Major trauma in life can affect you , even years afterwards, but you can heal. Find out some of the signs of severe stress from trauma, how trauma affects us, and how to heal from it.
A lot of people talk about trauma, but not everybody knows what it means. There are different kinds of trauma of course, but they all cause the same thing- long term suffering. Trauma can devastate you and completely change your entire personality, but it doesn't have to be that way forever. Join SpiritualBlossom as we learn about trauma. Find out what trauma is and what causes it. Find out how it affects your life, signs of trauma, and whether or not we can actually heal from trauma. Spoiler alert- yes we can. Read all the way to the end to find out different ways that you can heal from trauma. Just because trauma happens to you doesn't mean it has to keep you down forever, and we'll show you why!
What is Trauma?
Trauma is defined as a very distressing experience, a major physical injury, or an emotional response to going through something horrible. It can be physical, psychological, or both. After a physical trauma, you may get surgery, or some type of physical therapy so that your body can heal. You patiently nurture your body until it's better. Psychological trauma is supposed to be treated the same way, but a lot of people don't understand that. Emotionally, you have to process trauma and heal.
Trauma is not the same thing as just going through something mildly unpleasant. Trauma is a major event that completely changes your life. It can make emotionally open people completely shut down and it can turn previously kind people into bitter heartless individuals. It can destroy relationships, turn you into a substance abuser, or transform you into someone who quests to save other people from experiencing similar things. Different people respond to trauma in different ways. Some people will pretend trauma never happened, refusing to talk about it, and refusing to think about it. Other people will talk about it, get therapy for it, and face it head on in attempts to heal. Can families cause trauma? You bet they can. Read here to find out if they are worth it: Are Relationships with Your Relatives Worth It?
What Causes Trauma?
Trauma is caused by painful events. Abuse, heartbreak, or grief from loss of a loved one can cause it.
Abuse
Abuse is defined as being mistreated. Violence, unkind words, neglect, and emotional mistreatment are all examples of abuse. Long-term abuse can cause lifelong trauma and even short-term abuse can change the victim for life. It can make you fearful, make it difficult to form good relationships, and give you depression, PTSD, or make you emotionally closed off. It can also make you adopt your abuser’s habits and become abusive yourself if you’re not careful.
Grief
Grief is our emotional reaction to loss. Losing someone or something very important to us can change our lives forever. It can be loss of a loved one through death, a loss of a way of life, or loss of a relationship due to a falling out or a move. Not everyone immediately moves on when loss happens. Grief is one way we process our loss and come to terms with it. One way to communicate with someone you lost to death is with a séance. Find out how here: How to Do a Seance
Heartbreak
Breakups, falling outs, and the end of relationships break our hearts so badly, we might wonder if we can ever love again. This can cause serious trauma, and it can take years for us to recover from it. Heartbreak and the trauma that comes from it can keep us from forming new relationships, at least for a while, and make us distrustful of new people who say they love us.
How Does Trauma Affect Your Life?
Trauma causes us to react in painful ways. It can give us trust issues and change our emotional attachment styles. It can keep us stuck in life, unable to move forward, and it can make it feel impossible for us to be happy.
Trust issues
Trauma can make us distrustful of everybody, not just the person who hurt us. There are over 8 billion people on the planet. If one person or even a dozen people hurt you, the rest of the people on the planet are not responsible- only the ones who caused the trauma, thankfully. That’s difficult to remember when you are shielding yourself emotionally, hoping to protect yourself from more trauma. Try to remember it though. Toxic relationships can cause trust issues and you can read about toxic relationships here: Why Relationships That Are Toxic Happen
Emotional Changes
Trauma can make you emotionally disengage, trying to protect yourself from more trauma, or it can make you over reliant on other people to the point you are codependent. We can’t choose our emotions, but we can decide how we act upon them. It is especially important to examine our emotions and how we adjust our emotional attachment styles when we are dealing with trauma.
Inability to Move Forward
Some trauma is so bad, we can’t emotionally move past it. The death of a spouse, a falling out with adult children, or loss of your health can keep you stuck in an emotional state that paralyzes your life completely. How do you celebrate your birthday without the love of your life? Holidays will never be the same without your kids. Losing your health can prevent you from living the kind of life you love. These kinds of serious traumas can completely rule your life and make you feel helpless. Falling out of love can be traumatic- but can you really fall out of love? Read here to find out: What to Do When You Fell Out of Love
Inability to Feel Joy
A serious trauma can make you so miserable, you can’t ever imagine being happy again. Small things like your favorite flowers, food you love, or hearing birdsong may feel meaningless when they had previously made you very happy. It is not unusual to feel this way after a serious trauma. It may take time, but you will start to feel joy again.
Signs of Trauma
Some things indicate that you are dealing with trauma. Stress and sudden illness can come from trauma. Feeling on edge, having trouble sleeping, and having dark or hopeless thoughts can all be signs of trauma.
Stress
Stress is our body’s natural reaction to harmful things and trauma is harmful. Headaches, rising blood pressure and heart rate, loss of appetite or overeating, digestive problems, and irritability are signs of stress from trauma. Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or excessively worried are too.
Sleep Disturbances
Inability to sleep due to lying awake at night thinking of the horrible things that happened to you are signs of trauma. Some people are afraid to go to sleep when they have been victims because they don’t want to be vulnerable to a possible attack.
Physical Illness
Illness can happen from trauma, even if there has been no injury. You can neglect yourself by not eating or eating all the wrong foods and get sick. You can neglect your need for sleep, and neglect your hygiene, not caring anymore because the trauma hurt you so badly. You can also engage in drug or alcohol abuse as an emotional coping mechanism and make yourself very sick.
Being On Edge
You might become very jumpy after trauma. You might feel easily overstimulated by other people, crowds, loud sounds, bright lights, or even strong smells. It can feel unbearable to be touched and even the clothes on your body can feel irritating.
Dark Thoughts
Trauma can make you think negative or dark thoughts. You can think that nothing will ever get better or that you might not feel happy ever again. A serious breakup can make you think you will never find true love. The death of a parent can make you feel completely alone in life. These feelings are normal and can be journaled about or shared with people who you trust.
Can We Heal from Trauma?
Yes, we can heal from trauma, but we have to be mindful when dealing with trauma. Some people are completely unaware of how their trauma changes them. Some people who were abused become abusers themselves. Some people who were neglected close themselves off emotionally and never want to open their hearts to other people. Some people who were abandoned break off every relationship they have in the attempt to avoid being abandoned again. Not everybody handles trauma this way though.
Some people actively work on undoing the negative changes that trauma imposed in their lives. Becoming consciously aware of the unhealthy coping mechanisms and bad habits that were developed to emotionally protect yourself from the pain that the trauma caused is very important. Healing can happen, but it's a choice. You have to choose to examine what the trauma has done to you emotionally and be objective about the negative ways that it taught you to be. Focusing on the chakras can be used to help self-heal and you can find out how here: Unleash the Power of Your Chakras
How to Heal from Trauma
Healing from trauma doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen. You can't ignore what happened. You have to think about what happened and reject feelings of helplessness. Don't use unhealthy coping mechanisms and practice good self-care. Get the support that you need even if you need professional help, and give yourself time to heal.
Process What Happened
Some people want to pretend that their trauma never happened and never think about it again, but that doesn't work. You will get flashbacks when you least expect it, reminding you of your trauma and there is nothing you can do about that. You have to emotionally process what happened and think about it. Only then can you understand what happened and the way that it makes you feel.
Reject Helpless Thoughts
Thinking about the trauma can make you feel helpless. At the time that you were being traumatized, perhaps you were. You couldn't prevent the trauma from happening to you, but that doesn't mean that you will always be powerless in every situation for the rest of your life. It can be especially difficult when you see the person who hurts you, but taking the power away from them to harm you is very important. Never tell yourself that you don't have the power to protect yourself.
Avoid Unhealthy Coping
We all have to cope with things that happen to us. Just make sure you don't use something unhealthy to do that. Abusing substances like alcohol or drugs, overeating, or exercising to the point that you injure your body all done in efforts to put the trauma out of your mind we'll just make things worse. Those only serve as a distraction and in the end cause more damage. Hurting yourself because somebody hurts you is no way to heal.
Practice Self-Care
If you don't take care of yourself, no one is going to do it for you. That is why self-care is so important, especially when you're healing. What do you need to help yourself to feel better? Do you need quiet time, or do you need to be surrounded by people so you don't feel alone? Do you need to confront the person who caused your trauma, or do you need to be completely away from them? Do you need more sleep, or more time in nature? Take care of yourself in the best way possible and you will heal better.
Get Support
For some people, self-care is all they need to heal trauma, but other people need support. Talking to other people who have gone through a similar trauma can let you know that you are not alone and help you to be heard and understood. Spending time with emotionally supportive friends and family members will help you to heal through your trauma. Never underestimate the power of speaking with a spiritual guide or a counselor. These people help other people heal from trauma all the time and they can help you heal too.
Give It Time
Your trauma won't go away, and you won't be able to forget about it. It's going to hurt for a while, and it might always hurt. Even if it stops hurting, it won't stop hurting immediately, and you are going to need time to heal. You're not on a deadline to heal. Give yourself as long as you need to heal. There is literally nothing more important and nothing better to do with your time.
A Last Word
Whatever happened to you, it wasn't your fault. Trauma is unfair. Sometimes it's nobody's fault, but a natural catastrophe brings it on. Other times someone hurts you and they were wrong for what they did. Unfortunately, a lot of times the people who caused trauma are not sorry. Don't expect them to apologize to you and don't hold off on your own healing waiting for them to make up for what they did. Find your own healing without the participation of the people who hurt you in the first place. Find out what to do when people hurt your feelings here: Controlling Emotions When You’re Hurt
Our traumas might wreck our lives for a while, but they don’t have to destroy us. You can heal from trauma even if it takes a very long time. You can and will find a way to pick up the pieces of your life that the trauma shattered, and live a happy life. You are greater than the bad things that happen to you and you can beat them. Healing will begin the minute you decide you want it to, but it will take time. Give yourself the time you need to heal, and reach out for support.
You can always reach out to us at SpiritualBlossom for emotional support and help in healing from trauma. We are here for you all the time every day.
About the Author: Lady Saoirse has studied magic and lore for most of her life but started walking her own Magical Path after being spiritually reborn in the desert. Today she is a High Priestess for The Temple of the Goddess, she is a psychic advisor and spiritual counselor, she shares her gifts as a Psychic and Content Writer for Mysticsense and SpiritualBlossom, and she writes for The Green Egg Magazine and PaganPages.Org emag.
