How Trauma Affects A Person
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- 06-07-2023

Have you questioned: how trauma affects a person? Explore the profound impact of trauma on individuals. Understand how trauma affects mental and emotional well-being. Learn about coping mechanisms, healing strategies, and seeking support to navigate the effects of trauma on personal growth and recovery.
What Is Trauma?
Events that put you or a loved one in danger of significant harm or death are traumatic. We are overloaded with our typical coping mechanisms, which makes us feel scared and uncomfortable.
We can experience trauma from one-time experiences like an accident, violent attack, or natural catastrophes. As well as abuse, living in an unstable environment, and witnessing another person suffer. It is unrelated to your level of strength how trauma affects you.
Your response can be influenced by past events, pressure, and the amount of help you receive. Trauma can cause mental health issues or increase your risk of getting them.
All mental health issues might be brought on by it. It might be challenging to identify the issues that are brought on by trauma. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complicated post-traumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD) are two disorders that are known to arise as a direct result of trauma.
The Long-Term Effects Of Trauma
Trauma might increase your susceptibility to mental health issues. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may also be directly triggered by it. Some people abuse drugs, alcohol, or themselves to deal with painful memories and feelings. Depending on how it affects you, trauma may make it difficult for you to go about your regular life. It can be difficult to trust individuals, making connections more difficult.
You can find it difficult to take care of yourself, keep a career, or enjoy life. Because your mind is reacting to the past, rather than the present, you can struggle to control your emotions and react in ways that appear irrational or excessive. Both your body and your mind can be impacted by trauma. It can raise your chance of physical health issues, including chronic illnesses.
Common Mental Health Effects Of Trauma
You might know some of these typical trauma symptoms, such as reliving some parts of a painful experience. This can happen whether or not you recall the precise specifics of the horrific event.
An extreme manifestation of your body's response to danger is panic attacks. However, your mind can also use dissociation as a coping mechanism for extreme stress. You could experience numbness or a surreal sense of the surroundings.
You can be continuously on edge or feeling extremely anxious, and unable to relax. It may be difficult for you to fall asleep or stay asleep, and you may feel uneasy at night.
rauma can alter your sense of self-worth and perception. In order to cope, some people choose to harm themselves. This can involve substance abuse, obsessing over suicide, or making preparations to commit suicide.

How Might Trauma Affect Me?
Our bodies respond to distressing events by getting us ready to act. We are at the mercy of an innate survival mechanism in this situation. There are more than just "fight or flight" reflexes, though you may have heard of them. They consist of:
Fight - battling, defending oneself, and objecting
Flight - fleeing
Freeze - the inability to move or make decisions
Flop - feeling overwhelmed, dissociating, and even fainting
Fawn - attempting to please or win over someone
Physically, you can experience a racing heartbeat and mind, shortness of breath, sharper vision, nausea, coldness, trembling, or dizziness. They set your body up to respond to danger, but if you don't understand why they're happening, they can be unsettling. Usually, your body will go back to normal within 30 minutes of the incident.
However, these emotions can linger for a very long period after the event. Even after the threat has passed, our bodies and thoughts remain in this state of risk. You could experience nightmares or flashbacks. As well as feeling on edge, furious, guilty, or sad. You could experience panic attacks, numbness, or have trouble falling asleep.
How Our Bodies Respond To Danger
Numerous physiological changes take place during a fight-flight-freeze reaction. Your brain's amygdala, which is in charge of perceiving fear, is where the reaction starts.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is activated as a result of signals the amygdala sends to the hypothalamus. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve systems make up the ANS.
The fight-or-flight reaction is driven by the sympathetic nervous system, whereas freezing is driven by the parasympathetic nervous system. Your reaction will depend on whatever system is in control of the response at the moment.
Your hearing sharpens and your ears "perk up". Your blood becomes thicker, increasing the amount of clotting factors, which primes your body for harm.
You could feel colder or sweat more; you might look pale or experience chills. Your hands and feet may get chilly as your larger muscles receive more blood supply.
Your sense of pain is briefly diminished by fight-or-flight. Your particular physiological responses are based on how you typically handle stress. Alternating between the fight-or-flight and frozen states is another option, although it is hard to regulate.
Ways Trauma Affects Our Lives
Trauma can influence our everyday lives. Altering our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours towards others and towards ourselves. Trauma frequently shows itself as intrusive thoughts, avoidance behaviour, hypervigilance or paranoia. Alongside trouble interacting with people, persistent emotional anguish, and substance use in daily life.
A person's life after trauma changes both in the short- and long-term. This is due to trauma impacting us on many levels, balancing the status of our mental health. People who experienced trauma are substantially more likely to acquire mental health conditions.

This can end up impacting on other issues. Trauma and mental health can cause someone to use harmful coping strategies, such as self-harm, drugs and alcohol. Don't be reluctant to seek professional help. If left unchecked, these behaviours can be extremely harmful and, in the worst circumstances, lethal. People are affected by trauma in many ways.
What could be a painful experience for one person might not be that intense for another. Others may find themselves regressing into their pain, whilst others may recover. Trauma has an effect on our physical, emotional, and mental state and can cause problems in the long term. These difficulties can have a dangerous effect on the person and can lead to suicide. Trauma may make us feel as though we are confined. But we'll be okay.
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