Trauma 

Trauma definition

physical or emotional injury that causes damage and lasting effects. Physicologically, this refers to the emotional or psychological response to a deeply disturbing experience that can lead to lasting negative effects on a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Trauma symptoms

• Avoidance of people and places

• Avoiding thoughts and feelings related to the experience. 

• Flashbacks/intrusive thoughts-involuntarily having the memory of the experience pop into your mind as if you are reliving it and without warning

• Nightmares related to experience

• Difficulty sleeping

• Easily startled or jumpy

• feeling irritable or having angry outbursts

• feeling persistant negative emotions like guilt, shame, anger or fear. 

• Difficulty feeling happy or feeling other positive emtoions

• feeling protective of yourfelf or needing to keep yourself physically and emotionally safe

• Increased alertness/hypervigilance feeling sensitive to a potential threat hense the need to protect yourself

• Feeling emotionally numb or detached from their body and or reality, not able to feel emotions- this is called Dissociation.

  • It looks similar to driving and not knowing how to arrived at your destination. Not remembering what you saw on the drive, how you were feeling, or what events occured in the car or around you.

• Having gaps in memory related to your general life experiences around the time of the trauma.

• Having gaps in memory about the experiennce if one similar traumatic experience occured multple times or you experienced multiple different traumatic experinces over your lifetime. 

Please note everyone experiences traumas differently-something may affect you in a way that is different than someone else. If you notice you have these symptoms you may have (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder also "PTSD")