Response to trauma can look an awful lot like ‘normal’

There are aspects of our lives, relationships, businesses, education system, medical system, religions, and mother culture at large that are so prevalent that we have no idea they are actually trauma responses held over from childhood trauma. Many of them just feel, well, normal.

Emotional childhood trauma follows us into adulthood — Unhealed childhood trauma follows us into adulthood

Understanding Childhood Trauma

Perhaps you are aware that you have unhealed wounds from childhood trauma. Or perhaps, you think that trauma is something that happens to other people. That was me. I never identified with words like trauma and abuse. But that’s also because those words don’t exactly mean what I thought they meant.

Let’s start with some clarity on definition.

Trauma is a wound. In this case, we’re talking about emotional and psychological trauma, not blunt force trauma.

Abuse is mistreatment.

To use blunt force as an example though, being hit is an abuse. The bruise it creates is a trauma wound.

In this case, the soft tissue is overwhelmed by the impact to such a degree that bruising resulted. If the blow is strong enough, the bone may be overwhelmed and fracture.

Translating this to emotional trauma, a trauma wound can be created any time a person is emotionally overwhelmed. By anything.

Abuse commonly creates a trauma wound but not always. Just like being hit doesn’t always leave a bruise.

Likewise, we can be overwhelmed by circumstances that are not abusive.

Even children who grow up in good enough families experience childhood trauma wounds. And even those good enough parents unwittingly create trauma wounds in their children. Sometimes it happens through abuse that’s not recognized as abuse and sometimes through not effectively meeting all of a child’s needs because the needs are simply not recognized or are misunderstood and sometimes even by seemingly harmless or even loving actions.

For example, my grandparents loved me dearly. They are the only people I ever felt unconditional love from. And they were emotionally unavailable which created trauma wounds for me.

As another example, my mom was one of my favorite people and she supported me in many ways. And she was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness that worsened throughout her life. The majority of my childhood trauma wounds were created by abuse that was the result of her mental illness even though she loved me and was trying to do what she thought was in my best interest.

Whether you were raised in an overtly abusive and neglectful home with violence, disaster and stressful environments or in a good enough home, where you could feel safe, relax into routine, thrive and build resilience, if you are alive, you have trauma wounds. Just as it’s not possible to get through life without collecting some physical wounds, the same is true emotionally.

So what does it look like to have unhealed childhood trauma wounds?

How do you know what is or is not a trauma wound?

And how do you discern how it might be impacting your life?

This handy checklist will help you determine if childhood trauma may be impacting you.

Grab your free copy of: How Do I Know if I Have Unhealed Trauma?

1. Attention, memory or focus

While we all struggle with this at times, what we’re looking for is: is it situational or chronic?

If you are sick or overworked or going through a loss, then it’s perfectly natural to struggle with attention, memory and focus. But if you tend to struggle with this a lot or ongoing, then it may be a trauma response.

Experiencing childhood trauma as a child impacts development in many ways, including cognitively. If your attention struggles began in childhood, you likely have also been greatly shamed for it as if you were either willfully disobeying or were pathologized and told something is wrong with you.

While it’s important to provide proper support for learning disabilities, it’s also important to not pathologize a person. Trauma responses can exhibit as any mental or physical ailment or disability. Being neurodivergent, especially as a potential result of trauma does not mean there’s anything wrong with you.

This is one of those things that is so baked into our culture that we think that ‘normal’ is good and anything different is bad. And that’s simply not true. Different is different; neither good nor bad.

When we pathologize neurodivergence, we are blaming the victim. A person carries trauma wounds, then they’re held accountable for the way trauma has impacted them. But here’s the thing.

Whatever your trauma responses are, they are a normal response to abnormal circumstances. That bears repeating.

Trauma responses are normal responses to abnormal circumstances.

To assume otherwise, would be like pathologizing a person who hasn’t had access to food for being hungry all the time.

2. Feeling numb or disconnected somehow or spaced out, like you can’t think straight

I lived in this state much of the time for the first couple decades. By the time I was 7 or 8, I was convinced I was brain damaged and I carried that belief into my 30’s.

It’s actually a brilliant strategy that protects you in the moment from feeling pain or terror that would cause even greater harm. Disconnecting like this reminds me of an ostrich with its head in the sand.

Choosing to not be aware and present as something horrific and extremely overwhelming takes place is powerful. Continuing to live out our entire lives as ostriches is damaging though.

This is often triggered when trying to make decisions. We can send ourselves into a tailspin unable to figure out how to move forward.

It can be triggered when feeling lots of big feelings that we don’t know what to do with. Or by certain people, certain types of people, certain types of environments.

Someone I know and I met with a business coach once who spoke to us EXACTLY like our narcissistic parents. We were both so disconnected that we fell back into those old patterns for two hours before finally, I came online just enough to say, ‘wait a minute. I can just leave.’

But while I was numbed out, I didn’t even have the ability to recognize what was happening. I simply felt nothing and was back in that headspace that had me believing for so long that I was brain damaged.

Reconnecting with our Self, our Truth, is the inner work! This is the one single thing that will also facilitate all further healing. When we are not connected, at least to some degree, we’re simply not able to show up for ourselves.

My Reconnect Program focuses on getting you back online, so to speak, even as you learn how to apply new tools and perspectives. I’ll link to it in the show notes so you can find out more.

3. Trouble regulating intense emotions

I’ve struggled greatly with overwhelming anger. I know others who are crippled with sadness. It can be any emotion. I think we’ve all known people who struggle with overwhelming happiness.

We don’t tend to look at it like that. This is another example of how trauma responses are baked into our systems and cultures.

We have this tendency to label emotions as good or bad but good or bad doesn’t apply. Receiving a letter in the mail is neither good nor bad, it’s just a message. And that’s exactly what every emotion is.

Emotions arise to communicate very specific messages in order to inform us so that we may better recognize balance and imbalance. Some emotions point to imbalance in the form of unmet needs, take action to meet those needs and to restore balance. Some emotions point to what we are doing that is creating balance and homeostasis. Either way, an emotion is a messenger. Period.

When you look at it like that, it makes no sense to say one emotion is good and another is bad.

What we mean when we say that is that some emotions feel uncomfortable and we don’t know what to do with them. It’s like being hungry and saying that hunger is bad but not knowing how to feed ourselves.

Hunger is not the problem. Not knowing how to interpret the message is a disconnect that we can remedy.

So how can happiness be overwhelming or something that people struggle with?

Since happiness is a socially acceptable emotion and dubbed ‘good’, a common trauma response is to force ourselves into feeling happy or to at least put on the appearance of feeling happy.

As a child, I was shamed for feeling or expressing emotions and this is true for many. So even when we’re dying inside, if we can plaster on that smile, perhaps we’ll be accepted or at least more tolerated. Perhaps others won’t see us as selfish or needy.

I have known people who are so happy, there’s a manic feeling to it. Other telltale signs communicate the presence of childhood trauma. And they are unknowingly using happiness to mask.

Whether you struggle with anger, sadness, happiness, grief or any other emotion, emotional dysregulation can be triggered by:

Fear of rejection,
Criticism,
Pressured to rush or
Pressured to do something you don’t want to do.

My anger rose in the face of my fear of abandonment which was triggered by feeling ignored, dismissed, minimized.

I knew someone who also had anger issues but they imploded whereas I exploded. Their implosive anger was triggered by my explosions. When they imploded, they went into a freeze state that left them silent and uncommunicative, which triggered my feelings of being ignored and dismissed. If I’m being ignored and dismissed, they might leave me, hence my fear of abandonment. Round and round we went.

This is actually a pretty common dynamic. And not only romantic, it can be any type of relationship. It creates a circuitous pattern that is unhealthy for both people. It doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed. But it does mean that each person has to commit to doing their inner work and also commit to repairing the ruptures and working together to create healthy dynamics.

This actually feeds right into the next sign I wanted to share.

4. Unhealthy relationship dynamics

Again, this is referring to any kind of relationship. With a spouse, a friend, co-worker, boss, parent, child, anyone.

It can look like conflict, people pleasing, codependency, or anything else.

Not knowing how to engage in healthy ways is absolutely expected when we were never taught communication skills!

Even if you were raised by good enough parents, few people, especially generations ago, were emotionally intelligent and skilled at effective communication. I mean, basically, we’re all a bunch of children playing house, pretending we know what we’re doing.

Whether at home or school or work, you’ve likely just been expected to know these things or to figure them out. You may have been punished for mistakes or for not doing something the way someone else would have.

Things that are irrelevant to one person may have been blown out of proportion by someone who had a childhood trauma wound around that topic. Then it becomes a matter of finger pointing with both people believing they are right and the other person’s an ass.

What’s actually going on is that one or both people are triggered but they don’t realize that. Neither person feels seen, heard, accepted and neither knows how to see, hear or accept. They are caught in a spiral they don’t understand and don’t know how to get out of.

5. Trouble connecting with others

Being around others may be overwhelming for a number of reasons. If you have not yet learned emotional intelligence and effective communication, being around other people can feel like a ticking time bomb. You never know when you might be emotionally dysregulated.

If you’re empathic or energy sensitive, you might be soaking up other’s emotions and thoughts and not even realize it. That can create enormous emotional distress but also can lead to many mental and physical health issues over time. Things like chronic fatigue, lashing out, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorders, and many others things.

You may struggle with social anxiety, avoid social engagements or heavily populated places like malls and theaters. Perhaps you keep few or no friends, avoid dating or hold people at arm’s length. Or perhaps you are only able to be in relationships that you control.

This can leave you feeling alone and isolated and having no idea what to do about it. As a social animal, human connection is a very real need but how do you meet that need when being around others shuts you down?

Learning emotional intelligence and effective communication will help you see ways you can remove yourself from such dynamics. This is something my Reconnect Program targets, as well.

6. Fear of abandonment

I mentioned how my fear of abandonment triggers my explosive anger when I feel ignored, dismissed or minimized.

Fear of abandonment can also tie into trouble connecting with others in healthy ways.

You may choose to avoid connections like we mentioned above. If you never engage, then you’ll never be abandoned, right? Sometimes living in isolation can feel less scary than risking someone leaving us.

Conversely, settling for and staying in unhealthy dynamics can rob us of years and even decades.

Fear of abandonment can lead to codependent dynamics, depression, anxiety, people pleasing, being a doormat, being clingy and needy.

Whether we avoid and minimize connections or become codependent and clingy, we tend to be in relationship – with spouses, friends, family and even co-workers who are the opposite of how we show up. We fit together like puzzle pieces.

This is one reason seeking connection can feel so scary and impossible. Healthy enough people will not resonate with us nor we with them until we are healthy enough too. If we are at a healthy level of 3, then someone at a level 8 will be speaking a different language. Until we are able to heal to a sufficient degree, we will find it very challenging to form healthy partnerships with healthy enough people. In that way, many if not all of our relationships become self-fulfilling prophecies where we end up feeling abandoned.

7. Attracted to all the wrong people

Piggy backing off of that, we can have a tendency to be attracted to people who are emotionally unavailable, who have a destructively low energy, are stuck in a victim / scarcity mindset, are potentially abusive, may not be trustworthy and integrous.

There are very good reasons for this.

Often, these people feel familiar. I’ve been in many relationships that felt familiar, that had my nervous system saying, ‘this is what love feels like’. I believed the person and relationship were healthy, because it was SO much better than my parents. What I didn’t realize is that, while it was healthier than my parents in some ways it was still a long ways from being healthy.

We may also be attractive to the wrong people because healthy people feel so boring when you’re in a very unhealthy place. Many years ago, a guy was interested in me and at first I felt attracted to him. But as I got to know him, I found him unbearably boring. He was a good kid (we were teenagers), he went home on time, did all his homework, made good grades, etc. He would have been a great influence on me! But I was caught up with raising my brother, not being beat up at school, avoiding my violent father at home and my mom’s pedophile boyfriends. I was too jacked up on stress hormones to care about such mundane things as curfew and grades.

Sometimes we can be attracted to the wrong people because we think they’re broken and we can help fix them. Other people can become pet projects that feed into our need to be needed and into our fear of abandonment. As long as they need us, they won’t leave us.

8. Depression, anxiety, or any mental health or physical health issue

Everything is energy. Every physical object is comprised at its smallest parts, as energy. Likewise, emotions and thoughts are all energy.

Unhealed childhood trauma wounds are frozen lakes of energy inside. Suppressing emotions does not mean the emotions go away. It means they all pile up inside and we tote them around with us until we’re able to allow a lake to thaw, and we’re then able to release that pent up energy.

Carrying around all that energy for a lifetime takes its toll. Every single mental or physical symptom you can think of can potentially be the result of carrying around all that frozen energy.

This is also why the initial stages of dedicated healing is so freaking hard! You are consciously choosing to face things you didn’t have the ability to face before. You’re actively allowing one frozen lake after another to thaw, complete it’s wave action (energy behaves in waves) and to slowly roll out of your system.

Over time, there are fewer lakes and they’re smaller and it becomes easier, gentler.

Having said that, it’s also important to have support, especially in the beginning stages. Not having a full understanding of childhood trauma can lead you to do too much too soon.

That was my MO. When I first learned I have unhealed wounds, my thought was, ‘oh my gosh, then let’s heal! I am committed to supporting myself.’ I told my new therapist that I was ready to jump in, all in.

She cautioned that it’s important to not go too fast. What? If I’m able to, then why wouldn’t I? She didn’t explain concepts like retraumatization, titration or pendulation. These are all critical tools to healing in supportive and healthy ways.

My jumping in too fast caused many new trauma wounds, deepened existing wounds and made the entire process far more painful, debilitating and dangerous than it needed to be.

If you decide you need support, it’s critical that you work with a trauma trained coach or therapist. Most coaches and therapists are not trauma trained! Do your research to be sure you’re with the right person.

If you don’t know if you’d be best supported by a coach or a therapist, book a free call with me and we’ll figure it out together. If I’m not one of the best resources for you, I’ll tell you that.

9. Polluting our bodies

Smoking cigarettes or vaping, overeating or eating unhealthy foods, drinking to get a buzz or to get drunk, doing drugs, even using marijuana to get high.

I’m not talking about medicinal marijuana, I’m talking about getting high.

The two things these all have in common are, one, we know they are not good for us and two, they all help disconnect us from ourselves, from our bodies and emotions.

Eating crap food like chips, cake or burgers, occasionally, is not of concern. It is, though, when that makes up a large portion of what you consume.

All of these speak to the degree of our disconnection from Self. When we are deeply connected and healed, we love ourselves completely. When you love someone, you would not choose to do something knowingly harmful to them.

We know smoking and vaping and drinking and using drugs and overeating and the Standard American Diet are all extremely unhealthy. The fact that we also tend to minimize that fact is what makes this a glaring trauma response that has been accepted as ‘normal’ by our traumatized society.

This minimization is standard addict behavior. Making fun of eating organic or paleo or other attempts, or making fun of people who exercise or vacation or take care of themselves in any way is a trauma response that is used to deflect attention from the ways we are abusing ourselves.

If I am afraid of being called out for overeating or of having my food taken away from me, then I might talk crap about all those stupid people who are so concerned with every bite they take. Do you hear the hyperbole?

My family did that with food. My dad’s family did that with drugs and alcohol. Actually we all do it with anything we’re using as a crutch. Workaholics with work. People stuck in a victim mentality with anything they actually able to effect. When we’re talking about something a person relies on to help them disconnect, to help them feel less, to check out in some way, we will make up any excuse we can to take the spotlight off ourselves and risk shame and also of losing our fix.

10. You feel like you don’t belong

No matter where you go, you feel like you stand out like a sore thumb. When I was three years old, I learned about adoption and had a eureka moment, convinced that I was adopted and that made everything make sense.

This was at play too with that good boy who liked me that I found so boring. I had nothing in common with the kids who were able to focus on things like grades and school.

Even as an adult, I would keep quiet in work and social functions because I had a tendency to make myself stand out like a sore thumb. We all speak from our own experiences and perspectives. When you grow up collecting childhood trauma wounds like baseball cards, you’ve got some weird stuff to talk about.

Now, all of those people who look at you like you have three heads also have their own collection of trauma wounds. Likely they don’t know it at a conscious level. And many of their trauma responses are socially sanctioned as normal. AND many of those people are deflecting attention onto you, so that no one looks too closely at them.

Healing the Effects of Childhood Trauma

So there you have it. 10 common signs of unhealed childhood trauma wounds that are all so commonplace they tend to fly under the radar. It’s easy to think something is wrong with us when we experience these symptoms.

There are two big takeaways I wish for you. One is to know that you are ok. Your brain and body are working exactly as they were designed. You are experiencing normal responses to abnormal circumstances.

The other is to know that you can absolutely heal. This is not a life sentence and you have the power to choose.

With much love and many blessings,

Amy

I help health and wellness providers, entrepreneurs and other free spirits communicate effectively, become Self-led leaders and grow thriving businesses while navigating trauma recovery and spiritual awakening.

Book your free Empowerment Session to learn how I may support you. Book your free Empowerment session