5 Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Trauma

Emotional Trauma

More than 223 million Americans have gone through at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes, which comprises both emotional and physical trauma. This represents an extremely high proportion. To go even further, 90 percent of people who experience mental health problems say they have been traumatized.

Extremely stressful circumstances that shattered your sense of safety and left you feeling helpless in a hazardous environment might lead to emotional trauma. You may struggle with troubling feelings, thoughts, and anxiety as a result of this. You might also experience feelings of detachment, alienation, and lack of trust in individuals.

Traumatic events frequently involve a danger to one’s life or physical safety, but they can also be caused by any circumstance that makes you feel helpless and alone. Your emotional reaction to the incident, not the facts, determines whether it qualifies as traumatic.

Causes

Trauma on the emotional and mental levels can result from:

• One-time occurrences like an unplanned attack, physical injury, or an incident, particularly if they occurred while you were a child.
• Continuous, unrelenting stress, like witnessing traumatic experiences that recur frequently. This could include childhood or domestic abuse, living in a bad area, or getting bullied.
• Commonly disregarded factors include surgery, the end of a meaningful bond, an embarrassing or emotionally unpleasant experience, particularly if someone was being intentionally harsh, or a close relative’s unexpected death.  

This doesn’t mean that you have to be personally affected by the incident, even as a bystander, there is trauma that you experience that gets hard for you to deal with. Even while it’s extremely improbable that the majority of people will ever be directly harmed in a terrorist attack, airplane disaster, or mass killing.

But, we are all frequently subjected to horrifying pictures of those who have been on social media. Repeated exposure to these sights might overload your neurological system and lead to severe stress. No matter what caused your trauma, you can take therapy, buy books on mental health, and continue with your life.

Long-Lasting Effects

You might experience the following effects if you’ve had a traumatic experience and are unable to handle it suitably:

Anxiety

After experiencing a traumatic experience, a lot of people complain of having intense anxiety that consumes each waking moment. While everybody experiences occasional worry, an anxiety disorder keeps you in a fight-or-flight state and can make it difficult for you to carry out daily tasks. Most mental illness books regard this as a common aftereffect in most people.

Reliving or Having Flashbacks

Even if a traumatic event happened a long time ago, some triggers may cause you to have flashbacks of it. These don’t just constitute you having a small reaction but these unpleasant recollections make you vividly recall the identical feelings you experienced the first time. Additionally, you can struggle with persistent nightmares. Plenty of e-books on mental health highlight this particular factor.

Behavioral Alterations

A lot of people cope by using drugs or alcohol. Whenever their trauma gets triggered, they indulge in these substances, just so they wouldn’t have to think about the trauma anymore. Books about fights with alcoholism make it clear that if this isn’t done in moderation, it can very well develop into substance abuse disorders.

Similarly, other people use food as a coping mechanism for untreated difficulties, that can result in weight problems or eating problems. Additionally, certain people engage in risky and harmful activities because they enjoy the rush of the present as opposed to reflecting on their feelings and experiences.

Medical Problems

when you constantly worry and have high anxiety levels, it can lead to several inflammation problems. This could result in a range of grave health problems like autoimmune or cardiovascular diseases.

Cognitive Issues

Trauma has a way of overpowering your brain. This can result in a lot of cognitive issues like memory loss and difficulty concentrating. In extreme situations, individuals’ inability to concentrate on the subject at hand prevents them from functioning at school or work.

Overcoming Traumatic Experiences

The duration of trauma symptoms ranges from a few days, months, or longer depending on the type of trauma a person has endured. It could be a progressive process that diminishes your symptoms as you get over the harrowing experience. However, even if you start improving, you could still occasionally experience distressing thoughts or feelings. E-books about mental trauma note that it frequently happens when a traumatic trigger has occurred. If you’re not able to heal, get therapy or read books on mental health, then there’s a chance you might develop PTSD. This means the symptoms don’t go away or get worse and you find it difficult to forget the experience for an extended length of time.

Although emotional trauma is a common reaction to a traumatic event, the reason it can easily turn into PTSD is that it makes your nervous system feel “trapped” in that event. This causes you to experience shock all over again and make it hard to manage your feelings.

Your brain’s normal balance is upset by trauma, which causes you to become fearful. Workout and mobility can aid in nervous system restoration in addition to creating endorphins and getting rid of excess adrenaline.

Most PTSD books suggest 30-minute exercises a few days a week. But, if you’re just starting then you can also do 10-minutes short bursts of activity daily so you can get used to doing them altogether. The most effective exercises are the ones that keep your arms and legs engaged. This could include running, jogging, playing sports, swimming, or even dancing.

Include a mindfulness component while you exercise. Instead of viewing it as a distraction, use it to concentrate on your body. Take note of things like the sound and pattern of your breathing or how the earth sounds beneath your feet when you run. This can be made simpler by engaging in activities like rock climbing, weightlifting, or combat sports. And besides, you must concentrate on your physical movements while engaging in such activities to prevent bodily damage.

Although there are several books on mental health available, Luis Trivino’s “A Notebook Of Love” is a combination of heartfelt true stories on mental health that includes his experience with PSTD, childhood trauma, and bipolar disorder along with several other themes. Get a copy of the book today!