Trauma manifests in a similar manner in people, regardless of what caused it. Although stigmatized and not talked about often in society, trauma remains one of the main reasons for stress and mental illness in modern life. When this trauma goes unhealed for a long time, it can wreak havoc on the body as well.

It is important to note that trying to identify the cause of every symptom and trying to fix them individually is a very time-consuming activity that leads nowhere but to frustration.

You can spend years of your life trying to fix an individual symptom or issue but without taking care of the trauma itself, new symptoms will appear even as some others are fixed temporarily.

Symptoms of Trauma

Here are some common ways you can identify if you suffer from trauma.

The effect of trauma on the body increases, both in number of symptoms and their strength, with the amount of time it remains unhealed in the body. Some symptoms only occur in the long term.

Chronic fatigue

Unresolved Trauma in your body results in you spending most of your life in survival mode, over-working every part of your body and mind even when they are not needed. The ability to deal with stress is also greatly diminished and you might feel stressed and exhausted easily and frequently. Quality of sleep is also reduced, leading to a vortex to the bottom in terms of energy and vitality.

Intrusive thoughts or images

Intrusive thoughts or images are a very common symptom of trauma. This often leads to being unable to think clearly and act in organized manner. Intrusive thoughts can cause disruption in normal life, and can lead to enormous amounts of post-traumatic stress. This can also lead to internal conflict, insomnia and other disorders.

Anxiety and panic attacks

A constant sense of anxiety that is accompanied by situational panic attacks are common with people struggling with unresolved trauma. This can stop you from doing the things you want in life, which makes life less joyful and more like an effort to just get through your days. This also leads to being overprotective, which leads to over-thinking and living mostly inside your head.

Digestive and Immune Disorders

Being under constant stress from unresolved trauma over a long periods of time harms both the digestive and immune systems. Some common issues faced are inflammation, indigestion, bloating, gas, IBS and constipation. Stress related damage to immune system may lead to falling sick often, developing sensitivity towards certain foods and auto-immune disorders, among other things.

Addictions

You can develop what is referred to as "Addictive Personality", i.e. you seem to get addicted to a surprisingly high number of things. Overeating, drinking/smoking, drugs, over-indulging in video games or pornography, or anything else that can help you escape the suffering of post-traumatic life. You could also be involved in an abstaining lifestyle, spending too much time and effort treating the symptom instead of root of the issue, i.e. Trauma.

Depression and Apathy

Unresolved trauma within you will cause you to stray away from who you are and what you want in life as an individual, making you be a shell of your former self. You might struggle to find a reason to live, and see the world, people around you and life itself as pointless and futile. Self-hating tendencies and suicide ideation can happen as you seek to escape the impact of trauma, and the other symptoms that affect your life.

Isolation and Inability to Socialize

You have a hard time connecting with other people and socializing. When around other people, you seem to be unable to enjoy the company and may feel uncomfortable or even dreadful in some cases. Being around other people can feel draining. You are likely to isolate yourselves from other people as much as possible.

Feeling Stuck and Disconnected

You feel like you are stuck in life and the effort you take leads you nowhere. You might also feel disconnected with time, where it seems like a big part of your life is going by without you living it the way you want. You can feel disconnected to your body and its sensations such as thirst, hunger (or lack of), etc. All of this can lead to feelings of being incomplete and living like a half dead zombie.

Unusual body sensations

Unusual body sensations are common with people suffering from aftermath of trauma. This includes tingling sensation around the body or warm patch of skin, heart palpitations, etc. Similarly, you might also notice some other psychosomatic manifestations such as constant tightness in various parts of your body such as neck, back, abdomen or anus, which may lead to conditions such as migraine, back pain, and anal fissure.

Personality disorders

People struggling with trauma have lot of personality disorders that develop slowly after the event, and these disorders severely affect how they interact with others as well as how they live their everyday life in general. Development of unhealthy obsessions, irrational rituals or habits and constant need to control are common.

Emotional detachment

Your life is overwhelmingly dominated by a single emotion. It could be fear, anger, regret, shame, sadness or hopelessness. Going through your life, emotions do not feel fun or exciting but feel like a baggage that you need to handle everyday to try to function normally. This is a major sign that your mind and body are not functioning normally and that you have trauma.

Hypochondria

Another common symptom with people suffering from trauma is a feeling that something is wrong with them. A deep sense of knowing that something needs to be changed or healed to feel normal and be healthy again. It is generally hard to put this into words or identify what is causing this or how to fix it, but the feeling persists until the trauma has been healed.

Some Frequently Asked Questions:

I have few of the above symptoms but do not remember experiencing traumatic situation.

This situation is very common among people for three main reasons.

When your mind perceives you have experienced some dangerous or life-threatening situation, it can actively try to repress that event and any emotions surrounding it out of conscious awareness.
It is also possible that an event that occurred a long time ago has left the trauma unhealed inside your body, which felt manageable at the time, has over time grown in severity.
Finally, it is possible that the event might have happened during your childhood, for which you have no mental reconnection, but your body has been traumatized by it.

This is why we put emphasis on the symptoms while identifying trauma, as they are more accessible and noticeable than trying to figure out what and where a traumatic event might have occurred.

I get traumatized very easily at even the smallest things, It is hard for me to live an easy life and go with the flow.

Unlike what you might think, trauma is not just caused by the external events or incidents, but a big part of it is how an individual responds to that situation. A person with good childhood role models and healthy upbringing will have higher resilience to trauma and will easily bounce back from unfortunate event compared to others. This resilience can also be diminished by factors such as long term stress, physical and mental health and the amount of support you get from people around you.

Somatic therapy can help build this resilience, and if you think you get traumatized easily and would like to know what you can do about it, check out Get Help page.

Can Trauma be passed down from parents to their children?

Trauma is not passed down through genetics or lineage. However children during their formative years pick up on the symptoms of their parents far more easily and integrate those within their own personality.

A child whose parents suffer from anxiety or depression is more likely to develop their own mind to be inline with their parents, without conscious choice or effort. This unhealthy way of living can cause the child to live a life that is similar to someone who has experienced trauma firsthand.

There is also possibility that parents that are going through post traumatic situation pass on faulty or unsafe worldview on to their children. This can make them feel like they are not strong enough to face life on their own, and may cause them to be overprotective, isolated and have issues with anxiety.