma you feel. This makes you feel tense and anxious. As you heal from the trauma, these issues will go away.

Holistic Ways to Heal and Release Trapped Trauma

Here are holistic ways to discharge old trauma activation: Body awareness practices like yoga, meditation, breathwork, and somatic movement. These bring non-judgmental attention to physical sensations and held tension.

The 'fight or flight' response is how people sometimes refer to our body's automatic reactions to fear. There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'.