Understanding Emotional and Psychological Trauma

What is psychological & emotional trauma?

Extremely stressful circumstances that shatter your sense of security and leave you feeling helpless in a hazardous environment can lead to emotional and psychological trauma. You may struggle with troubling feelings, memories, and anxiety as a result of psychological trauma. You might also experience feelings of numbness, alienation, and lack of confidence in other people.
Traumatic events more often than not involve a terrifying past experience, but they can also be caused by any circumstance that makes you feel helpless and alone. Your personal emotional reaction to the event, not the objective facts, determines whether it qualifies as traumatic. You are more prone to experience trauma the more terrified and helpless you feel.
Trauma on the emotional and mental levels can result from:
One-time occurrences like an unplanned accident, a physical injury, or a violent attack, especially if they occurred while you were a child, are called childhood traumas.
Some examples of childhood traumas are ongoing, unrelenting stress, such as suffering traumatic events that recur frequently, like bullying, domestic violence, or neglect as a kid, fighting a life-threatening illness, or living in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
Commonly disregarded factors include surgery (especially during the first three years of life), a close relative’s unexpected death, the end of a meaningful relationship, or an embarrassing or emotionally unpleasant experience, particularly if someone was being intentionally harsh.
Even if you weren’t personally affected by the disaster, dealing with the trauma of it can bring particular difficulties. Even while it’s extremely improbable that any of us will ever be directly harmed in a terrorist attack, airplane disaster, or mass shooting, for instance, we are all frequently subjected to horrifying images of those who have been on social media and in the news. Repeated exposure to these sites might overwhelm your neurological system and lead to acute stress. You may make therapeutic changes and continue with your life no matter what caused your trauma, whether it happened years ago or just yesterday.

Risk of Trauma

While anyone can experience a traumatic occurrence, your chances of being traumatized increase if you’re currently under a lot of stress, have recently experienced a string of losses, or have already experienced trauma – particularly if the prior trauma happened while you were a child. Anything that interferes with a child’s sense of safety can cause childhood trauma, including:

• An unsteady or dangerous situation
• Being cut off from a parent
• Serious disease
• Medical interventions gone wrong
• Abuse that is verbal, physical, or sexual
• Domestic abuse
• Neglect

Trauma suffered as a kid can have serious and enduring effects. A sense of fear and powerlessness that persists into adulthood as a result of unresolved childhood trauma creates the conditions for additional trauma. Nevertheless, even if your trauma occurred a long time ago, there are measures you can take to get past the hurt, rediscover how to connect with and trust other people, and reclaim your sense of emotional equilibrium.

Psychological trauma symptoms

There are many various physical and emotional responses that we all have towards trauma. Do not criticize your own or other people’s responses since there is no “correct” or “wrong” response to a thought, an emotion, or a response. Your replies are REACTIONS THAT ARE USUAL TO UNUSUAL EVENTS.
Psychological & emotional trauma signs:

• Disbelief, denial, or shock
• Confusion and attention issues
• Angry, irritable, and moody
• Fear and angst
• Shame, guilt, and self-blame
• Withdrawal from other people
• Sad or despairing feelings
• Having a distant or numb feeling
• Physiological signs
• Nightmares or insomnia
• Fatigue
• Being quickly startled
• Difficulty paying attention
• Rapid heart rate
• Anxiety and jitteriness
• Pains and aches
• Tense muscles

Overcoming trauma

The duration of trauma symptoms ranges from a few days to a few months, with a progressive diminishing as you get over the frightening experience. However, even when you start to feel better, you could still occasionally experience distressing thoughts or feelings, especially in response to triggers like the anniversary of the incident or something that makes you think of the trauma.
You may have post-traumatic stress disorder if your psychological trauma symptoms don’t go away or get worse and you find it difficult to forget the experience for an extended length of time (PTSD). While emotional trauma is a common reaction to a traumatic event, it turns into PTSD when your nervous system stays “stuck” and you continue to experience psychological shock and are unable to manage your feelings or make sense of what happened.
You, as a survivor, must learn to deal with the loss, at least momentarily, of your sense of safety, whether a traumatic incident entails death. Grief is a normal response to this loss. You must go through the grieving process, just like others who have lost a loved one.
There are two types of people in this world; those who can overcome traumatic events on their own, and those who need professional help to do so and get back to their normal lives. If you are facing difficulties in overcoming your past experiences, then the most effective way to fix your situation is by seeking professional psychological help. Just as you would seek a doctor for the treatment of a deep wound, you need an expert specializing in mental problems to expel trauma from your life permanently.