We like to spend time with our family, there is a lot of work to do, we have our favorite hobbies like reading, writing, journaling, art, or even going for a walk. But because of some repeated and disturbing thoughts we often pull ourselves back from doing what we really like. These heavy thoughts are called overthinking anxiety. There is a high chance this overthinking and anxiety is a result of a trauma we always carry inside our mind. Let’s look at what trauma is and how it can affect our lives in unexpected ways.

1. What is Trauma?

Any disturbing experience that results in fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or any other negative feelings that is enough to have a long negative effect on a person’s attitude, behavior, and other aspects of functioning is often addressed as Trauma.

Trauma has the power to reshape your entire life. This thoughts and patterns can feel overwhelming and unable to carry alone. So you expect someone is going to come into your life and save you. But actually it’s just a coping mechanism of your mind. Nobody is responsible for your mental health and happiness except you. Nobody owe you anything. So without waiting for a helping hand, understanding the situation and slowly trying to change yourself can help you a lot.

The most important thing is that, everybody expect an instant relief and escape from trauma after doing any healing method or therapy. But the reality is, healing isn’t like baking cookies. There is no quick recipe. It takes time, patience, and practice. But it’s guaranteed that a change will happen any way.

2. The Causes

Trauma can be triggered by any disturbing situations. These situations can be happened because of nature or another human being.

For example,

Human caused trauma

  • War
  • Industrial accidents
  • Humiliation
  • Bullying
  • Rape
  • Abusive or toxic relationships

Nature causes

  • Natural disasters (earthquakes, floods)
  • Loss of loved ones in sudden disasters
  • Unsafe or unstable living environments

2.1 Overthinking

Overthinking is a psychological condition that analyzing, replaying, or worrying about a situation inside the mind. It leads to a mental paralysis instead of leading to a solution to fix any problems. This condition is often found in people who have experienced trauma.

Overthinking can be categorized into two,

1. Rumination

A situation of replaying past conversations, decisions, or mistakes.

For example,

  • Why did i respond in that way?
  • Why he talked to me like that?
  • What would they think of me?

2. Catastrophizing

A situation that creates the worst possible outcomes about upcoming events inside mind. A worst type of condition that forces to worry about things that not yet happened.

For example,

  • What if it doesn’t go well?
  • Will they like me?
  • What if i fail?

The main difference with thinking and overthinking is that, thinking goes straightly to a decision while overthinking puts you inside a spin of thoughts that never ends up in a solution but high stress and fear.

2.2 Depression

Depression is a heavy, overwhelming experience. It is not a personal failure or lack of willpower but a treatable medical condition.

Depression affects the thoughts, feelings and functioning of that individual. Common signs of depression are,

  • Constant sadness, emptiness, or emotional numbness.
  • Loss of interest or pleasure in activities you usually engage well.
  • Fatigue, low energy in doing things, lower sleep quality or sleeping too long.

Insomnia is a sleep disorder identified by ongoing difficulty in falling asleep, or getting a good quality sleep even when you have a perfect environment to sleep and rest. This leads to unrefreshed morning feelings, daytime fatigue, brain fog, and irritability.

Hypersomnia is a condition leads to too much sleep for long hours. Often 10+ or 12+ hours of sleep without feeling rested.

  • Felling unworthy, guilt, or helplessness.
  • Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, and remembering things.

3. How Trauma Affects You

Becoming over-reactive

After a traumatic event, the amygdala (the brain part responsible for detecting threats) goes into a panic mode. Then it starts to treat every single similar events as a potential danger, even things that you have enjoyed doing.

This causes feelings like you are on edge or constantly jumpy. Your body always expect something bad is going to happen overtime and be prepared. Even a small trigger, like a noisy environment or crowded room can feel overwhelming and disturbing.

Memories feel blurry and unclear

Trauma also affects hippocampus (the part responsible for organizing memory) which leads to a trouble of recalling events already happened clearly. You won’t get a clear idea about what exactly happened in the traumatic situation that cause you this trauma. So the brain just auto-fills the unclear part with worst possible scenarios that maybe never even happened.

This can feel deeply disorienting, as if your own memory is not on your side. It also makes it hard to trust your own sense of reality, which makes you unsure about the trauma ends or it still continues.

Your body holds the stress

Trauma is not just a state of mind, it’s affects the body too in unexpected ways. This chronic stress affects your muscles and tissues, leading to tension, pain or fatigue.

Fatigue is a state of constant physical and mental exhaustion that isn’t healed by sleep or rest. It affects the body more than mind, which make even simple everyday tasks feel like draining and exhausting.

You constantly feel a tightness in your chest, pain in your shoulders or even digestive issues. It’s the body’s way holding onto the trauma, even if your mind is ready to move on.

Nervous system struggles to reset

In trauma, the nervous system (responsible for fight or freeze responses) tries to protect you. But after the event or situation is ended, the nervous system still struggle to return to a normal state.

That might look like a continuously working machine when you try to sit down and relax. Feeling frozen or unable to act when you’re stressed. An overwhelming sense of exhaustion even after resting.

Actually, the brain is stuck on a protective mode, which can make everyday looks hard and unable to move on the it really is.

Expects the worst possible situation

One of trauma’s the longest and most lasting impact is that, how it rewires the brain’s expectations about upcoming events. After experiencing harm, your brain learns to see the world as a dangerous place, even in situations where you are actually safe.

This leads to intentionally avoid peoples or places that reminds you about the traumatic event you experienced. Feeling anxious in situation that you were enjoyed in past (before experiencing trauma). Always imagining worst-possible outcomes, along with overthinking.

Over time, your world gets shrinks down into your own mind. making it extremely hard to connect with others and feel normal. Eventually, you decide to give up all connections and prefer sitting alone inside a room.

4. How Trauma Can be Healed

If you have ever experienced trauma, you might be curious about how it can be healed. Even if you took steps to solve trauma, it can take some time to reflect a noticeable change in your life and feel like yourself again.

There are several ways you can reduce the effect of traumatic events in your life and get back to who you used to be. Let’s look.

Acceptance

Accept yourself that such a disturbing incident happened in your life. This can be a very good start as you no longer fighting with any thought but by acceptance you are healing the wounds.

Acceptance will eventually lead mind to find ways to escape from current thought patters. This also brings a lasting relief from panic attacks, overthinking and anxiety on certain events.

Accept support

It’s understandable that in such a disturbing situation finding and getting help is very hard process. but still you need a helping hand to start the process of healing if you are too exhausted. This can be your loved ones like your parents, siblings, trusted friends or even a therapist.

The important thing here is that, you have to make believe your brain that seeking or receiving help from others is not a threat or bad thing at all. It can be a helping hand, or door opened by your loved ones for you, when you are stuck in a loop of negative and disturbing thoughts.

Grounding exercise

One of the most effective coping mechanism for trauma is grounding. Grounding techniques are designed to help individuals affected with trauma to reconnect with present moment and reduce the overwhelming feelings associated with trauma.

Techniques to use

  • Focus on the breathing
  • Holding or touching a physical object (like holding a ball or cube)
  • Counting objects in a room
  • Closing eyes and trying to imagine any 5 related objects
  • Solving sudoku like strategy games

This will try to distract the thought pattern of intrusive thoughts and force the individual to stay in present.

Cognitive re-framing

Cognitive re-framing is a technique that helps individuals to challenge and re-frame their negative and irrational thoughts. Many individuals have distorted thinking related to trauma which can worsen their stress.

For example, this individuals often get thoughts like they are broken or unworthy. By identifying the negative thoughts and re-framing it into a more balanced perspective, individuals can begin to reduce their trauma-related stress and overthinking which leads to a more stable mindset toward healing.

Identify triggers

Triggers reminds you about the traumatic event happened to you. This can be sights, sounds, people, crowd, words or situations, etc. So learning what are your major triggers is a huge step.

Once you know them, you can try to avoid them, only if it is safe to do so. Also you can prepare yourself to use healthy coping mechanisms when you face them again.

Set boundaries

A safe zone is very important for healing processes to work. This means your physical environment is secure. Not only physical, but setting a clear boundary on your relationships too.

Learning to say no, stepping away from situations that feel unsafe or overwhelming is essential for well-being.

Practice mindfulness

When memories and emotions feels overwhelming, some grounding techniques can help you to force the mind to stay in present, rather than falling into overthinking and anxiety.

  • Deep breathing: Focus on slow, deep breaths.
  • Meditation: A method of staying silent somewhere peacefully to control thoughts.
  • The 5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Scan: Look around and name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can physically feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
  • Mindful Walking: Take a slow walk and focus entirely on the sensation of your feet touching the ground, the movement of your legs, and the feeling of the breeze against your skin.
  • Box Breathing: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, and pause for 4 seconds. Repeat this cycle 3-4 times to calm your nervous system.

Be patient with yourself

There will be good days and bad days. Instead of expecting a quick fix, just understand the feelings without judgment and remember progress is a slower process.

Treat yourself with kindness and understanding, as how we treat a good friend. Avoid self-blame and remember what happens around you is actually not only in your control.

Self-care

Self-care is not selfishness. It is very important to prioritize ourselves for having a healthy mind. This means actively doing things to make ourselves happy like a self-treat.

It is simple as eating a balanced diet, taking a warm bath, reading book, listening to music, or just simply resting/sleeping.

Journal

Journaling is a method of writing down important events in life. By journal you can safely explore your own thoughts and experiences, both bad and good without any judgment. Using this you can organize the experiences you get and gain new insights about what triggers the emotions and what healing method actually work, when.

Be creative

Being creative doesn’t mean become an artist, story writer, painter, etc. in one day. Creativity means do any simple craft or activity yourself that can be counted as an actual progress.

Create activities like drawing, painting, playing any instrument, crafting, or even dancing can give a wonderful sense of accomplishment and joy. This helps a lot as a healing method for traumatic events.

Celebrate progress

No achievement is smaller that doesn’t need a celebration. Especially when you are healing from trauma, celebrate every single achievement by giving yourself a healthy treat. This increases you confidence and urge to do that coping mechanism again.

Realistic goals

Don’t try to achieve everything at once. Instead break down your journey into smaller, manageable steps. Achieving small tasks can help you build confidence.

Exercise

Physical activities can be extremely beneficial as it helps to release tension, reduce stress hormones, etc. By doing physical exercises daily you will feel more connected to the body.

Choose the activity, which you enjoy the most, whether it’s walking, dancing, yoga or workouts.

5. Useful Therapies

Several evidence-based therapies have been developed to help individuals fix their emotional trauma, which allows them to process those painful memories and re-frame their entire life.

5.1 Cognitive behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a method used to identify and challenge negative thoughts. It helps individuals to identify harmful thought patterns that is developed by traumatic experiences.

Look how current pattern of thoughts analyzed,

The three step cycle

  • Thoughts: The thoughts that formed as a result of trauma.
  • Feelings: The feelings these thoughts triggering.
  • Actions: Actions are formed by the feelings you get.

After analyzing the pattern, with the help of certain activities, CBT helps to break those thought patterns and keep the mind in the present.

CBT Activities

  • Catch the thought you experiencing.
  • Fact-checking.
  • Re-framing thoughts.
  • Real-world tasks.

5.2 EMDR therapy

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. A therapist helps an individual to process traumatic memories with the use of bilateral stimulation.

Bilateral stimulation is just a process of tapping both sides of the brain, one after another. It doesn’t mean tapping head with hand or a tool. But moving your eyes left to right, sounds that alternate between ears, tapping the shoulders one after another, etc.

The process

  • You recall the traumatic memory.
  • While focusing on the memory you do the bilateral stimulation.
  • Re-process the thought.

5.3 Exposure therapy

Exposure therapy helps you to face your inner fears in a safe environment, so it will stop controlling your life and present moments.

Through this process therapists teach the brain’s alarm system that safe triggers aren’t dangerous. So as the result panic response naturally fades over time. This is also known as habituation.

The process

  • The therapist lists your triggers from easiest to hardest to solve
  • You try to face one trigger at a time.
  • By repeating this, you become efficient enough to process these thoughts without any fear.

5.4 Additional method alongside therapy

Medication

Medication can’t cure trauma or erase disturbing memories. It acts as a crucial support system.

For example, a life jacket keeps you from drowning in the sea, in a floating state. But you are still in that sea and problem is not solved until you find any help.

The process

  • Reduces constant panic attacks and anxiety.
  • Helps to manage depression, low energy, and mood swings.
  • Fixes insomnia temporarily. So the brain gets needed rest to heal itself.

Medication is usually prescribed alongside therapy. It doesn’t replace any therapy.

6. Conclusion

Trauma is a very disturbing condition. But most of us feel like there is no way to get out this thoughts. Because it’s not a dream. It’s actually happened in our life. So people start to label their life as cursed or filled with sad moments. This is the issue.

Actually, whatever happened to you isn’t because you deserved it. It happened because of circumstances beyond your control. It doesn’t define your present or your future. So, instead of getting permanently stuck in a dark thought patterns, recreating what already ended, start to analyze the pattern and cure yourself.

It’s really worth it as life is a precious thing.

A quick note: I’m not a therapist or psychologist. Everything I’ve shared here comes from my own self-study, reading, and research on trauma and mental health. This post is just meant to be educational and helpful. If you’re struggling with trauma related issues and need help, please consider reaching out to a professional who can give you personal support.

Hope you find this article useful.

Thank you for reading.