What it’s like to live with acute trauma:

When you first wake up in the morning, you’re unsettled. The dreams you had were weird, kind of dark and possibly scary. Maybe they were horrible nightmares where someone or something was trying to hurt you.

This is your trauma memory being trapped in your conscious mind as a short term memory. Dreams are your short term memories being “filed away” at night into long term memories. The images of your dream are the sensory details that your memories are made up of. Since trauma memories are stuck in short term storage, they can’t be processed properly, and you relive them night after night.

As you make your way to the bathroom, you don’t really know where you are. You can see your current home, and do your current routine, but you’re not really present. You’re still scared and on-edge, afraid that you’re not ok, and maybe that someone or something is trying to hurt you.

This is your survival brain and nervous system keeping you in the state of hypervigilance – the on-edge state that’s the ramping up to fight, flight or freeze (survival mode).

A shower and some coffee bring you more into the present, along with your day’s to-do’s (whether it be work, kids, homemaking, etc). You can’t shake this off-feeling that something’s wrong, but you focus on the day ahead of you and all of the things on your list to do, and start doing them anyways.

As you navigate your day, you find that you’re fluctuating between moments of peace and flow, where you’re present and things are going smoothly; and moments of fogginess, doubt, worry, anger, concern and that on-edge feeling. You’re not sure why your morning was so off, or why you can’t shake this feeling at times, but you keep moving forward, enjoying the moments of peace when they come.

Your brain has dissociated so that you can get on with your day. Your trauma memory is in the background, locked away for safe keeping, so that you can function. But the symptoms of your trauma are still present, even when the memory isn’t.

Then something happens, you’re not sure what, but all of sudden you’re not ok. Your vision blurs, your heart rate is through the roof, you can’t catch your breath, and you’re panicked. 

It feels like the walls are closing in around you, and nothing going on outside of you is helping. Everything everyone says is awful, making this feeling worse. And suddenly you find yourself either getting irritable and snapping at them, or anxious and just wanting to curl up in a ball and hide. You’re not normally like this, but you can’t control it. This anger and frustration, or anxiety and panic is moving through you like a freight train and you can’t stop it.

You duck into a bathroom (or private area of some kind), look yourself in the mirror and don’t recognize the woman staring back at you. She’s got wide eyes that are scary looking, maybe red stained from tears. You see your hands shaking; and feel your knees, stomach and insides shaking. You either don’t know if you can stand up right now; or you feel like the incredible hulk, ready to burst through your clothes and break things.

This feeling inside of you is so powerful you can’t control it. You either want to yell at someone to change everything so you can be ok, run out of the building and away from all of this madness, or curl up in a ball with your hands over your head and wait until it’s all over.

As you begin to realize that all of this happening, you resign to the emotions and either collapse, holding yourself as you sob; yell and possibly throw things; or create reasons to leave and get out of there. You do whatever you need to do to help make all of this awfulness inside of you go away.

This is your survival brain and nervous system shifting you into fight, flight or freeze (survival mode). It sensed that something in your external environment is identical to a sensory detail from the bad thing that happened before (the event where you wounded with trauma). It shifted you into this mode to help you survive the danger again (even though the danger isn’t present, this is just a trigger).

As the wave of emotions move through you, you feel them peak and begin to subside. Suddenly, you find yourself back in your body, back in your room, aware of your surroundings, and in control of yourself again.

Now that you’ve felt your way through the emotions (and probably burned off some of that fight or flight energy in releasing those emotions), your survival brain brain has sensed safety, and has shifted you back into the state of rest & digest.

You have no idea what just happened, or why. You’re fine now, and feeling some (if not a lot) of shame for the behaviors you just exhibited. If anyone was around you during that meltdown, you feel horrible for how you treated them. Maybe you apologize to them; maybe you get overly nice to them to make up for it, but never acknowledge what just happened; or maybe you avoid them until enough time has passed that they won’t remember all of this.

Your cognitive function shuts offline when you’re in survival mode. You have no conscious thought about what you’re doing when you’re in these states, or why. They’re automatic responses from your survival brain and nervous system to keep you safe and alive in what they think is danger.

You splash some water on your face, fix your clothes, regain your composure and go out into the world, determined to be fine this time.

Your conscious mind is back online, taking control of your life and behaviors again. You’re actively choosing to be different and do different next time. But as soon as you’re triggered again (in survival mode), this part of your brain will go offline again and you won’t have a choice in how you behave.

Throughout the rest of your day, you relive the meltdown from earlier in your head. Your thoughts constantly come back to why this happened, why you couldn’t control yourself and why you’re like this (because this isn’t the first time it’s happened).

How and why your brain reacts the way it does when you’re triggered isn’t logical. It’s easy to shame and blame yourself in these moments after. Learning this science can be so instrumental in stopping these thoughts, and helping you take the right steps to getting help to heal your trauma.

You also find yourself avoiding certain tasks, people, things and or even parts of yourself (whether they be emotions, memories, thoughts or even body parts). Thinking about or doing these things, being with these people, or focusing on or touching these parts of yourself brings about strong emotions that are too much for you to handle. Life is just easier right now if you avoid these things. You find excuses that you tell yourself, and others, to justify your new avoidance of these things. This helps your avoidance feel normal, and ensure you don’t have to engage with these things, people or parts of yourself again (and feel all the emotions).

All of the sensory details from your environment when you traumatized are now in your hippocampus as things that are dangerous (even though they aren’t actually dangerous). Your danger list has grown, and you get triggered everytime you encounter them. As such, your brain will actively avoid them them in the future (whether they be people, things or ever parts of your own body or self).

If you’ve been physically or sexually abused, your brain may actively numb out or dissociate from parts your body physically. Your survival brain may avoid paying attention to these parts of your body, get triggered when you touch them, or even get triggered just thinking about them. Through healing you can begin to feel into these parts of your body safely, and touch them without having any triggers.

Somehow, you’re able to manage through the rest of your day without another meltdown. You had moments where you were on-edge, anxious, avoidant or angry; but no incidents like the one from earlier.

Once home, you pretend as if you’re day was fine, not telling your husband or roommates what happened. Maybe even keeping this from God. You’re ashamed of your behavior, your inability to control yourself and the fact that you’re not ok.

At the end of your day, you climb into bed worried. What on earth has happened to you, and why can’t you control this. You pray for peace; for God to help you be better, a more Godly woman who He’s proud of; take some deep breaths, and promise yourself you’ll be better tomorrow.

These are all symptoms of acute trauma. The anxiousness (flight response), irritability (fight response), avoidance (freeze response), shame and embarrassment. These behaviors and emotions aren’t you, but reactions because of your trauma.

Tomorrow comes, and the day repeats. It continues to repeat, getting worse as time passes.

Trauma is a wound in your mind and heart. It’s a backwards wiring of your brain that hinders your ability to function normally. Which is why it’s called a dys-function. Over time, these wounds impact your life in enough ways that they can cause bigger mental health issues, as well as physical illness.

What it’s like to live with complex trauma (including developmental trauma, possibly PTSD):

When you first wake up in the morning, you’re unsettled. The dreams you had were weird, often times dark, scary nightmares. Often times, someone was trying to manipulate you into doing something you didn’t want to do; or someone or something was trying to hurt you, or worse, kill you.

These are your trauma memories being trapped in your conscious mind as a short term memories. Dreams are your short term memories being “filed away” at night into long term memories. The images of your dreams are the sensory details that your memories are made up of. Since trauma memories are stuck in short term storage, they can’t be processed properly, and you relive them night after night. 

With complex trauma, the hardships you went through are often severe (either in type of abuse and/or neglect, or in the amount of time you were exposed to these hardships). These memories carry pain at some high levels, which is why you might be experiencing nightmares. Often the fear you experience is related to the type of pain you endured (like someone harming or trying to kill you). It’s not necessarily the exact thing you lived through, but similar in the type of harm (physically, mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually).

As you make your way to the bathroom, you don’t really know where you are. You can see your current home, and do your current routine, but you’re not really present. You’re still scared and on-edge, afraid that you’re not ok, and maybe that someone or something is trying to hurt or kill you.

This is your survival brain and nervous system keeping you in the state of hypervigilance – the on-edge state that’s the ramping up to fight, flight or freeze (survival mode). 

With complex trauma, the hardships you went through are often severe (either in type of abuse and/or neglect, or in the amount of time you were exposed to these hardships). These memories carry pain at some high levels, which is why you might be experiencing nightmares. Often the fear you experience is related to the type of pain you endured (like someone harming or trying to kill you). It’s not necessarily the exact thing you lived through, but similar in the type of harm (physically, mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually).

A shower and some coffee bring you a bit more into the present, along with your day’s to-do’s (whether it be work, kids, homemaking, etc), but you’re still fairly lost in this fear. You can’t shake this off-feeling that something bad is about to happen. You choose to focus on the day ahead of you and all of the things on your to-do list, and start doing them anyways.

Your brain has dissociated so that you can get on with your day. Your trauma memory is in the background, locked away for safe keeping (meaning you don’t have flashbacks), so that you can function. But the symptoms of your trauma are still present (like the fears and on-edge feeling that something bad is about to happen), even when the memory isn’t.

As you navigate your day, you find that you can’t really be present. There’s always a part of your mind that’s off in another world. It’s filled with doubts about who you are, how you look, how you do things and why you can’t be better. It might also be fearful that something dangerous or scary is about to happen to you, requiring that you be hypervigilant at all times, to stay safe and alive. It’s like a soundtrack to your life, playing in the background on repeat, that you can’t turn off.

Complex trauma often comes in childhood (developmental trauma), when you’re brain is wiring in belief systems about yourself. When abuse, neglect or hardships happen during that time, those belief systems often get wired in as limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are often about you and your worth in this world (not the situation you went through).

If physical or sexual abuse happened, or life-threatening events like accidents or natural disasters, your brain may be fearful of physical or sexual harm again.

Whenever you interact with people, it feels like everything they’re saying and doing is hurtful. Like they’re not looking out for you and your best interest, but only looking out for themselves. You might feel like they’re intentionally trying to hurt you, emotionally. Their words often feel like empty promises that you can’t fully rely on.

It can also feel like everything people are saying isn’t really what they’re meaning. Like they’re hiding something from you, possibly manipulating you in some way, and might be about to hurt you physically or sexually. You struggle to trust that they’re going to show up for you, protect you, support you and look out for you and your safety. Their words might feel like empty or manipulative promises that you can’t fully rely on.

Complex trauma often comes in childhood (developmental trauma), when you’re brain is wiring in belief systems about yourself. When abuse, neglect or hardships happen during that time, those belief systems often get wired in as limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are often about you and your worth in this world (not the situation you went through).

If physical or sexual abuse happened, or life-threatening events like accidents or natural disasters, your brain may be fearful of physical or sexual harm again.

When hard or scary things happen, they’re both nothing new, and emotionally devastating to you. Even when you’re expecting them to happen, they’re too much for you to cope with emotionally and you fall apart. It’s so hard living a life where hard or scary things keep happening to you. 

When these things happen, you might collapse in tears, feeling like everything and everyone’s out to get you. Or you might get angry that nothing ever goes right in your life. You might get mad at God, wondering why He’s allowing all of this hard stuff to keep happening to you.

Even when things are going right during your day, it’s hard to trust that everything’s fine. Often it feels like something bad is about to happen, because nothing ever seems to go right for you. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When you go through something scary and you feel helpless, your brain and nervous system will shift you into the state of fight, flight or freeze (survival mode). If your brain decides that the safest for you to do is freeze, your nervous system will likely get locked in this state (called hyper-arousal), not coming back to rest & digest (the window of tolerance) after the danger over. This leaves you on-edge, just waiting for something bad to happen again.

Throughout your day, you find yourself avoiding certain tasks, people, things and or even parts of yourself (whether they be emotions, memories, thoughts or even body parts). Thinking about or doing these things, being with these people, or focusing on or touching these parts of yourself brings about strong emotions that are too much for you to handle. Life is just easier if you avoid them. You find excuses that you tell yourself, and others, to justify your avoidance of these things. This helps your avoidance feel normal, and ensure you don’t have to engage with these things, people or parts of yourself again (and feel all the emotions).

All of the sensory details from your environment when you traumatized are now in your hippocampus as things that are dangerous (even though they aren’t actually dangerous). Your danger list has grown, and you get triggered everytime you encounter them. As such, your brain will actively avoid them them in the future (whether they be people, things or ever parts of your own body or self).

If you’ve been physically or sexually abused, your brain may actively numb out or dissociate from parts your body physically. Your survival brain may avoid paying attention to these parts of your body, get triggered when you touch them, or even get triggered just thinking about them. Through healing you can begin to feel into these parts of your body safely, and touch them without having any triggers.

Everyday, possibly multiple times a day, something happens that sends you spiraling out of control. You’re not sure what happened this time, but all of sudden you’re not ok again. Your vision blurs, your heart rate is through the roof, you can’t catch your breath, and you’re panicked. 

It feels like the walls are closing in around you, and nothing going on outside of you is helping. Everything everyone says is awful, making this feeling worse. And suddenly you find yourself either getting irritable and snapping at them, or anxious and just wanting to curl up in a ball and hide. You’re used to this, so you believe you should be able to find a new way of reacting when it happens, but you still can’t control it. This anger and frustration, or anxiety and panic is moving through you like a freight train and you can’t stop it.

You duck into a bathroom (or private area of some kind), look yourself in the mirror and wonder if you’ll ever be the woman you know yourself to be deep down. The woman God designed you to be. Whoever that woman is, she isn’t the one you’re looking at in the mirror. This version of you has wide eyes that are scary looking, maybe red stained from tears. You notice your hands are shaking; and feel your knees, stomach and insides shaking.

You pray you don’t hurt someone this time. Because you’ve hurt a lot of people before when you got like this. Including yourself.

The feeling inside of you is so powerful you can’t control it. You either want to yell at someone to change everything so you can be ok, run out of the building and away from all of this madness, or curl up in a ball with your hands over your head and wait until it’s all over. You know it’ll subside because you’ve lived this before. Yet it feels so new, and terrifying that you can’t move past it.

As you resign to your emotions, you either collapse, holding yourself as you sob; yell and possibly throw things; or create reasons to leave and get out of there. You do whatever you need to do to help make all of this awfulness inside of you go away.

This is your survival brain and nervous system shifting you into fight, flight or freeze (survival mode). It sensed that something in your external environment is identical to a sensory detail from the bad thing that happened before (the event where you wounded with trauma). It shifted you into this mode to help you survive the danger again (even though the danger isn’t present, this is just a trigger).

As the wave of emotions move through you, you feel them peak and begin to subside. Finally, you’re back in your body, back in your room, aware of your surroundings, and in control of yourself again. 

Now that you’ve felt your way through the emotions (and probably burned off some of that fight or flight energy in releasing those emotions), your survival brain brain has sensed safety, and has shifted you back into the state of rest & digest.

You’re fine now, and feeling some (if not a lot) of shame for being like this, and for all of the behaviors you keep exhibiting when you get like this. You have no idea why this keeps happening to you, and why you can’t be better.

Your cognitive function shuts offline when you’re in survival mode. You have no conscious thought about what you’re doing when you’re in these states, or why. They’re automatic responses from your survival brain and nervous system to keep you safe and alive in what they think is danger.

You hope and pray that no one got hurt in the meltdown. That it was just you alone in the not ok-ness this time. If anyone was around you during that meltdown, you feel horrible for how you treated them. Maybe you apologize to them; maybe you get overly nice to them to make up for it, but never acknowledge what just happened; or maybe you avoid them until enough time has passed that they won’t remember all of this.

You splash some water on your face, fix your clothes, regain your composure and go out into the world, determined to be better this time.

Your conscious mind is back online, taking control of your life and behaviors again. You’re actively choosing to be different and do different next time. But as soon as you’re triggered again (in survival mode), this part of your brain will go offline again and you won’t have a choice in how you behave.

You spend the rest of your day reliving this meltdown(s) in your head. Your thoughts constantly come back to why this happened, why you couldn’t control yourself and why you’re still like this. 

How and why your brain reacts the way it does when you’re triggered isn’t logical. It’s easy to shame and blame yourself in these moments after. Learning this science can be so instrumental in stopping these thoughts, and helping you take the right steps to getting help to heal your trauma.

Once home, you either pretend as if you’re day was fine, not telling your husband or roommates what happened. Or you re-hash everything to them, hoping they’ll side with you, so that you feel better about how you acted. Deep down, you’re ashamed of your behavior, your inability to control yourself and the fact that you’re not ok. You know this isn’t how God asked you to behave, or the woman He designed you to be. But you have no idea how to make it go away and be that woman.

Maybe you take this to God, as a prayer for help. Maybe you pray for everyone else to change, because you always get like this when they do something specific. Or maybe you hide it from God, knowing He wouldn’t approve; possibly hiding from God altogether.

These are all symptoms of complex trauma (including developmental trauma, possibly PTSD). The anxiousness (flight response), irritability (fight response), avoidance (freeze response), shame and embarrassment. These behaviors and emotions aren’t you, but reactions because of your trauma.

As you get ready for bed, you find yourself avoiding your own eyes in the mirror. How can you look at yourself with all of this pain, this heartbreak and all of these messy behaviors? You focus instead on the imperfections – the acne, the wrinkles, the blemishes and the fat rolls. You’ve never felt good enough, pretty enough, thin enough or lovable enough. It’s easier to nit-pick your physical imperfections, than feel into the pain deep down inside of you.

The limiting beliefs you’re carrying from childhood trauma, along with the pain from the hardships you’ve lived through, and the shame and embarrassment for behaving like this can be too much to cope with. It’s often easiest to avoid (dissociate) and focus on other things instead of all of that pain.

At the end of your day, you climb into bed exhausted. Another day of fear, panic, anger, hate and a whole mess of emotions in between. You’re exhausted being like this, exhausted from the physical toll it takes on your body, and exhausted with not understanding why it’s happening and why you can’t move past this now.

The state of fight, flight or freeze (survival mode) is an extreme form of physical exertion. It’s designed to keep you alive when something or someone is trying to harm kill you (by running 80mph and outrunning a cheetah, or fighting a attacker and winning). Everytime you get triggered, your body goes into these extreme state. Once you come out of it, back into rest & digest, you will be exhausted and need to rest and recoup all of that energy you just lost (even if you didn’t burn it off fighting or running away). Over time, this constant exertion is going to tax your system, especially your adrenal glands. It will burn you out to the point where you are exhausted all of the time.

Fight, flight or freeze also shuts down your digestive system, immune system and reproductive system (everytime it triggers). Overtime, this can lead to physical illness (like autoimmune disease), which adds an additional toll on your body.

You pray for healing and change; for God to help you be better, and be a more Godly woman who He’s proud of. You roll over with the sinking feeling that these prayers will never be answered, because this is who you are, and who you have to be in this life. It’s hard to pray for a better tomorrow when they never seem to come.

The limiting beliefs you carry about yourself are the beliefs that control how you view yourself in this life. At the end of the day, they are the beliefs that will prevail, no matter how much work you do to believe differently (until you heal your trauma and re-wire them into empowering beliefs).

This day repeats itself, as it has every day of your life. As time passes, the meltdowns and behaviors somehow seem to get worse, even in all of your trying to get better.

Trauma is a wound in your mind and heart. It’s a backwards wiring of your brain that hinders your ability to function normally. Which is why it’s called a dys-function. Complex trauma is a high level of trauma (oftentimes at the level of PTSD), which impacts every area of your life. When it happens during childhood, it has ever greater impacts on your life.

Over time, this high level of trauma is going to show up and impact your life in even bigger ways, making it nearly impossible to function at all. Eventually, it can lead to physical illness (like autoimmune disease).