How Does Trauma Affect Emotions?
How Does Trauma Affect Emotions in Those That Have Experienced Trauma
Staggering statistics state that around 70% of US citizens have suffered at least one traumatic experience in their lives.
Since trauma inflicts long-lasting negative consequences on a person’s well-being, it’s crucial to familiarize ourselves with trauma and traumatic experiences, as well as understand how trauma affects the sufferer.
It’s even more so important to offer DIY trauma relief strategies and provide accessible therapy help for those affected.
In this blog post, I will do all of the above. By tackling how trauma affects emotions, I will try to underline the importance of therapy to help trauma sufferers regain their self-esteem, power, and control over their well-being. As always, remember that professional help is available.
Information About Trauma
The Trauma Informed Care Center defines trauma as a distressing experience or experiences that are emotionally distressing and life-threatening. They have long-lasting adverse effects on the sufferer and harm the physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being.
Trauma has two main components, as the American Psychological Association states. The first component is the traumatic experience itself and its life-altering and life-threatening elements. They can include physical or emotional abuse, household violence, bullying, sexual violence, accidents, violent crimes, neglect, the death of a loved one, war and witnessing war crimes, and the like.
The second component is the aftereffects of the traumatic experience, which are the lasting memories and consequences of the experience itself. Some of them include flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety and fear, relationship difficulties, mindset difficulties, negative self-image and low self-esteem, unhealthy coping skills, and even physical signs like nausea or headaches.
The Treatment Improvement Protocol Series, as part of the US Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, names numerous reactions to trauma. Initial reactions may include confusion, dissociation and numbness, exhaustion, anxiety, sadness and fear, or anger and agitation. Initial reactions happen during and after the traumatic experience itself. More severe responses are continuous periods of distress without calm, profound dissociation, and intrusive memories that prevent the person from realizing they are not endangered anymore.
The long-lasting reactions of trauma include constant fatigue and apathy, sleep difficulties and disorders, nightmares, constant anxiety and fear, excessive shame, depression, and depressive symptoms, avoidance of emotions and emotional numbness, loss of engagement in activities, avoidance of things that even remotely remind of the trauma, etc.
How Many Types of Trauma Are There?
Although there’s different ways to divide it, for this blog trauma can be divided into 3 types based on the duration of the traumatic experience and its complexity.
Acute Trauma
Acute trauma is a one-time occurrence that is traumatic to the individual. Acute trauma can be an accident, the death of a loved one, or a violent attack.
Opposed to the other types of trauma, acute trauma is represented by only one traumatic event. Nonetheless, acute trauma can leave as adverse effects as complex or chronic trauma. Every individual is different, and there isn’t anyone who can say that a particular trauma is “smaller” and “should” be overcome more easily.
Chronic Trauma
Chronic trauma is a perpetual or repeated traumatic event that happens over a period of time in a similar manner. For example, instances of bullying, household violence, neglect, abusive relationships, or repeated physical assaults are considered chronic trauma.
The effects of chronic trauma can be more adverse and complex, depending on the particular circumstances, since the distress is repeated and ongoing. In such situations, the sufferer tends to build defensive mechanisms, beliefs, or behaviors that serve as protectors, which can then restrict the person long after the traumatic experience.
Complex Trauma
Complex trauma is a set of multiple distressing events that come from numerous different sources and happen over a more extended period. Complex trauma included distressing experiences from various sources and contexts. For example, a person who has suffered complex trauma might have experienced household abuse, school bullying, and, later in life, an abusive relationship. Adverse living conditions in violent neighborhoods, refugee hardships, or living in times of war are also considered complex traumas.
What makes chronic and complex trauma highly negatively impactful is the fact that it happens for a longer time, forcing the sufferer to obtain a certain mindset, behavioral adaptations, and coping mechanisms as ways to survive and cope with repeated mistreatment. It also restricts their ability for healthy life transitions, often leading to fixed behavior patterns, low emotional regulation skills, and lower educational opportunities, employment, and personal growth opportunities.
The effects of trauma
Trauma affects people in numerous ways and interferes with all of their life aspects.
Trauma affects the person’s:
View of themselves and their self-image
View of others and their ability to trust and connect with others
Ability to care for oneself and others
Mindset, belief system, and thoughts
Emotional regulation, responses, and safety
Physical safety and behaviors, including coping mechanisms and activities they engage in
Motivation, determination, and drive for improvement
As part of the series “How does trauma affect well-being?” so far, I’ve already covered “how trauma affects the body” and “how trauma affects the mind.” Feel free to head over there and familiarize yourself with the effects of trauma on the body and mind.
Now, it’s time to dive into trauma's impact on emotions.
How Does Trauma Affect Emotions?
Trauma affects emotions in numerous ways. First and foremost, the traumatic experience itself can bring a lot of immediate strong emotions like distress, fear, confusion, negation, or shame. In the long term, these emotions may stay intense if unresolved or evolve into anger, irritation, sadness, negative self-image, and the like.
Here are some of the most frequent emotional impacts of trauma.
Emotional dysregulation
Emotional regulation is the person’s ability to feel, understand, and manage their emotions without acting upon those emotions or letting their emotions control them.
Often, trauma survivors have difficulty regulating their emotions like anxiety, anger, sadness, or shame. This is especially true if they have suffered childhood trauma, and the experience has been with them far before they could have logically or mentally understood it, controlled it, or consciously decided how to move forward from it. Grown-ups who have suffered trauma may be more successful in regulating their emotions, and this dysregulation may be short-lived, but that is not always the case. Most of the time, the trauma is perceived as life-altering, and most individuals need some sort of professional help to resolve the lingering negative emotions that are connected to it and overcome the experience.
Emotional regulation often leads to other self-injuring or maladaptive behaviors like self-medication or substance abuse, as well as disordered eating, compulsive behaviors, and emotional repression. They temporarily serve as relief but, in the long run, only decrease the ability for emotional regulation.
The stress from a traumatic experience may cause dysregulation in two extreme ways: feeling too much or too little emotion. Both of these extremes are ways of self-protection and self-preservation. Let’s discuss both of them.
Overwhelm
Some trauma survivors may start feeling too many (and too strong!) emotions as a reaction to the trauma. This emotional overwhelm serves as a protective mechanism - the person subconsciously finds reassurance that when they feel too much, they are going to be sensitive to threats and any possibility of another traumatic experience.
In other cases, the overwhelm may happen when the person continues to have strong emotions connected to the traumatic experience, and upon an external trigger, they come back with the same intensity as initially.
Overwhelm usually leads to a negative self-image because the survivor is aware that their emotions completely take over them, and they can’t regulate themselves.
Numbing
Numbing, on the other hand, is the tendency to detach from thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and memories as a coping mechanism against emotions. It usually happens as a protective mechanism against feelings, the same emotions one feels during or after the traumatic experience. For overwhelmed survivors, the emotions push forward without the person being able to control them; for numbing survivors, the feelings are “locked away,” and they can’t access them.
Numbing survivors may seem like they are “coping” to a layman because they hide and suppress their emotions so they don’t show any signs that their trauma still shakes them up. Nonetheless, numbing can be very detrimental to the physical and mental health. For one, suppressed emotions can later come up psychosomatically as physical illness or auto-immune disease. Furthermore, numbing, as a process, restricts people's emotional palette and might disable them from feeling all kinds of emotions, including positive ones. This can, in turn, lead to emotional isolation or depression.
Excessive or inappropriate emotions of guilt, shame, or fear
After suffering a trauma, the survivor will likely also experience changes in their mindset and belief system. They might start feeling afraid and unsafe all of the time, especially if the traumatic experience was far beyond their control or if it happened suddenly and they didn’t have any way of controlling or changing the experience.
In another set of circumstances, the trauma survivor may also experience extreme shame and perceive that the experience might have somehow been their fault, a result of their shortcomings, or due to their inability to control, manage, and change their circumstances or protect themselves. These same thoughts can also evoke feelings of guilt. Depending on the circumstances, a survivor may feel guilt for how they acted or didn’t act or what they could have done differently. Survivor’s guilt, for example, is one type of guilt that can often happen in people who have survived trauma in which there were casualties. These trauma survivors may feel guilty for living through the experience, and this type of problem often happens in war zones, acts of terrorism, car accidents, etc.
Often, these excessive and inappropriate emotions of guilt, shame, or fear are intertwined and set in motion a complex emotional state of the person who has suffered the trauma.
For people who have suffered childhood trauma or types of complex or chronic trauma, these feelings might be even more so present since the traumatic experience was not a one-time event but instead was a series of events in which they acted a certain way numerous times.
Triggers
A trigger is an external stimulus that reminds the person of the trauma or a specific part of the traumatic experience. Although a trigger is primarily a cognitive/mental effect of trauma, it does lead to strong emotional reactions.
A trigger, essentially, brings the person into a state of fight or flight, making them either defensive or offensive. So, they might run away and avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma, or they may lash out and show excessive aggression, oftentimes disproportionate to the situation at hand.
Avoidance
Avoidance is usually a way to lower the anxiety and the negative feelings that may come when exposed to certain people, situations, contexts, or places that remind the person of the trauma.
Although avoidance may seem like “protecting” oneself, it is often maladaptive - the avoidance of triggering situations or scenarios only increases the mental perception that those situations are unbearable, which in turn increases the anxiety and the need for avoidance. If not addressed, avoidance gets worse with time and may lead to complete isolation of the person.
Anger and Lashing out
In another set of circumstances, people who have suffered trauma may be prone to angry outbursts of lashing out. This usually happens as a defense behavior against perceived danger or trigger.
People who lash out usually suppress their anger, and when triggered, these emotions explode.
What Therapy Helps With Trauma?
Numerous different types of psychotherapy work with trauma and offer methods and tools that can help trauma survivors manage their emotions better. Cognitive behavioral therapy, emotions-focused therapy, and trauma-focused behavioral therapy are just some of them.
A vital element in recovering from trauma involves learning to handle triggers, memories, and emotions without evasion—essentially, becoming desensitized to traumatic memories and their related symptoms. EMDR is recognized as one of the most effective therapies for trauma. It addresses trauma-related challenges without overly concentrating on the trauma itself, leading to faster and more efficient results than other therapy types. To learn more about EMDR for trauma, feel free to explore this blog post.
Exercises To Relieve Symptoms of Trauma
For people who have suffered trauma, it’s essential to start working with a certified professional therapist as soon as possible. Although many of the effects of trauma may subside after a while, for a lot of individuals, the opposite is true. As time passes, the symptoms get worse and actively and considerably lower their ability to manage their inner world and the external environment they live in.
To start the process right away and relieve the signs of trauma on your own, you can do a few experiences:
Exercise and do physical activities that you like
Engage in meditation, mindfulness, and breathing techniques
Share your experiences with someone you trust
Start a journal that focuses on your triggers and emotional responses
Connect with like-minded individuals who can understand you
Eat healthy food, hydrate your body, exercise, and have a healthy sleeping schedule
Engage in hobbies and pleasant activities that you like
Practice gratitude and try to focus on the positive aspects of your life
Conclusion
If you have suffered trauma and have difficulties regulating yourself and your emotions due to it, it is crucial that you start working on the issue as soon as possible. Often, avoiding therapy is avoiding facing the trauma (which may seem like recovery!). Still, in the long run, trauma can significantly lower self-esteem, life satisfaction, and ability to control and manage our life circumstances.
Here at EMDR Therapy Nashville, we are dedicated to helping clients alleviate the symptoms and consequences of traumatic experiences and regain control over their mental and physical health, their self-image, and the way they interact with the world around them.
References
What is trauma? - trauma-informed Care Implementation Resource Center. Trauma. (2022, July 8). https://www.traumainformedcare.chcs.org/what-is-trauma/
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Trauma. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/trauma
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). (1970a, January 1). Understanding the impact of trauma. Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (2018, May 25). Trauma types. https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types