Unresolved Trauma: 9 Signs Trauma May Still Be Affecting You

When something traumatizing happens to us, we often want to leave that memory behind. The truth is, distressing experiences often stay with us, and unresolved trauma can significantly affect our daily lives.

When we don’t resolve our trauma, our bodies can stay stuck in fight-or-flight mode. This article will outline nine signs your trauma might still be affecting you and provide practical steps for starting the healing process.

What is Unresolved Trauma?

Unresolved trauma is the inability to process and accept the memory of a highly traumatizing event, such as the death of a loved one, an accident, or a past relationship [*]. The traumatic experience stays active in the nervous system and can be triggered by present, everyday events.

For example, an adult survivor of childhood trauma may manifest their unresolved trauma by excusing the abusive parent’s behavior or continuing to have a toxic relationship with them.

When people don’t process their trauma, it can affect their relationships with others. They might develop anxious or avoidant attachment styles as a defense mechanism or out of a fear of abandonment. Conversely, an avoidant partner might be extremely independent and refuse to be vulnerable with their partner.

Prolonged and unprocessed childhood trauma can also harm a person’s self-worth. They may perceive themselves as unlovable or deserving of the pain inflicted on them. They might feel insecure about how others perceive them or wonder if they are doing “enough.”

9 Signs of Unresolved Trauma

Symptoms of unresolved trauma often show up subconsciously. Below, we list nine signs of unresolved trauma that you might experience.

1. Hypervigilance

People with unresolved trauma may fear that the triggering event will happen again if they don’t act a certain way. Thus, they become hypervigilant because their bodies are always preparing for a threat.

A hypervigilant person might be overly conscious of how they present themselves to others, overthink things in their workplace, assume the worst in someone’s feedback, or walk on eggshells around family members and friends.

Hypervigilance can cause brain fog, chronic physical and mental exhaustion, and insomnia because the brain refuses to “drop its guard.”

2. Lack of trust

When a person experiences severe trauma, their sense of trust is often broken because their brain may remain on high alert. They may feel like they can never be truly safe.

Trauma survivors will sometimes blame themselves for what happened and struggle to trust their own judgment. They might always feel the need to second-guess themselves and get stuck in a decision loop.

In interpersonal relationships, this lack of trust may manifest as hyper-invasive monitoring. A person might obsessively track their partner’s location or feel panic when someone isn’t talking to them in the manner that they usually do.

3. Dissociation

Dissociation occurs when a person is too overwhelmed for their mind to handle it. You may feel like you’re “floating” or detached from reality. Dissociation occurs with unresolved trauma because the body feels as if it has no physical escape.

When you dissociate, you may feel like you are “outside of yourself.” This experience is called depersonalization. If you feel like the world around you isn’t real, that’s called derealization. Your environment might feel blurry, nebulous, or even look like a stage or movie set.

4. Control issues

By definition, trauma is something that occurs to a person when they have no power to stop the terror, pain, and despair. When a person doesn’t resolve this trauma, they may feel like they’re always fighting for control over different aspects of their lives.

The brain will always be in fight-or-flight mode. You might feel the need to be hypervigilant about your work or dictate how things should be done to prevent negative outcomes. For example, you might feel the need to micromanage your partner’s schedule or feel that you’re not “allowed” to show weakness to others.

5. Low self-esteem

Self-esteem is how we perceive our own worth. When we don’t process our trauma, we sometimes assume that the terrible things that happened to us are our fault. This is especially true for children who feel they’re being punished because they’re “bad.”

Unprocessed trauma makes people feel shame rather than guilt [*]. While the guilty mind might think, “I did something bad,” the shameful mind thinks, “I am bad.”

6. Anger issues

Anger is a secondary emotion that acts as a defense mechanism because it protects us from feeling the more painful and vulnerable emotions deep down.

We might have disproportionate reactions to small triggers. A small bicker might turn into a rageful argument. We might drop something on the floor and blow our anger out of proportion. These reactions are likely a result of triggering deep and unprocessed memories.

7. Physical symptoms

Like stress or anxiety, unprocessed trauma can cause physical symptoms, such as headaches, nausea, sleep issues, and digestive issues [*]. When traumatic experiences remain unprocessed, they don’t disappear. Instead, they move to other parts of the body, which is why they can manifest physically.

When the body perceives a threat (such as a triggering memory) it releases adrenaline and cortisol, which can damage tissues, cause blood pressure to spike, and dysregulate our metabolism.

8. Bodily memories

There is a saying that goes, “the body keeps the score.” When you experience normal, everyday events, the body records them like a diary entry or explicit memory through the hippocampus. However, a traumatic experience causes the hippocampus to shut down and instead results in the body recording the raw sensory data as an implicit memory [*].

Suppose you’ve survived a devastating car crash and have completely healed from your physical injuries. While your body is safe, your muscles tense up every time you get into the passenger seat of a car—that is how the bodily memory manifests.

9. Mental health conditions

The longer we leave our trauma unprocessed, the more your brain stays locked in survival mode. The psychological changes in your brain then solidify into various mental health conditions.

Most commonly, unprocessed trauma can result in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), dissociative disorders (such as depersonalization or derealization), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) [*].

Healing from Unresolved Trauma

No matter how long ago you experienced something traumatic, treatment can help you fully resolve the issue. The best and most effective treatment is trauma-specific therapy.

These therapies include trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), which helps children and adolescents address inaccurate beliefs and unhealthy behaviors that result from trauma [*].

Other forms of trauma therapy include prolonged exposure, which involves gradually interacting with the source of your fear until you no longer fear it [*]. Family trauma therapy can be effective for developing healthy family systems.

At home, you can start to heal from your trauma by rebuilding your emotional safety. You can do this by establishing internal and external safety. When you encounter a trigger, the first immediate step is to acknowledge the trauma response. Then, orient yourself to your physical environment. Ground yourself using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Finally, use a helpful coping mechanism, such as deep breathing or repeating a mantra several times.

You can continue to rebuild this emotional safety with different trauma-based coping mechanisms. Think about your trauma responses and work on replacing them with intentional and healthy tools. For example, if you tend to have bursts of anger, find other ways to discharge energy safely, such as through running or working out. If you frequently dissociate, use sensory triggers like aroma inhalers.

Healing From Unresolved Trauma Is Possible

The effects of trauma can be long-lasting and affect many different parts of our lives. Recognizing the signs of unresolved trauma and developing healthy coping skills can help us heal, but that’s just the first step. Healing takes time and a strong support system, so don’t hesitate to reach out to friends, family, or a mental health professional.

If you’re looking for more resources on managing trauma responses, explore our collection of trauma worksheets.

Sources:

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2. “Understanding the Impact of Trauma.” Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014. (Source 2 & 5)
3. Silver KE, Kumari M, Conklin D, Karakurt G. “Trauma and Health Symptoms in a Community Sample: Examining the Influences of Gender and Daily Stress.” The American Journal of Family Therapy, 2018.
4. Van Der Kolk B. “The Body Keeps the Score.” Viking, 2014.
5. Watkins LE, Sprang KR, Rothbaum BO. “Treating PTSD: A Review of Evidence-Based Psychotherapy Interventions.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018.
6. Back SE, Acierno R, Saraiya TC, et al. “Enhancing Prolonged Exposure therapy for PTSD using physiological biomarker-driven technology.” Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, 2022.