5 Signs That You Have Trauma

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

What are the clear signs that you have psychological trauma and need to see a psychologist?

The first, most important and deepest common symptom is guilt. If you all the time feel that in some situations you did something wrong, you are afraid to do the wrong thing, to disappoint others or a specific person, this fear does not allow you to move on, does not give freedom, does not allow you to straighten your shoulders. There may also be a fear of not meeting the expectations of the people around you (most often close ones - mom, dad, husband, wife). If you experience these feelings, then you have a deep trauma for which no one took responsibility, which is why you feel guilty. This is how our psyche is arranged - a person is inclined to take the blame so that he has a sense of control of the situation, then, relatively speaking, he will change so as not to receive emotional and moral hardening from his parents (as it was in childhood). Accordingly, this is then transferred to the whole life, so a person all the time and feels guilty.

The next sign is trust. You do not trust people, are afraid to enter into a relationship, or, conversely, fall into codependency in a relationship, do not trust yourself, relying entirely on the decision of your partner. Another option is that you, in principle, have difficulties with building relationships, you are afraid of being abandoned or leaving your partner before you become very close to him. Here we are talking about the fear of violating personal boundaries, the fear of being absorbed and absorbing a partner (that is, you yourself are so worried about yourself - "I will come into a relationship and most likely absorb my partner, which means he will not be!"). However, more often than not, we are afraid to be absorbed than to devour someone ourselves. Sometimes a situation arises when the level of rage is so high that we are afraid of a partner, or, conversely, we love him so much that we are ready to eat.

This reason also includes the belief that you do not deserve happiness and all that you want (as if you do not have the right to all the existing benefits in life). In this case, we are talking about trusting space and the world as a whole (“The world accepts me!”). This view is directly related to the relationship with the mother figure (relationship with the mother forms further relationships with the world). For example, as a child, you had a feeling that your mother does not accept you enough, and accordingly, the world does not accept, much less give you anything. As a result, a deep childhood trauma of trust will arise in this place.

The third sign is responsibility. If you find it incredibly difficult to take responsibility for your life, actions, behavior - this is a sign of trauma. Relatively speaking, your psyche is stuck at some stage of development (psyche is 3 or 5 years old, and at this age it is impossible to take responsibility for your life). The situation repeats itself - you did not have enough resources then and do not have enough them now to make a qualitative leap towards growing up. How to deal with it? You need to work in tandem with a psychotherapist on your responsibility and making decisions (especially difficult ones) that can affect your whole life. "Adults", serious decisions that predetermine fate, should be exclusively yours, and you should not follow the lead of someone (mom, dad, husband / wife), even if you do not understand what exactly will be better, but where something inside you "gnaws a worm" and you want to do everything differently. Nobody knows better than you! So, if your psyche is stuck in childhood, early stages of development, when there was not enough resources, this is an indicator of deep trauma, and it needs to be worked out in therapy.

The fourth sign is self-esteem. If you do not feel self-worth, you have no self-worth, then you are satisfying the desires and expectations of others. There may also be a high level of perfectionism, but in general this is also the satisfaction of someone's needs and desires (there is an idealized picture that we strive for).

Perfectionism is an indicator of unformed self-esteem (uneven, unstable, a person does not enjoy himself, he strives somewhere, but he himself does not know where exactly). Often, perfectionists have a lot of difficulties with self-deprecation - I'm bad, I again failed. In fact, we are dealing with both guilt and shame (toxic shame). Sometimes a person is so ashamed of himself that he cannot share his thoughts, admit that he did not cope with something, and his life is not what he would like.

The last sign is a specific, separate situation. In a conflict or stressful situation, you withdraw into yourself or flare up. The most important indicator that there is trauma here is that you do not remember a piece of what happened to you (it can be part of a dialogue, a chain of events, all day, but often it is about 1-2 minutes of conversation). If you ask a person to reproduce the entire dialogue with someone, he will not be able to repeat it completely, he will stumble, claiming that the words of the interlocutor sounded as if in a fog. This is a direct sign of the trauma of the psyche, because you do not remember how you got into the trauma funnel, a state of numbness, into some dissociation, when all your feelings disappeared.

The four main signs of trauma are numbness (akin to "freezing" both in the body and in the thoughts that you are losing yourself), hyperexcitation (an outburst of anger, an affective reaction to someone), a state of muscle contraction inside (closed and withdrawn into oneself) and dissociation (mentally you are present in the conversation, but there are no feelings, perhaps you see yourself from the outside or you just don’t feel yourself at all).

What to do? The best option is to see a psychotherapist. The main problem with all these traumas is that your feelings have gone into the depths of the unconscious, and you are afraid to experience them. Next to another person, especially a psychotherapist, you will be able to find your feelings, and even if you are in pain, you do not want to touch them, you will gradually work through the entire depth of pain. Self-medication in this case only retraumatizes you, while taking a considerable amount of time, so it is better to undergo a course of therapy and live happily on.