Trauma is something that seriously impacts you to the point that when in the traumatic situation you were worried about your safety, that of others or those around you. You may even experience potential loss of life or potential severe injury. These events permanently alter your perception of safety.

Trauma can be any disturbing experience. The trauma aspect is that you experience significant fear, feelings of helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings that are intense enough to continue over a period of time to have a negative impact on your attitudes, behaviour and other aspects of normal functioning.

When you feel you are in, or about to go into a, threatening situation you develop intense feelings of fear and anger. Other indicators that you are experiencing a perceived threat include shifts in attention, shifts in perception and changes in emotion. These feelings are caused by your brain going into a “fight or flight response.”

How Trauma Shows Up For You

Trauma can manifest itself in various ways. Some people can experience depression and intense sadness. Others may feel helpless and powerless.

One of the most common impacts of trauma is hypervigilance. This is where you constantly scan your surroundings, communications with other people, even interactions out of the home for potential threats to your safety.

Hypervigilance is part of your fight or flight response. This constant scanning for danger.

When you are in a hypervigilant state you will be anxious and may experience sweating and elevated heart rate.

Intense Sadness

It is very common to experience intense sadness and disconnection after a traumatic event.

The event has challenged your sense of safety and often you feared harm or even death as the outcome.

Not surprisingly it can feel very unreal and disconnected after such an event. You have lost a sense of safety in your life and this is a loss that you need to adjust you.

Any loss is something to grieve. As I relate in my blogs on grief. That carries a lot of adjustments and takes time to incorporate the event into your future life.

Allow yourself time to experience that sadness. Allow all the feelings associated with that to be experienced.

If you are having trouble coping with those feelings, an appointment with a trauma trained counsellor is a good idea.

Hypervigilance.

When you have experienced a traumatic event you are going to be primed to watch out for a similar event. That is totally normal. It is how your brain works to protect you.

Having lost a sense of safety and trust in the safeness of your world, your brain is going to be working hard to ensure your safety.

This means constantly being on the lookout for danger.

You may well find yourself preoccupied with searching for safety when you need to attend to something or someone else.

A great example is my daughter’s dog. She is quite nervy. When she sees a threat (usually a larger dog) she freezes. She won’t even accept treats until the danger is passed. She loves treats so that shows how strong the fight flight response is. All focus is on safety and being ready to run or fight. There is no space in that response for eating or normal conversation.

Someone who is constantly hypervigilant finds it very hard focusing on their work and getting things done.

Helplessness

Many people feel they have no control over what happens to them.

When trauma is experienced in childhood that child is very disempowered and develops learned helplessness. Many people never grow out of that learned helplessness as they grow into adulthood.

One of the biggest tasks in treating trauma is to empower you to be able to develop a sense of being able to solve issues in life.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your trauma healing, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz