Trauma is quite the word. Nobody wants to hear or accept that they are going through trauma. However, situations and events affect people deeper than they think. When you have not overcome trauma you suffer mentally and emotionally long after a traumatic event.
You may believe trauma is about, for example, growing up with abusive parents, bullying, or tragic accidents. That is true; however, it is not enough. Situations that scare you, take away your hope, and make you feel alone can scar you in just the same way, losing a significant friendship can. Here is how to know if you have overcome traumatic events.
1. The Memories Keep Coming Back
You find that you can’t stand certain places, smells, or sounds. They are triggers of bad memories. You find yourself lost in thought recounting a tragic event.
Besides, the memories come back when you see or hear something unrelated roll-coasters. Moreover, you have anger burning inside you and sometimes feel so fearful. You have not overcome trauma.
2. You Can’t Bring Yourself to Tell the Full Account of Events
Usually, when something terrible happens to people, they are shocked, sad, and in disbelief. Thus, they struggle to explain what exactly has happened to them. Such a person will break into tears, be quiet, or even say they can’t talk about it.
Traumatic events tend to fade and get better with time as one accepts what happened. So then, one can talk about those events with ease. However, for someone who has not overcome trauma, it is not the case. In other words, you are still stuck in trauma if you can’t talk about it. You can’t speak the same way you’d talk about how you spent your morning.
3. Physical Symptoms You Haven’t Overcome Trauma
Do you have trouble falling asleep and often have nightmares? Do you often feel worn out by fatigue? You find it difficult to concentrate? Your heart races and you have muscle tensions. Besides, you feel edgy like somebody expecting bad news.
You find that you react in the most inappropriate ways, like getting startled when, for example, the wind blows against the curtain. You have certainly not overcome trauma if a few or all these symptoms occur after some adverse event.
4. You Can’t Form Healthy and Meaningful Relationships
On one hand, you may have trust issues, especially if you experience betrayal from someone very close. Going forward in life, therefore, you find it very hard to trust people and their intentions.
You are, thus, very quick to end friendships as soon as they begin. You always feel this other person is going to let you down anyways.
On the other hand, it may be about a bad childhood. For instance, you have parents who abused you emotionally or physically. For that reason, you find yourself being friends with people who treat you the same way.
Do you find a destructive pattern in your relationships? You need to take a step back and examine yourself.
However, not everybody with a bad childhood does that, but most do, for they haven’t overcome trauma. In other words, they ‘normalize’ being treated wrong, mainly because that is how they grow up.
5. You Feel Shame and Guilt
Traumatic events are usually out of control. So, you feel like you the only one going through and feeling what you are feeling. In short, you feel like nobody can relate to your situation. You think you should have done something different to stop that event.
When you have not overcome trauma, you blame yourself. Your actions did bring this unwanted event. It is difficult to move past a traumatic event when you feel you caused it when, in the real sense, you didn’t.
Conclusion
To conclude, trauma weighs on your mind and body. How does this happen? A traumatic experience does not integrate into the memory in the way other activities are. For example, going for coffee and eating dinner is normal. However, crashing a car is not.
Therefore, these memories of the car crashing keep coming back because the brain has not processed them fully. You should know then that you have not overcome trauma.You, therefore, have emotions you should process fully.