It isn’t unusual to feel hurt and angry if you have a traumatic past. Understandably, the memories of your ordeal may give rise to a sense of injustice and violation.

However, if you notice that the anger you’re experiencing feels in someway beyond your control, or difficult to rein in, trauma may be inspiring your anger in unproductive or harmful ways. 

The reality, for many people, is that anger is a complicated part of life after trauma. It has a very real and painful impact on their self-image, relationships, and careers. Untreated, it can even lead to violence and legal trouble.

If you’re in this position or fear you’ll find face this situation soon, you aren’t alone. Now is not the time to become mired in shame, you can recover. However, you’ll need support to improve your mental health and move forward. Learning to process your anger is crucial. 

First, Understand How Your Anger is Functioning

Is Anger Your Current Survival Mechanism?

Trauma overwhelms your mind. As you try to make sense of what’s happened you react from a fight, flight, or freeze perspective. And you may still be stuck there. This state of perpetual arousal keeps you alert and waiting for the next threat. Essentially, you may be a person for whom anger, rather than fear, becomes a self-protective norm.

Are These Post-Trauma Anger Symptoms Are Recurring and Disruptive?

Unaddressed anger can become chronic and takes a significant toll on you. You may be experiencing the following:

• flashbacks
• avoidance and anxiety
• aggressive or controlling behavior
• situational reactivity or overreaction
• relationship conflict
• overstimulation
• feelings of isolation
• a tendency toward risky behavior
• body aches or chronic pain
• heart, blood pressure, or digestive issues

It’s important to address these symptoms and stop the damage anger is doing to you, your connections, and your life goals.

Is Anger Reaction to Your Trouble with Personal Boundaries?

After trauma, personal boundaries may feel tenuous and violated. Perhaps abuse or violence occurred or some other aspect of your personal safety was disrespected. As a result, anger seems the best way to force a measure of respect and safety when you feel triggered. Unfortunately, angry outbursts are rarely directed at the primary violator or original trauma. Thus, your sense of respect and security don’t last long and the cycle of triggers and angry reactivity continues.

Pay Attention to Your Anger

Your anger is trying to tell you something. Rather than indulge it or stuff it, acknowledge that anger is arising for a reason. Try to take a step back and listen to your emotions.

Meditation and journaling can help with this approach. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What triggered my anger?
• Which of my needs are unmet? How?
• Is my anger linked to something current, or the result of past events/memories?

Uncovering the roots of your anger is the key to relief and resolution. Trauma changes your brain, thought patterns, and ability to accurately perceive and react appropriately. Sometimes, managing your anger is beyond your own best efforts. To retrain your brain, the help of a qualified therapist is often invaluable. 

Healing is Possible: Make Time for Therapy 

If you want to move away from anger, get to the heart of it, and express your emotions more effectively, don’t go it alone. Trauma therapy can help you determine what your anger is telling you and how to grow through it.

Please read more about trauma treatment and reach out today. Let’s discuss your options for scheduling a consultation. You deserve a happier, healthier life.

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Racial trauma can come directly from someone else (or a group of people), from an experience, or even from watching the news. Experiencing or seeing a racial bias displayed can be disturbing or distressing. 

Unfortunately, experiencing any kind of racial trauma can have an impact on your relationships, your career, and your everyday quality of life. If you’ve been through a racially-traumatic experience, it isn’t difficult to become triggered. Anything from an offhanded comment to seeing something like police violence against a person of color on the news is enough. 

In this year, when it seems the topic of race and equality has jumped into the national again, it’s important to understand that racial trauma is real. If you’ve experienced it, you’re not alone. You’re a survivor.

Thankfully, there are ways for you to find peace and comfort. 

Find the Support You Need

One of the best things you can do to combat the personal impact of racial trauma is to do what you can to feel supported. 

You can find that support from family or friends, of course. But, it may be more beneficial to get involved in a community that understands and validates racial trauma. That might include a support group specifically meant for survivors. Or, just opening communication with someone in your life who might understand what you’re going through could be helpful. 

Additionally, it’s a good idea to avoid relationships or interactions with people who create or promote triggering experiences for you. Conversely, avoid contact with people who don’t take racial trauma seriously. That could even include members of your own loved ones or certain circles of friends.

Even if you can’t evade those situations completely, restrict your interaction with those individuals if they cause you distress. 

Limiting Your Triggers

People in your life can certainly be triggering due to their thoughts on racial trauma. However, other aspects can trigger your trauma symptoms, too. Therefore, it’s important to understand your triggers well.

What makes your symptoms worse? What causes you to flashback to that time of initial trauma? It’s not always easy to think about, and you may want to avoid figuring out your triggers. But, it’s an important step to take. 

The more you understand your triggers, the easier it is to work on avoiding and resolving them. For example, for some victims of racial trauma, going on a media “diet” to avoid images of racial abuse or mistreatment is an important emotional guardrail. 

Take Part in Activism

If you’ve been through a traumatic experience because of race, one way to find some peace is to try to challenge racism. 

Join different groups or organizations that promote racial equality. Become an activist or an advocate. Share your voice. Share your story. You’re not the only one who has endured racial trauma. You’re not the only one who longs for change.

By speaking up and standing out, you never know who you might encourage or empower along the way. 

Also, when you’re part of a group that speaks out against racism and promotes equality, you empower yourself. You allow yourself to grow stronger, despite your trauma, which can further aid your road to recovery. 

Seeking Help When You Needed It

As with any other type of trauma, you don’t have to suffer the effects of racial trauma on your own. In many cases, work with a mental health professional is the best option. 

A therapist or counselor can help you to identify the root of your trauma and its impacts on your thoughts and behaviors. You’ll receive resources on how to work through traumatic events and process them productively. You will see that your trauma doesn’t have to define you.  From there, you can develop the coping skills needed to best manage the realities of life in a racialized society. 

If you’ve experienced any type of racial trauma, please feel free to contact me for more information on trauma treatment. Together, we can work on even more ways to help you find peace, so you can encourage others to do the same.

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If this sounds familiar, you may have unidentified trauma. Identifying trauma is a challenge for several reasons.

Trauma Can Happen Early

Trauma sometimes occurs so early in childhood that people don’t realize it’s happening or remember it.

Children don’t have the cognitive skills and maturity to identify and call out trauma. Children are especially vulnerable to trauma because it can interfere with ongoing neural, social, and physical development.

There are many sources of childhood trauma, including parents who aren’t there for their kids emotionally or physically.

Other examples are parents who are verbally and physically abusive with each other or their children, divorce, natural disasters, and the death of closed loved ones.

Some children eventually heal and recover with love and time. Yet many silently carry the effects of trauma into adulthood.

Not Recognizing Trauma

Adults even experience trauma and may not realize it.

Accidents, severe illnesses, and difficult intimate relationships are common causes of unidentified trauma. Many falsely assume that trauma only results from great violence, such as being in a war or being sexually assaulted. This is not true in all cases.

Identifying Secret or Forgotten Trauma

Even if one doesn’t realize they’ve experienced trauma, there are clues that can point them toward answers.

Emotional Clues

Several emotional responses develop in response to trauma, no matter when it happened.

These emotions express themselves as different anxieties, such as social or generalized anxiety. It could also be someone having a hard time feeling close to other people.

Depression and self-doubt are also common reactions, as is difficulty concentrating, insomnia, nightmares that interfere with restful sleep patterns.

Behavioral Clues

For many people, trauma reveals itself in behaviors.

Children who’ve gone through trauma may have difficulties in school, “act up”, struggle in social situations, or turn to substances. Down the line, this can lead to problems to both finding and maintaining employment and relationship struggles.

Sadly, the person themselves and many of the adults around them do not understand that trauma is the root cause.

Physical Clues

Secret or forgotten trauma often manifests in physical ways because our bodies are intricately connected with our minds. The experiences that shape us psychologically can play out in our bodies and can even lead to chronic aches or digestive issues that have no identifiable cause.

When a professional finds no physical cause, individuals end up feeling as though their healthcare providers don’t take them seriously and wonder if it’s all in their head. With trauma, it’s not.

Finding Healing

Fortunately, once someone identifies forgotten trauma, it is possible to find healing.

Working with a therapist is important if you believe unidentified trauma has been affecting you. A therapist can guide you through the emotional journey of healing and can help you make connections between any physiological manifestations and your past trauma.

As you learn to be more in touch with your body, you’ll be able to move forward.

If you suspect secret or forgotten trauma is affecting you, please read more about trauma therapy and reach out to my office for a consultation.

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As a result, it can be difficult to find any purpose in your life or what you’re doing. 

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. 

You don’t have to blame yourself for the trauma you experienced, or the struggles you might have in “getting over it”. The reality is, you can find purpose in your life again. You can grow after trauma, and take the reins of your own life once more. 

Let’s take a closer look at how you can make that happen. 

Practice Forgiveness

There might be multiple people to forgive after a traumatic situation. Maybe you were abused by someone, or emotionally tormented by your family. Forgiving them for their actions, even if you don’t necessarily say it directly to them, will give you some peace. 

But, if you’re holding onto a lot of your own guilt, forgiving yourself is even more important. Bitterness and anger from any kind of traumatic experience won’t go away on their own. You have to be willing to let them go. Don’t just speak words of forgiveness; mean them. 

Recognize How Strong You Are

A traumatic event can leave anyone feeling weak and scared. But, look at yourself. You survived that event, one way or another. You might feel as though you have lasting effects from it, whether physical or mental. But, you got through it. 

Survivors of trauma often have low self-esteem and confidence. When you recognize, however, that you’ve come out on the other side of something traumatic, you can start to realize just how strong you really are. It can boost your confidence and resilience. 

When you start to recognize that strength even more, you can continue to grow and get stronger. Not everyone can get through that type of adversity. No matter how you have handled it in the past, you got through it. It often takes a lot of strength and courage to seek out help. Doing so is a testament to just how brave you really are. 

Finding Your Real Purpose

Once you’ve realized your strength and worth, you might be wondering what your purpose really is. Going through something traumatic can make you feel as though you need a change in identity. While that isn’t always true, you could use that feeling in a positive way. 

Consider the type of trauma you went through. Perhaps your purpose now is helping others who might be struggling with the same things. 

For example, if you were a victim of assault, think about how you can help other victims who may be struggling to move on and grow. If you were abused as a child, connect with others who are having a hard time with the abuse of their past. 

There is nothing more fulfilling than knowing your life and your story can have a positive impact on someone else. Connecting with individuals in that way will let you see your true worth. It will give your life more meaning than you may have ever thought possible. 

It’s not always easy to see any ‘positives’ that can come from a traumatic event. But, if you’re willing to learn and grow, you will not only find peace in your life again, but you’ll take the reins of your own life once more and start to exhibit more control over who you are and how you will continue to move forward. 

Let’s work through your story together. Please read more about trauma therapy and reach out soon for a consultation.

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It’s not uncommon to feel as though you need to push your emotions down for a variety of reasons. Maybe you think they aren’t justified. Maybe you’re embarrassed. Perhaps others are telling you to “get over it” or move on. 

Sometimes, you can even feel like your feelings are your enemy. Do you choose to minimize your trauma as a defense mechanism? Or try to ignore them to protect yourself? 

Whatever the case, minimizing your trauma and ignoring your emotions can be damaging to you and your relationships, in the long run. 

So, what can you do to honor your emotions now? How can you work through them, rather than pushing them aside? 

Be Real With What You Feel

You don’t necessarily need to understand your emotions to be honest about them. Dealing with trauma can be confusing and even overwhelming. You might not know why you feel the way you do. 

It’s important to acknowledge those feelings anyway. 

One of the best ways to acknowledge your feelings is to journal them. You might feel different things at different times and journaling is a great way to look back on things. When you write everything down, you can look back to gauge what you were feeling at any given time. 

Journaling is a good way to reflect on where you’ve been and how far you’ve come. It can also give you a better understanding as to why you view things the way you do, or if there are any triggers for certain emotions. 

You’re Not Your Own Enemy

You might be minimizing your trauma because you’re judging yourself. Other people will say and think what they want, but you don’t have to agree.  Shame and trauma often combine negatively, causing you to become your own worst enemy.

If you find yourself thinking “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “I need to get over it,” consider those thoughts toxic and negative. You don’t need to criticize yourself when it comes to honoring your emotions. 

Simply put, feel how you feel. There is no right or “wrong” way to feel when you’ve been through a traumatic experience. You can control how you act upon those feelings, but don’t judge yourself for allowing them to enter into your mind. 

When you stop judging yourself for the emotions that take over, you’re giving yourself permission to feel. That offers you a sense of freedom and acceptance that supports relief and recovery. 

Once you do give yourself some grace, the weight of your emotions will feel much lighter. 

Get the Support You Deserve

Sometimes, one of the best ways you can honor your emotions is to seek out the support of others. Don’t allow yourself to become embarrassed or ashamed by what you feel. People who care for you are often more willing to help than you might think. 

Having a support system in your life can help you open up. Trusted loved ones can provide an outlet for sharing your trauma and feelings, without fear of judgment. 

If you don’t have that kind of support system (or you’re worried about sharing certain details with friends and family), therapy can help. Simply expressing emotions in a safe environment may ease your emotional burden. 

Honoring your emotions is healthy. I’m here to help. Please read more about trauma therapy and feel free to contact me. Together, we can resolve your past and determine healthier ways to honor you and your story. 

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This happens on both a psychological and physiological level. As a result, you may feel trapped in the past even as you strive to heal and create a better future. The key to trauma recovery can be found in a word that does not appear in the above sentences: present. Trauma recovery happens in the here and now.

How Trauma Can Skew Your Sense of Time

A traumatic event has the potential to alter your brain chemistry. Without getting too technical, it often has to do with the regulation of stress hormones. Left elevated, such chemicals can keep you locked into a state of hyper-vigilance. You see threats all around you. Your memory works to keep threats from the pasts as appearing as though they exist in the here and now.

This underlying scenario pushes victims to identify with their trauma. As you may already sense, you can end up being defined by the experience and the resulting pain. You feel as if you’ll never recover as you remain stuck in a past perception of yourself and your potential. Too often, it leads you onto a path toward post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

8 Strategies for Staying Present During Trauma Recovery

1. Choose Self-Education

Learn as much as possible about your general condition and specific details. In addition, educate yourself about mindfulness and staying present. Misinformation is never your friend.

2. Maintain Patience

Recovering from trauma takes time. Developing the ability to stay present in a world of distraction also takes time. Do not rush yourself or set hasty timelines.

3. Team Up With Others

It may be a trauma recovery group. It may also be a group meditation class. The idea is to connect, learn, and grow with others during this process.

4. Embrace a Beginner’s Mind

In the PTSD mind, you feel like you’ve tried it all and nothing will work. In the beginner’s mind, you’re open to new possibilities and approaches.

5. Practice Observation Without Judgment

Particularly through meditation practice, staying present guides you to a place of experiencing with feeling the need to compare or compete. This is an ideal state for healing and recovery.

6. Accept the Process

Both goals may not be “goals” in a strict sense. Healing from trauma and learning to stay present are journeys. It’s not about arriving at a destination; it’s an ongoing process.

7. Keep a Journal

It is essential to have a barometer of progress. Monitoring your efforts and your evolution is an ideal way to maintain momentum. Your journal will also be very useful when speaking with a counselor (see below).

8. Take Care of Yourself

Through it all, be sure to stay present with your commitment to daily self-care. This usually involves a focus on eating, sleeping, and activity habits. Also, seek out ways to de-stress and recharge.

Getting Help With Both Trauma Recovery and Staying Present

These can be two daunting tasks — each in its own way. While trauma recovery is a goal that requires some professional guidance, staying present is not typically viewed in the same manner. Guess what? Neither is easy when attempted alone.

Committing to weekly therapy sessions is a proven method for getting on the parallel tracks of healing and mindfulness. You’ll have a trusted ally with whom you can brainstorm and explore. To learn more about this life-changing and often a life-saving process, read more about trauma therapy and reach out today for a free consultation.

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Unfortunately, many children who go through a traumatic experience still see signs and symptoms of that situation years later. As a result, some adults deal with anxiety issues that stem from childhood trauma without even really realizing it. 

Children often don’t have any control over traumatic situations that might be surrounding them. Whether it’s a one-time thing or a continuous situation, they are often forced to “deal with it” at the time. 

If you’re struggling with anxiety now, though, there are things you can do to manage your symptoms and get to the bottom of your feelings. 

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at how chronic anxiety and childhood trauma are connected. 

Childhood Coping Mechanisms

When children experience trauma at a young age, they have to find ways to cope with what they’re dealing with. Because they likely don’t have the resources for someone to help them, they do what they can to protect themselves. Many times, that involves distancing themselves emotionally from people. 

When a child deals with consistent trauma, such as abuse, they might learn to anticipate it in their lives. So, they will always be on edge, wondering when the next “bad” thing is going to happen. As you might imagine, it’s not hard for that to develop into full-blown anxiety as an adult. 

Anxiety is, at its very core, the feeling that something bad is lurking around the corner. You’re constantly on high alert and can’t find a moment of peace. Anxiety can take over your life and become debilitating. If you’ve carried over that feeling of being on edge from childhood, it can have a negative impact on your adult life. 

Adults who experienced trauma as a child might only feel anxious during stressful situations. Or, when they are triggered by something that reminds them of that traumatic event. It often causes them to feel helpless, even when they know they have the ability to do something. 

Treatment for Trauma-Related Anxiety

There are a variety of different treatment solutions for those struggling with anxiety brought on by childhood trauma. One of the first (and most important) factors in any treatment is getting to the root of your anxiety. 

It’s not uncommon for people to try to block the trauma of childhood out. Maybe you haven’t thought about it in years. Or, maybe you have purposefully tried to ignore it. But, if anxiety is showing up in your life now, it’s important to look at the life experiences you went through as a possible cause. 

Once you accept that underlying cause, you can learn how to work through it with the help of a therapist or counselor. 

Anxiety doesn’t typically go away on its own. But, the symptoms of your anxiety can be managed with treatment. You will learn how it affects you on a daily basis, and how you can take more control over those thoughts and symptoms. 

The truth is, it’s never easy to admit that you went through a traumatic experience as a child. That’s especially true if the trauma came in the form of abuse, or witnessing the abuse of someone else. 

But, you don’t have to live with the effects of that trauma forever. If you or someone you know experienced any type of trauma as a child and you’re worried it might be causing anxious thoughts and feelings today, you’re not alone. Please read more about trauma therapy and feel free to contact me for more information or to set up an appointment. 

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As an adult, if you’re starting to experience out-of-control emotions, it could be connected to trauma that happened in your past.

These emotional reactions to past trauma can be harmful to both your mental and physical health. They could even put you at a greater risk of developing certain conditions like diabetes or cancer.

So, how can past trauma affect your present responses? What can you do about it?

The Instant Impact of Trauma

Many people who experience a traumatic event will have a physical reaction. That can include an increased heart rate or sweating. Some people will also develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in which they relive the event in flashbacks, or have vivid memories of it for years to come.

While trauma can impact you instantly, for some people the effects of it will either linger through the years or may even show up years later.

Long-Lasting PTSD

The effects of PTSD can last for years after a traumatic event. Some people might not recognize the symptoms right away. That can make you feel as though your emotions are out of control. But, some of the common signs aside from experiencing flashbacks include:

• Sleep disturbances
• Poor concentration
• Emotional numbness
• Depression

Depression can easily make you feel as though your emotions are out of control since everyone experiences it differently. It can give you feelings of anxiety or hopelessness. Instead of those emotions coming and going, they tend to linger and may make you feel helpless all of the time.

Feeling depressed can impact your behaviors in a variety of ways. You might not want to do things you typically enjoy, or you may isolate yourself from friends, family, or other loved ones.

Another effect of past trauma can be how you respond to specific situations today. You might have traumatic “triggers” that you’re not even aware of until they happen. If you feel as though you have control of your emotions most of the time, but not in certain situations, it’s important to get to the root of what is causing you to feel that way.

When to Seek Help

If you experienced a traumatic event in your past, you might think it’s too late to get any kind of help. That’s simply not true. You should seek out help if

• you feel like you can’t talk to anyone about your emotions
• other people are noticing changes in you
• you’re having trouble with your normal daily tasks
• you’re turning to harmful ways of coping (drugs or alcohol)

One of the best things you can do is turn to a support system. Don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed over talking about trauma that may have happened a long time ago. If you are still experiencing the impact of it, getting to the root cause can help you to overcome those negative emotions.

If you feel as though you don’t have a support system in your life, professional help can be your best option. Counseling can help you to unravel what happened in the past and get to the core of the traumatic event.

Once you have a better understanding of what is causing your out-of-control emotions, you can learn the skills and techniques to manage them. People do overcome PTSD. People overcome traumatic events, even from long ago. If you’re struggling, please feel free to contact me for more information about trauma therapy or to set up an appointment online session.

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This experience may have been some type of loss or possibly something that left you absolutely breathless. No matter what it was that you experienced, you feel different now.

Changing and evolving are typically positive things in life. But, the difference you see in yourself after trauma isn’t positive. In fact, you might feel like you’re not even the same person you once were. This negative experience has washed down the drain the trust you used to possess for others and for life. Your self-confidence, happiness, and hope spiraled down with it, too.

While it’s not uncommon for trauma to affect life negatively, the loss of trust you feel doesn’t have to be permanent.

How Trauma Damages Trust

You View the World as a Bad Place

As you moved from the innocence of childhood to your adult perspective, of course, you realized that the world wasn’t really full of daisies and rainbows. Yet, you still accepted the world, even with all its ugly injustices.

After experiencing your recent trauma, the world seems like it’s more of a bad place now than it was before. Not only is it a bad place, but you feel angry and bitter towards the world for being so hurtful.

Trauma often warps your perception, so you view things as only negative.

You Can’t Depend on What You Used to

It’s not only the world that you can’t depend on, it’s also people and experiences you can no longer trust. What used to be safe and secure is broken and shattered.

You can’t count on life not to hurt you anymore. It feels like pain is always right around the corner, waiting for you.

You might feel paranoid and afraid a lot. Living in an aroused state of hypervigilance may be your new normal. Trauma has a way of making you feel like bad things are out to get you.

You Have No Hope for the Future

Having experienced such trauma, you can’t forget it. It seems to haunt you so that you don’t have hope for the future anymore. It’s almost like a dark cloud parked right over your head.

You might be having trouble sleeping because of nightmares or flashbacks. Relaxing is usually very difficult after experiencing trauma, as well. Although you may not be motivated to do much, you can’t seem to unwind.

Emotional numbness is common, too. In a matter of speaking, trauma tends to suck the life right out of you, leaving your mind drained with little hope for a good future.

Strategies to Rebuild Damaged Trust

Grieve Your Loss

Traumatic experiences are not to be taken lightly. No matter what happened, you have the right to grieve your loss.

You should grieve your loss.

Your heart hurts and this isn’t something that time will heal or you can put a bandaid on. You will remember this event for the rest of your life, but it doesn’t have to rule you.

Give yourself time to feel. Talk about what you’re feeling and tell your story if you want. Find a therapist who can help you locate those complex emotions and navigate through them.

Now is the time to take the healing process at your own pace. Most likely, that pace is going to be slow and steady and that’s quite alright.

Maintain a Stable Routine 

Many people try to rely on a temporary coping method to deal with the heavy weight of trauma. Some go as far as depending on a substance like alcohol, prescription or illegal drugs, or food for a reprieve.

To damage lost trust after trauma, it’s important to bump yourself to priority #1.

Increase your self-care routine. Make a change in your diet if that has taken a nose-dive. Ask your therapist to assist you in giving up any unhealthy coping methods.

Your body, mind, and emotions are all interconnected. When one is deeply hurt, the rest of your being suffers, as well. Taking care of your body is a very positive step to reclaiming your life as a whole.

Rediscover Yourself

After trauma, it’s easy to withdraw from society and to give up things that you once enjoyed. With your energy level being low, getting out and about or pursuing a hobby might seem impossible.

You’ll find that the first step is usually the hardest, though.

Now is the time to revisit old hobbies and reconnect with friends. Trauma will try to overcome you with its negativity, but you can fight back by doing your best to live the life you planned on living before the experience.

You can reclaim your life and rebuild damaged trust.

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Instead of feeling like your normal self, you might feel like you’re carrying around a ton of bricks. Perhaps this heavy feeling just won’t go away.

Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes. It can also stop life right in its tracks. Simply said, it can be disheartening, devastating, and debilitating. That’s putting it lightly. So, how do you get through something so intensely negative? Forgetting the pain would be a reprieve, but you can’t forget. It’s like your body, heart, and soul are struggling simply to survive right now.

Be encouraged that I understand your pain. I also know that there is freedom from what seems like a never-ending dark night in your life. Sometimes it gets difficult to know when to lean on someone else for help. Consider the following when you’re trying to figure out if it’s time to call a trauma therapist.

1. You’re Exhausted

When you experience trauma, your body often gets stuck in a state of hypervigilance. This intense state is like a vehicle operating in overdrive all the time.

You may be feeling overly tired, tension in your muscles, and chronic headaches or an upset stomach.

In short, it’s exhausting to carry around the burden of trauma. A trauma therapist can teach you how to anchor your senses back into the present so you don’t have to merely survive in an exhausting state of overdrive anymore.

2. You Feel Alone

The feeling of being alone is common after trauma.

Even among friends and family, you might feel like no one really knows how you feel. Sometimes it’s even hard to voice your emotions because what’s happening inside of you is so confusing. It’s difficult to sort it out most days.

Trauma therapy will help you to defeat that feeling of aloneness and debunk any false notion that you have to face all of this by yourself. You absolutely don’t have to go through it alone.

3. Unable to Concentrate

It can get hard to focus after dealing with a traumatic experience. Whether you’re at work or home, you may be having trouble concentrating.

Your thoughts sort of float away from you causing trouble with achieving your daily goals.

Trauma sends your mind into a whirlwind of chaos. Therapy can help to refocus your thoughts and strategize a pattern to overcome the mental roadblock.

4. Nothing Makes You Happy Anymore

More times than not, a traumatic experience can alter how you enjoy life. It may even prevent you from enjoying it at all.

The hobbies and activities that you used to love often become pushed to the side. You just can’t find any enjoyment in them anymore.

Trauma therapy can help you reclaim your life and help you capture those moments of happiness again. Although it might seem impossible to discover yourself again, know that it’s not.

5. You Rely on a Substance to Cope

When you’re trying to cope with life after trauma and nothing seems to be working, it’s easy to turn to substance abuse.

A cool beverage or a quick high can feel like such a relief during the hard times. Slowly these little moments of relief become daily and even hourly.

Some people get to the point where they can’t even face the day without the help of a substance. You might be in this position now.

If this is where you are, it’s time to contact a trauma therapist. Yes, you do need relief. Substance abuse will end up hurting you more than it helps, though. Your therapist can offer other forms of relief that will have a positive long-time influence on you.

6. Your Relationships Suffer

It’s not fair, but often relationships take a huge blow after one person experiences a traumatic event.

You might not feel like you connect with your partner anymore. Maybe you can’t talk openly to your best friend or sibling. It could even be that you just don’t have it in you to be social any longer.

Therapy can help you sort out all these feelings and offer some positive communication tactics to employ so that your relationships can be rejuvenated.

7. You Feel Sad and Hopeless 

Frequently, people who undergo trauma often don’t feel like themselves. Maybe you weren’t Sally Sunshine before, but now you have a sinking feeling of hopelessness that you can’t kick. the future may feel too uncertain, pointless, or frightening.

You may even feel numb and that you just can’t connect with others or with yourself.

Trauma produces a tangled mess of emotions. Your trauma therapist can help you navigate these negative thoughts and feelings.

Together, you can crush depression, sadness, and hopelessness. In time, you can feel whole again. Reach out and reclaim your life!

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