You may have trauma and not even know it.
Trauma is not just for combat veterans. Although combat veterans can struggle with trauma, they are not the only ones who do.
Do you ever wonder why a certain, negative experience seemed to set the course for your life up to this point?
At times in our lives we may go through difficult, emotional experiences that have a lasting impact on our lives. We have vivid, scary memories that feel like the negative experience is happening to us all over again.
We might shake, our hands may tremble, or we might feel like we’re freezing cold in a warm room. We may have nightmares or we may life in a perpetual state of feeling “frozen” in our lives. We can’t seem to experience any positive feelings at all. We could feel “cut off” from our loved ones and struggle with irritability or anger outbursts.
If this sounds like something you’ve been experiencing, you may have experienced some sort of trauma.
Trauma can come in many forms such as the new mom who gave birth and thought she or her baby was not going to make it. Or the person who had an illness, surgery, or health condition they believed they may not survive. It could be a car accident, a violent assault, or even hearing secondhand about something horrible that happened to a loved one.
It can come in even less obvious ways such as growing up in a household in which you did not feel that your caregivers were really there for you. You may have felt that your mom or dad didn’t really understand you and they consistently emotionally misattuned with your emotions, leaving you to feel lonely, angry, confused, etc. Many people come from “intact” families where “nothing bad ever happened”, however, due to emotional neglect or misattunement, they feel challenged to move past their childhood experiences.
Since each person is an individual, trauma can look different for different people. If you resonated with any of the scenarios or experiences above, it may be beneficial to meet with us to have a more comprehensive interview. There are treatments for trauma, even military combat trauma, such as EMDR which can lessen, or even eliminate, the effect of trauma on your life. Contact us for an appointment.