Unresolved Trauma is Hurting Your Well-Being. 18 Signs You Still Need Healing
What is Unresolved Trauma?
Unresolved trauma refers to traumatic experiences that you have not yet let go of. When scary or distressing things happen to us, we just want to forget they happened. We try to push down the memory and avoid situations or people that remind us of the trauma.
Unresolved traumas could be unresolved childhood trauma or events that happen in adulthood such as heartbreak, divorce, accidents, etc. Even if you have previously participated in psychotherapy services, trauma can linger. Occasionally, therapists who are not trauma therapists or who lack training and/or experience may focus treatment on addressing the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause. If the root of the trauma is left unaddressed, the trauma remains unresolved, which can have a negative impact on your physical and mental health. Unresolved trauma is best treated by childhood trauma therapists or therapists trained in treating PTSD and C-PTSD.
Signs of Unresolved Trauma May Include:
1. Perfectionist tendencies
2. An unhealthy level of independence
3. Low self-worth and feelings of worthlessness
4. Codependency in relationships
5. Fear of abandonment
6. Avoidance
7. Always fearing what might happen next (intense anxiety)
8. Difficulty managing life changes such as a new job
9. Tolerating abusive behaviors
10. Difficulties establishing boundaries
11. Craving external validation
12. Being overly agreeable
13. Being unable to tolerate conflict
14. Feelings of shame
15. Hypervigilance and an inability to let your guard down
16. Trust difficulties and being unable to open up to others
17. Control and anger issues
18. Emotional regulation difficulties
Causes of Unresolved Trauma
You may find you have unresolved trauma for various reasons. Perhaps your trauma was never professionally treated. Perhaps you have unresolved childhood trauma you haven’t yet healed from traumatic events such as neglect, abuse, or witnessing/experiencing other traumatic events. If parents/caregivers are unable to provide protection when a child is in danger and comfort when a child is distressed or overwhelmed, that can contribute to the development of trauma. Unresolved childhood trauma can also negatively impact the development of a secure attachment style, causing an avoidant, preoccupied, or anxious attachment style to form instead, which also plays a role in the symptoms of unresolved trauma. Sometimes, survivors grow up thinking that they must take care of themselves and ignore their traumatic experiences altogether.
Causes of unresolved trauma may include:
Childhood trauma, including abuse of neglect
Societal and systematic trauma, including discrimination and generational trauma
Directly experiencing life-threatening situations
Witnessing traumatic events that include life threatening situations or death
Sexual trauma (abuse, assault, harassment)
Separation from families or culture
Experiencing or witnessing intimate partner violence
The Impact of Unresolved Trauma
If you have unresolved childhood trauma or trauma from adulthood, you know how much it can negatively impact your daily life. You may be struggling to perform at school or at work. You may be experiencing high levels of conflict in your relationships, feeling triggered and threatened in your interactions with other people. Trusting others can feel impossible, leaving you feeling detached, disconnected, and isolated. Emotional numbness is another symptom that can affect daily life. If you’ve ever felt emotionally numb before, you likely felt detached or like you couldn’t express emotion or connect with others.
Carrying around unresolved childhood trauma or wounds from adulthood can negatively impact your behavior and your relationships. Living with unhealed trauma can make it difficult to have the fulfilling and joyful life you deserve. When you just “suck it up” and go about life without addressing the past, those wounds will deepen and fester. The lens through which you see the world—including the way you see and treat yourself— is significantly impacted, often in negative, detrimental ways. And the way you see and treat others becomes negatively impacted, too.
When the trauma remains unresolved, you’ll likely find yourself frequently “triggered.” Triggered is a word you’ve probably heard before, which means something happens that elicits an emotional response from you that is out of proportion to what’s happening in the present moment. These “triggers”—people and their behaviors—unintentionally remind you of the original trauma. If you had parents who worked a lot when you were a child, for example, and you were left in the care of someone else, you may have felt abandoned. So when your spouse works late, that abandonment wound may become triggered and you may feel like a child again, hopelessly waiting for a parent to come home. Even though your spouse is (likely) working late to make you proud and provide for the family, you’re unable to see that in the moment because of your trauma. Instead, you’re looking at the present moment through the lens of your trauma, experiencing your spouse’s behavior as harmful, even when no harm was intended. We see the world and our relationships through the lens of our unresolved trauma. That’s why it’s so important to heal our wounds—so we can have healthy, happy relationships as adults.
The Mental Impact of Trauma
Individuals are becoming more and more willing to discuss the mental and emotional impact of trauma. Unresolved childhood trauma can cause significant negative effects upon any one of us and may resurface at any given time when we become triggered. People don’t always respond to a traumatic incident right away. In many cases, it can take weeks, months, or even years for the triggers of an event to surface. This is why recognizing and processing the traumatic events that have taken place is so important. If left untreated, trauma can impact your day to day life in negative ways, such as:
Flashbacks
Panic attacks
Dissociation
Hyper arousal
Sleeping problems
Low self-esteem
Grief
Self-harm
Suicidal thoughts
Substance use or self-medication
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as these can significantly impact quality of life. They may even cause emotional impairment and cause damage in relationships with other people. Rather than feeling happy and calm, you may often feel unexpected:
Anger
Fear
Anxiety
Stress
Irritability
Overwhelmed
These feelings can spill over unexpectedly, and we may accidentally take them out on people in our lives we care about. It can be extremely alarming (to both ourselves and others) to react in a way that strays from our normal behavior. You may even feel frustrated and sad, mourning the loss of who you once were before the trauma. But give yourself some grace and remember—when we experience trauma, our minds quickly go to survival mode. The trauma changes the way we view the world around us. Traumatic events have the power to alter us permanently; however, acknowledging what we’ve been through (with the support of a mental health professional) is an essential step toward healing.
The Physical Impact of Trauma
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) can arise when trauma is left untreated. P.A person’s physical health is often impacted in addition to their mental health, and there are both short- and long-term physical effects. Trauma impacts functioning, and can cause impairment not only to our mental well-being, but also our physical health. Whether you have unnerving nightmares and flashbacks or adopt unhealthy coping mechanisms like excessive drinking, there’s no doubt that unresolved trauma can have a negative physical impact on a person’s body. The following issues may be present with unresolved trauma:
Substance abuse
Overeating
Increased rate of adrenaline
Inflammation of the body
When grappling with unresolved trauma, it's crucial to be mindful of what you put in your body and its potential impact on the recovery journey. At times, it might seem unfair that conscientious recovery involves monitoring what enters your body. (After all, other people can enjoy a glass of wine or two at dinner with no issue, right?) But when you think about the profound impact of trauma on your body, cultivating an awareness of what you’re nourishing yourself with proves beneficial in the long run.
When you’re first learning how unresolved trauma affects your everyday life, it can sometimes seem frustrating to be unable to return to your usual approach to situations or people. Yet this reset allows you to adapt and grow rather than avoiding and suppressing or creating further health complications.
How Can Trauma Therapy Help?
Trauma therapy is a branch of therapy designed to determine and manage how much of an impact trauma has on a person’s life. It helps people process frightening, dangerous, abusive or life-threatening situations and also overcome symptoms related to their traumatic experience. Childhood trauma therapists or therapists trained to treat PTSD are best equipped to help adults heal from unresolved trauma.
Types of Trauma Therapy Treatments
There are many types of trauma therapy treatments. Evidence-based treatments are backed by research supporting their effectiveness. The following are a few of the main types of evidence-based therapies for treating trauma that we use at Reflection Psychology.
Prolonged Exposure (PE)
During prolonged exposure (PE) a person is gradually exposed to their trauma-related memories, fears, emotions, and feelings about the event(s) to learn that these are no longer dangerous or need to be avoided. Patients typically meet with a therapist once a week for three to four months. PE is strongly recommended by the American Psychological Association as a first-line intervention for PTSD. 6 In one study, 71% of participants experienced a decrease in PTSD symptoms with PE treatment. (Hendriks, L., Kleine, R., Broekman, T., , Hendriks, G. & Minnen, A., 2018).
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a trauma-focused therapy designed to treat PTSD. It helps patients challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma. Writing a detailed account of the traumatic event allows patients to re-conceptualize the event to reduce its impact on current life. Patients typically meet with a therapist for about 12 sessions. CPT is considered a first-line intervention for PTSD and is strongly recommended by the APA.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and the relationship between them. A trauma-focused therapist might help a client understand how they are thinking about their trauma and how to shift it into more helpful thinking. CBT usually takes 12 to 16 sessions. This treatment is strongly recommended by the APA for the treatment of PTSD.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) addresses the mental health needs of adults suffering from the destructive effects of early trauma. The treatment is particularly sensitive to the unique problems of youth with post-traumatic stress and mood disorders resulting from sexual abuse, as well as from physical abuse, violence, or grief. TF-CBT has expanded over the years to include services for youths who have experienced many forms of severe trauma or abuse.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) was developed as a treatment for PTSD. It involves processing the memory and the way it is stored in the brain, which reduces problematic triggers and symptoms.
During this therapy, different methods of bilateral simulations can be used to focus on memories of the trauma. EMDR usually involves six to 12 weekly or twice-weekly sessions.
Written Exposure Therapy (WET)
Written exposure therapy (WET) is a brief, evidence-based behavioral psychotherapy in which people are gradually exposed. While in traditional exposure therapy, the individual is exposed to the fear object or experience, in written exposure therapy, the individual will writer about the trauma memory.
In a series of five brief (50 to 60-minute) sessions, the individual will write in detail about the thoughts and emotions they had at the time of the event. Studies show it is an effective way to extinguish the fear that makes PTSD and other forms of severe anxiety so distressing and disabling and to reduce the intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, disturbing nightmares, feelings of hopelessness, depression, and hypervigilance that accompany PTSD.
Treatments That May Also Help Trauma
There are some complementary and alternative treatments that may also be helpful for people with trauma:
Energy Psychology: methods combine cognitive interventions with somatic techniques that influence the human bio-energy systems such as meridians, chakras and the biofield to elevate physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. It has been shown to be evidenced based, cost effective and empowering for clients. Energy psychology integrates well with other approaches and includes self-help techniques. These methods can be used to facilitate transformational change at many levels including resolving trauma, anxiety and other diagnosis; working and living in flow; improving performance at work, school, sports, arts and business; and living in greater connection, love, and clarity.
Clinical hypnosis: Under the care of a clinically trained provider, hypnotherapy allows trauma survivors to process trauma in a controlled way.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT): MBCT incorporates cognitive therapies with the concepts of mindfulness meditation. Self-care strategies, such as engaging with art and music, relaxation, yoga, journaling, mindfulness meditation, and spending time in nature, can also help.
Childhood Trauma Therapy for Adults
If you are living with unhealed trauma and are considering trauma therapy, Reflection Psychology has trained and experienced providers that can help. Whether you’re seeking a childhood trauma therapist or someone who can support your healing from traumatic events that occurred in adulthood, our team of therapists are here for you. Consider scheduling an appointment so we can start your healing journey together.
