How Trauma Can Impact Our Anxiety And Future
Trauma. It’s a big word that gets thrown around a lot these days. When we think about trauma most of us think about Big T trauma, which is trauma most of us would define as traumatic, abuse, serious injury, sexual violence, or life-threatening experiences.
There is also little t trauma. Little “t” traumas are highly distressing events that affect individuals on a personal level but don’t fall into the big “T” category. Examples of little “t” trauma include non-life-threatening injuries, emotional abuse, death of a pet, bullying or harassment, and loss of significant relationships.
We all have varying capacities of coping with trauma. What is highly distressing to one person may not be to someone else, so the key to understanding little “t” trauma is to notice how it affects the individual rather than focusing on the event itself.
A majority of us have experienced some form of trauma (whether Big T or little t) in our lives, whether we realize it or not. So what does that mean for those of us who have experienced trauma and how does trauma affect a person?
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is best known as an emotional response to an incident or series of disturbing events that impact your emotional, mental, spiritual, social, or physical well-being. The impact of trauma typically has long-term effects on someone.
Here are some examples of long term effects of trauma:
Shock and/or denial
Increased anger and irritability
Guilt and/or self-blame
Isolation
Numbness
Nightmares, flashbacks, recurring memories
Loss of energy
Physical pain
These symptoms, along with many more, are all normal responses to experiencing trauma. Sometimes these effects will start to subside on their own but that isn’t always the case. Over time, the long lasting effects of trauma will build up our anxiety and start getting in the way of how we live our lives.
Trauma From an Early Age
When left untreated, trauma can affect you years later by building up inside us over time. That feeling may be the root cause of the anxiety you developed from a painful experience, and that can cause panic attacks, nightmares, midday flashbacks, and more. What’s worse is that this severe anxiety we develop from childhood can affect us years later.
Here are some common traits of the family’s my clients were raised in:
There was a strong sense of right and wrong and punishment and reward.
A strong emphasis on appearances and looking good to the outside world.
As you grew up you learned that one way to get positive attention was through achieving, the more you succeeded the more attention you received and the busier you were the less you had to deal with the emotional upheaval.
Loyalty to the family was super important. Keeping family secrets, honoring family ideals. The family was important. This is why you have a high loyalty value. Sometimes the loyalty to the family was so important that even as adults we can’t see the unhealthy ways we were taught.
Clients have told me, “I remember as soon as I walked in the house I would start ‘reading the house’ to see what I needed to do to help.” They will describe walking on eggshells in the house because there was a sense of instability and emotional upheaval.
In my childhood experience, this emotional upheaval led to feelings of anxiety, grief, and feeling out of control, but because it was emotionally unsafe I couldn’t talk about my feelings. So I shoved them down and ‘soldiered on’ and ‘practiced gratitude’ and ‘being positive’ so I could get through it. Eventually cutting myself off almost completely from any negative feelings.
This isn’t about blame. Our parents did the best they could with what they had and they were imperfect people raising imperfect people.
How Trauma Affects People With High Functioning Anxiety
Anxiety is a pretty common feeling and happens to almost everyone. You may start feeling anxious before a big job interview, when you meet your in-laws for the first time, or when you have a lot of tasks you need to get done in one day. These are all examples of general healthy anxiety that show up in our daily lives and that we may have experienced ourselves.
Often people that have high functioning anxiety (HFA) cope with the trauma they experienced by going into survival mode, ignoring their emotions, and focusing on accomplishments. They developed unhealthy coping skills to the trauma they were living in.
Your anxiety might be manifesting because the old coping skills of hustle and ‘push harder’ just aren’t enough any more. The only way out is learning new coping skills and developing ways to own our past and all the Big and little t traumas that might have occurred.
So with HFA, trauma affects us in three ways:
The actual anxiety - caused by not being able to relax, being raised in a house where you walked on eggshells, and emotional upheaval.
Unhealthy coping skills - overachieving, hustling, pushing down negative feelings, and people-pleasing.
The secretiveness - lack of emotional support and the lesson from an early age that self-loyalty is not as important as loyalty to others.
It’s understandable why someone would ignore and try to forget a traumatic event rather than address it. Sometimes it’s easier to act like something never happened - but from my experience, you can only ignore something for so long. The problem is that as you get older, this is unhealthy because you want to live their day-to-day life with no distractions or thoughts of your past. What you don’t realize is that by ignoring your problems you’re actually letting your anxiety build up inside, making it harder for you to move on.
This cycle doesn’t have to last forever. There are ways to lessen the effects of trauma, and maybe with the right guidance, you can finally learn how to stop it from impacting your life.
Work With an Anxiety Coach
Working through a disturbing experience can feel like an impossible task, I get it, but it doesn't have to be. With the right tools, a listening ear, and some helpful guidance, you can start taking back the life you thought you had lost to your trauma and anxiety.
With my coaching services, you can get the kindness, support, and strategy you need to work through your anxiety on a daily basis. If you’re not quite ready to work one-on-one, you can check out my self-guided course, a resource you can take advantage of on your own time and at the pace that’s comfortable for you.
Schedule a free consultation with me to learn how you can stop trauma and anxiety from impacting your future.