How Does Trauma Affect the Mind?
Trauma has numerous adverse effects on humans, and if not treated, it can be detrimental to numerous life aspects and last for a lifetime.
In one of our previous blogs, we discussed how trauma affects the body. In this blog post, we will examine the adverse effects of trauma on the mind as part of the same series.
Let’s take it from where it all starts…
What Is Trauma?
Before diving into the effects of trauma on the mind, it’s important first to define trauma.
Trauma refers to an individual's emotional response to a distressing event that overwhelms their ability to cope. Such events may include accidents, natural disasters, abuse, or violence, and they can have lasting adverse effects on their mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
The American Psychological Association defines trauma as "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster." Any trauma has two main aspects. The first aspect is the experience, often filled with negative feelings and even physical pain. The second aspect is the aftermath. This includes all the negative emotions that the person still has as a result of the traumatic experience, as well as the memories, beliefs, and resulting thoughts that they obtained as a coping mechanism for that traumatic experience.
Trauma can deeply impact individuals, and it’s essential to recognize that everyone's response is different. Some may experience shock and denial right after an event, while others might struggle with persistent symptoms like flashbacks, troubled relationships, and even physical discomfort such as headaches or nausea.
Timely intervention and compassionate support can play a vital role in the journey toward recovery.
Types of Trauma
Trauma can manifest in various forms, often categorized based on its nature and duration. Understanding the types of trauma can help in recognizing its impact and addressing it effectively. Read more about types of trauma and EMDR here.
Acute Trauma
This type of trauma results from a single distressing event. Acute trauma can be a car accident, a natural disaster, or witnessing/living through a violent act.
Acute trauma is characterized by a sudden and unexpected experience that leaves a lasting emotional impact on the person. People who have suffered acute trauma might battle with strong emotions that are connected with that experience, and they might also incorporate unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Chronic Trauma
Chronic trauma occurs when an individual is exposed to repeated or prolonged distressing events. These can include ongoing abuse, domestic violence, or long-term illness.
Repeated exposure can lead to deep emotional scars and affect one's ability to function normally in daily life. Usually, this is due to the nature of the trauma itself.
When faced with repeated offenses and adverse life experiences, the person is very likely to grow and develop in line with these experiences, thus obtaining particular personality traits and building a mindset and unhealthy coping mechanisms that “help” them cope/live through the experiences. For example, they might self-medicate (with alcohol or drugs) and have defensive, hyper-independent, or mistrusting personality traits.
Complex Trauma
Complex trauma originates from multiple traumatic events that are often interpersonal in nature and occur over an extended period. Examples include prolonged neglect, abuse, or exposure to war.
Complex trauma, similar to chronic trauma, can disrupt development and create lasting challenges in emotional regulation and relationships.
Chronic and complex trauma differ primarily in their sources. Chronic trauma occurs when repeated traumatic experiences arise from a single source, such as ongoing abuse within a household. In contrast, complex trauma involves multiple traumatic experiences stemming from various sources; for example, this could include both household abuse and a toxic professional environment.
How Does Trauma Affect People?
Trauma can profoundly impact an individual's mental, emotional, and physical well-being, with effects varying based on the type and severity of the trauma experienced.
Mental Health Effects
Trauma can inflict different mental health difficulties like intrusive memories, difficulties sleeping, and nightmares, as well as constant feelings of fear, uncertainty, or unease.
It can also impact the person’s ability to trust others, feel connected to the people around them, or battle with strong urges to control the circumstances and people around them.
In extreme cases, trauma can also result in disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression.
Emotional Effects
Emotionally, trauma can cause a mix of negative emotions and feelings of guilt, shame, fear, or anger. Survivors may also struggle with themes like self-esteem, self-protection, self-reliance, competence and ability, and the like.
Some individuals may struggle with emotional regulation. They can either get easily overwhelmed or detached from their feelings or be prone to emotional outbursts and anger.
Physical Effects
Trauma is not only a psychological issue—it also affects the body. Trauma triggers a "fight-or-flight" response, releasing stress hormones that can cause long-term physical strain.
Chronic trauma, for example, has been linked to conditions such as chronic pain, fatigue, auto-immune diseases, and gastrointestinal issues.
Social Effects
Trauma can profoundly impact relationships, resulting in feelings of isolation, distrust, and challenges in maintaining connections. Survivors might pull away from their social networks or find it hard to feel safe interacting with others.
Recognizing these effects is essential in understanding the pervasive influence of trauma and emphasizes the importance of comprehensive care for those affected.
How Does Trauma Affect the Mind?
As I previously mentioned, trauma has numerous adverse effects on the mind. Starting from negative thoughts and ruminations, moving through different negative and restricting mindsets or personality traits, all the way to mental health disorders, can all be effects of trauma.
In the next part, we will go over some of the most often encountered negative effects of trauma, as named by the US Center for Substance Abuse Treatment in their Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series.
Hypervigilance
One of the most common symptoms that come from trauma is hypervigilance, also called hyperarousal. During highly distressing experiences, the brain secretes hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that prepare the system for the fight-or-flight response.
The hypervigilance serves a protective function for survivors of trauma. Their nervous system is all “fired up,” and their body is tensed, looking for possible threats and being prepared for self-protection.
This ongoing hyperarousal may lead to sleep disturbances, muscle tension, and oversensitivity to unpredicted external stimuli like loud noises or sudden movements. Furthermore, it may lead to overreactions in situations where there isn’t any threat, but the person does perceive something as threatening.
Triggers
A trigger is an external sensory stimulus that reminds the person of the trauma or some aspect of the traumatic experience. Triggers often happen due to so-called cognitive errors. Cognitive errors are misinterpretations of situations as dangerous only because they, in any form or shape, remind the person of their trauma.
Triggers can be physical and psychological. Physical triggers are places, people, or circumstances that remind the person of the trauma. They include sound, smell, temperature, visual scene, or bodily sensation. For example, physical triggers can be connected to the anniversary of the event, going to the same place where the trauma happened, or smells that remind the person of the trauma.
Psychological triggers, on the other side, are sentences, topics, behaviors, or personality traits that may remind the person of their traumatic experience. For example, psychological triggers may include misogynistic remarks, topics of wars and war crimes, and even personality traits that might remind the survivor of their aggressor.
Although some triggers can be identified and anticipated, many are far more subtle and unforeseen, often catching the person off guard. One example would be a person who gets stuck in a bathroom stall after they've been repeatedly bullied in school by being shoved into a locker.
Intrusive thoughts and memories
Intrusive thoughts are thoughts and memories that come to the person automatically and suddenly and remind them of the trauma. When they happen, they are coupled with a surge of emotional reactions and physiological sensations.
Oftentimes, they are described as “flooding” the person with thoughts, emotions, and physiological reactions. They often happen as a reaction to a trigger, where an external stimulus reminds the person of the trauma, and intrusive thoughts take over, ruminating endlessly about what happened, thus substantially overwhelming the person with thoughts, memories, and emotions.
Dissociation
Dissociation is a mental process in which the person distances and detaches themselves from the situation or their own experiences as a protective mechanism against overwhelm.
Dissociation can occur as depersonalization, in which a person detaches from their own inner experiences (thoughts, emotions, memories, actions, or identity), or as derealization, in which a person detaches from reality.
Dissociation is somewhat natural and usually occurs when a person engages in an automatic activity, ignores their immediate surroundings, and is deep into their own thoughts.
Under stress or trauma, dissociation happens as a protective mechanism where the person distorts time, space, or identity to shield himself from the trauma and the traumatic experience. For people who have experienced trauma in their pact, dissociation may serve as a protective mechanism from triggers, intrusive thoughts, or emotions. Extreme cases of dissociation can lead to Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, previously called multiple personality disorder.
Some signs usually happen as part of dissociation:
Fixed eyes
Sudden loss of emotional affect (i.e., emotional state becomes completely flat)
Long periods of silence
Stereotyped movements or monotonous voice when speaking
Excessive intellectualization
Sensations that body parts are not one’s own
A sensation that the situation that unfolds is not real
Frequent Psychological Signs Due To Stress
Although trauma and its effects are highly individual and, in many ways, dependent on the person who experiences them and their circumstances, there are a few psychological signs that indicate trauma. The most commonly reported signs of stress due to trauma include:
Flashbacks are involuntary memories of the traumatic event that come suddenly and swiftly, usually evoking strong physiological and emotional reactions. In short, flashbacks are reliving experiences where the memory is so vivid that it seems like it’s happening in the present moment.
Panic attacks are exaggerated responses to danger, stress, or excitement, most often experienced with controlling fear, even when there isn’t any obvious trigger.
Difficulties sleeping include the inability to fall asleep, feelings afraid and unsafe at night, or having nightmares. It might also involve grinding teeth or contracting muscles during sleep and waking up feeling exhausted or with physical pain.
Self-neglect is the inability to care for oneself and meet basic needs like eating, bathing, or cleaning the house. This sign is often part of depression and depressive episodes, which can also stem from trauma.
Self-harm is a way of dealing with difficult feelings, memories, and situations. Focusing on the momentary physical pain allows trauma survivors to “forget” and detach themselves from the uncomfortable emotions and thoughts.
Suicidal thoughts are a step further and often seem like “ways out” for people who have experienced trauma.
Substance abuse is a way of self-medicating for people who have experienced trauma. Often, alcohol or drugs “enable” people to cope or forget about the trauma for a short period.
HelpGuide also mentions some other common psychological signs of trauma:
Low self-esteem and negative self-image
Inability to manage and regulate emotions
Emotional numbness
Inability to connect with others
Inability to trust others
Low motivation and inability to focus
Forgetfulness and memory holes
What Kind of Therapy Helps With Trauma
There are a lot of therapies that help with trauma, and based on their theoretical background, they tackle different aspects of trauma and approach it in various ways. Some of them include cognitive-behavioral, emotions-focused therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy.
Nonetheless, only some therapies are highly specialized and made particularly for working and resolving trauma and traumatic experiences. One of the most successful therapies that help with trauma is EMDR. If you want to learn more about how EMDR tackles traumatic experiences, feel free to keep on reading here.
Conclusion
Trauma is a complex and often life-altering experience that is highly distressing and, if not worked on, can have life-lasting effects on the mental, physical, and emotional health of survivors.
Working with an experienced and licensed therapist is crucial for navigating the complexities that trauma unavoidably brings. Here at EMDR Therapy Nashville, we are dedicated to helping clients navigate and overcome their traumatic experiences, resolve their inner conflicts and ruminations, and regain control.
References
American Psychological Association. (n.d.-a). Trauma. American Psychological Association.
https://www.apa.org/topics/trauma
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). (1970, January 1). Understanding the impact of trauma. Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/
Robinson, L., Smith, M., & Segal, J. (2024, August 23). Emotional and psychological trauma. HelpGuide.org. https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/ptsd-trauma/coping-with-emotional-and-psychological-trauma