How do I know if I have experienced trauma?

 Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past, it’s about transforming the way it lives within you. It’s about recognizing that while trauma may have shaped your experiences, it does not define you. You are capable of growth, of rewriting your story, and of stepping into a life that is filled with love, connection, and possibility.

One of the most common questions I am asked is:

How do I know if I have trauma? 

Many people believe trauma is something that only happens in extreme circumstances: war, stranger or family violence, automobile accidents, or major losses. These more extreme circumstances are objectively traumatic. However, an event need not be objectively traumatic or extreme to have been traumatic. 

Whether an event is traumatic for us is related to both whether the event is objectively traumatic and whether the event was subjectively traumatic.

When determining whether clients who have experienced major negative life events have experienced trauma, I am mindful of both their objective
exposure to trauma and my clients’ subjective experience of the event.

Clients who experience an event(s) that is both subjectively experienced
as traumatizing and objectively typically classified as trauma are at the greatest risk for significant distress. It is important to realize that even events that are not typically considered objectively traumatic may be traumatic to an individual based upon the individuals own life experience and resources and the meaning they have given to the event.

Trauma is not just about what in particular happened to us.  It is also about how we personally experience, process, and give meaning to those events.

Signs You May Have Trauma

Trauma can manifest in both very obvious and in more subtle ways.

• An Inability to Feel, Relate, Or Get In Touch With Our Emotions.  
• Continual anxiety or hyper vigilance: Always feeling nervous, fidgety, or on edge. Attempting to notice clues that something is about to go wrong, even in safe situations.
• Patterns of self-sabotage: Creating distance between yourself and others, putting off important tasks, behaving in ways contrary to you reaching your goals, or repeating unhealthy relationship patterns.
• Fear of abandonment or rejection: People pleasing, ruminating about conversations and interactions, or needing continuous reassurance. Having an intense fear of abandonment. Betray ourselves in order to avoid conflict or uncomfortable and painful situations.
  
• Overreacting to small hassles: Feeling disproportionately upset or anxious over minor situations.

If any of these symptoms of trauma ring true for you or if a few resonate with you,  your body, mind, and your nervous system may still be carrying unprocessed pain or fear from the past, affecting how you move through the world today.

Intergenerational Trauma

Research has shown that we may experience the effects of trauma indirectly. Trauma can be passed down through generations. Sometimes we carry the pain of the family that came before us. Trauma is passed down from prior generations through family dynamics, parenting styles, and unstated emotional wounds. Children absorb what their parents say and what their parents don't say or hold secret which leads to inheriting fears, anxieties, and survival patterns from parents, grand-parents, and great grandparents and other ancestors. We can change and transform intergenerational trauma by changing environmental factors, learned patterns of expression, feeling and behavior.

While trauma can be inherited, it can also be healed and prevented from being passed down in families. We can come to identify generational patterns and consciously break the cycles of suffering experienced by our ancestors, replacing them with cycles of growth, well-being, and resilience.

Healing trauma is extremely powerful. By processing and working through our trauma, we break painful cycles for ourselves and for future generations to come.

4  Trauma Healing Practices

As we realize that we may be carrying trauma, we can begin to take small but consistent steps to heal.  These four processes are powerful ways to invoke healing for yourself and for your family.

• Self-reflection: Journaling, meditating, or simply paying attention to your reactions and patterns.
• Seeking support and connection: Process emotions safely by having conversations with friends, family members, or support groups. You may also consider working with a therapist or counselor. 
• Regulating your nervous system: Engage in practices like deep breathing, mindfulness, or movement (such as yoga or walking).
• Rewriting your inner new narrative: Challenging old beliefs that no longer serve you and replacing them with self-compassion and empowerment.

You are not alone and you are

 capable of healing and living a good life.