What are the effects of psychological/emotional trauma?

A traumatic event is an adverse experience that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope and integrate the memories and emotions connected to it. Psychological/emotional trauma is caused by damage that is not of a physical nature, but that severely affects the individual’s emotional and psychological wellbeing. Making one feel worthless, blaming someone else for one’s mistakes or shortcomings, refusing to acknowledge or accept someone else’s feelings, displaying extreme ranges of mood, being extremely critical of the other person, belittling, humiliating, bullying, being verbally abusive and giving someone else “the silent treatment”, are some of the most common dysfunctional behaviours characteristic of abusive relationships.
Despite being the most common type of trauma, psychological/emotional trauma is the least talked about, understood and recognised by the general public as well as the psychiatric community. Due to its pervasiveness, however, it is vital that we explore the impact that psychological/emotional trauma has on our bodies, brains and emotions – honestly and openly. If you believe to have been psychologically/emotionally traumatised by an abusive parent, relative, partner or any other significant other, the following are the effects of psychological/emotional trauma that may be causing you prolonged pain and distress:
Emotional
- Feelings of intense sadness/depression: lack of enthusiasm for life, inability to feel happy and content, inability to enjoy the little pleasures in life, feeling like you do not belong or cannot connect with life, living on “automatic pilot”, only to fulfil your “duties” or the expectations of others.
- Hopelessness: feeling weak, powerless, incompetent, unlovable
- Guilt, shame and anxiety
- Self-hatred and self-blame
- Feeling like a bad or broken person
- Vulnerability
- Panic attacks
- Intimacy problems: having difficulties to love and accept yourself, hiding or being ashamed of your weakness/vulnerabilities, repressing negative emotions, refusing to share the whole of you/the real you with somebody else.
- Fearfulness
- Feeling out of control
- Anger
- Difficulty trusting others
- Feeling detached, distanced from others
Behavioural
- Self-harm: cutting, scratching, pinching, burning, banging or punching yourself
- Compulsive and obsessive behaviours: fear of being contaminated by germs, of losing control and hurting others, of intrusive thoughts and images, of losing and forgetting things, accumulating junk, double checking locks, appliances and switches, having to have things arranged in a particular way, spending a lot of time washing or cleaning, counting or repeating certain words to reduce anxiety.
- Addiction: substance abuse, alcohol abuse, gambling, shopping excessively
- Self-destructive and self-sabotaging behaviours: behaving recklessly and irresponsibly, comfort eating and/or self-medicating to “deal” with negative emotions, procrastinating, difficulty carrying out long-term goals and staying focused
- Social isolation: refusing to respond, initiate or keep social contact
- Parenting difficulties
- Difficulties in relationships: choosing the wrong people as friends or partners, identifying with chaotic, dysfunctional and dramatic relationship styles
- Pent-up rage: feeling an intense anger towards someone or a situation that does not subside with time
- Sleep disturbances: difficulty falling asleep, waking up too early or in the middle of the night
Cognitive
- Difficulty remembering traumatic memories
- Losing track of time
- Difficulty making decisions
- Lack of concentration
- Flashbacks, intrusive thoughts
- Thoughts of suicide
- Exaggerated startle response
- Biased perception: displaying a strong tendency to interpreting faces, people’s behaviours and situations as negative, threatening or frightening
The effects of psychological/emotional trauma are as potentially harmful to our general wellbeing as physical trauma. Victims/survivors of this type of trauma tend to feel isolated and misunderstood in their pain, and can go through months, if not years of suffering before they find the correct route to their emotional healing. If you identify with any of the above and feel ready to make some positive changes in your life, trauma counselling can help. For more information about trauma therapy, please click here