What is Trauma?

When you hear the word trauma or trauma counseling what comes to mind? It is common for people to hear the word trauma and think of those one-time catastrophic events (car accidents, assault, robbery, natural disasters, etc.) that result in major injuries like broken bones, head injuries, or lacerations, and symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder such as flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, increased startle response, etc. This perception of trauma causes people to minimize their suffering and postpone receiving treatment that helps them heal and increase their quality of life.

So, what is trauma, and who experiences it? Trauma is anything that overwhelms the mind and body and happens too fast, too soon, or too much. It causes physiological, neurological, chemical, and hormonal changes that impact memory and cognition; often resulting in:

• Emotional dysregulation
• Hypervigilance
• Lack of trust in yourself, others, and the world
• Mental health illness
• Chronic pain
• Inflammatory disease

What Does Unresolved Trauma Do to a Person?

Unresolved trauma does lasting damage to a person’s emotional health, physical wellbeing, relationships, and daily functioning. When trauma is not processed, the mind and body stay stuck in a state of alert, even when there is no real danger present.

Over time, this can show up as chronic anxiety, trouble sleeping, difficulty trusting others, sudden anger, emotional numbness, or a constant feeling that something is wrong. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 36.6% of people with PTSD experience serious impairment that affects their ability to work, maintain relationships, and manage everyday life.

Unresolved trauma can also affect how a person sees themselves. Feelings of shame, guilt, or worthlessness often take root after a traumatic experience and grow stronger the longer they go unaddressed. These feelings can lead to avoidance, withdrawal, or unhealthy coping patterns like substance use or emotional shutdown.

The good news is that these effects are not permanent. With the right support, the patterns created by trauma can be changed. Many people who struggle with lingering worry or nervousness after a difficult experience find relief through anxiety therapy that addresses the root cause rather than just the symptoms.

What Types of Trauma Are There?

“Big T” traumas, like those catastrophic events listed above, are the most obvious and lead people to seek treatment to help them learn to cope and move past the event. “Little t” traumas are the things we experienced regularly throughout our lives that we may have been conditioned to accept as part of life or growing up. Some of these experiences may include:

• Being bullied
• Witnessing violence
• Lack of constant care during childhood
• Lack of emotional validation
• Having a caregiver who struggled with mental illness and/or substance use
• Incarceration or having a loved one who was incarcerated
• Experiencing discrimination due to race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, or religious affiliation
• Lack of autonomy
• Lack of affection
• Being isolated, yelled at, or controlled by others

This does not mean that everyone who has experienced these things is traumatized. Traumatization is dependent on several biological and environmental factors that influence perception and physiological regulation.

How Does Unresolved Trauma Go Unnoticed for So Long?

Unresolved trauma goes unnoticed for so long because the brain is very good at protecting you from pain. After a traumatic event, your mind may push the experience into the background so you can keep functioning. This is a survival response, not a choice.

Many people do not connect their current struggles to something that happened years ago. They may not realize that their trouble with trust, their quick temper, their fear of conflict, or their pattern of pulling away from people they care about is linked to an earlier experience. According to the World Health Organization, about 70% of adults worldwide experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, but most do not develop a diagnosable condition. That does not mean the event left no mark.

Little t traumas are especially easy to miss. These are not the dramatic, life-threatening events most people picture when they hear the word “trauma.” They are things like emotional neglect in childhood, being bullied, growing up with a parent who was unpredictable, or going through a painful breakup at a young age. These experiences quietly shape how a person relates to others and to themselves.

That is why therapy often uncovers trauma a person did not know they were carrying. Approaches like attachment therapy help people trace current relationship patterns back to early experiences that shaped how they connect with others.

Is Trauma Stored in the Body?

Yes, trauma is stored in the body. When a traumatic event happens, the body’s stress response activates, flooding the system with chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. If that response never fully completes, or if the trauma is never processed, the body can hold onto that tension long after the event is over.

This is why many trauma survivors experience physical symptoms that do not seem to have a medical cause. Chronic muscle tension, headaches, stomach problems, jaw clenching, a racing heart, or a constant feeling of tightness in the chest can all be the body’s way of carrying unresolved stress. Research in the field of psychotraumatology has shown that trauma disrupts the normal communication between the brain and the body, keeping the nervous system stuck in a state of fight, flight, or freeze.

The concept of body-stored trauma gained wider attention through research on the connection between the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. Studies have shown that trauma causes the amygdala to become overactive while the prefrontal cortex becomes less effective at calming the stress response. These changes are measurable on brain scans and they explain why the body reacts to reminders of trauma even when the conscious mind has moved on.

This is exactly why body-based treatment approaches work so well for many trauma survivors. Somatic therapy focuses on releasing the physical tension and stored stress that talk therapy alone may not reach.

What Kinds of Trauma Counseling Can Help?

What kind of help is there? Trauma is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon that traps itself in the body and the brain keeping you in survival mode at a physiological level. Trauma treatment is an evidence-based technique that walks you through specific stages of treatment to ensure a felt-sense of safety, agency, and autonomy, empowering the client to take control of their lives leaving the past in the past. Certified trauma specialists and professionals can help unlock the trauma trapped in your brain, muscles, nervous system, and adrenal/endocrine system so that you can feel safe in your body and the world. Some of the effective treatments include but are not limited to:

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) targets upsetting life experiences that have not been stored properly in memory areas of the brain and are triggered more easily by similar events or negative personal beliefs. Unprocessed or blocked traumatic memories need help from therapies such as EMDR to become processed or unblocked.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) is an approach to psychotherapy that identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities or families within each person’s mental system. 

Sensorimotor psychotherapy (SP) integrates the body and movement into traditional talk therapy to address and heal ongoing psychological and physical difficulties.

Narrative Exposure Therapy: With the guidance of the therapist, a patient establishes a chronological narrative of their life, concentrating mainly on their traumatic experiences, but also incorporating some positive events. It is believed that this contextualizes the network of cognitive, affective and sensory memories of a patient’s trauma. By expressing the narrative, the patient fills in details of fragmentary memories and develops a coherent autobiographical story. In so doing, the memory of a traumatic episode is refined and understood.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a short term evidence-based treatment for PTSD and other related disorders. CPT is based in cognitive theory and helps individuals to recognize the impact that the traumatic event has had on their thoughts and beliefs, feelings and behaviors.

Why Does Trauma Take So Long to Heal?

Trauma takes so long to heal because it affects the brain, the body, and the nervous system all at once. Unlike a broken bone that follows a predictable recovery timeline, trauma healing depends on many factors that are different for every person.

The type of trauma matters. A single event, like a car accident, often heals faster than repeated or ongoing trauma, like childhood neglect or years of living in an unsafe environment. The age at which the trauma happened also plays a role. Trauma experienced during childhood can shape the brain during critical periods of development, which means the patterns it creates are more deeply embedded and take more time to change.

Another reason healing takes time is that trauma does not just live in your thoughts. As research on the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex has shown, trauma physically changes how the brain processes fear, memory, and emotions. Undoing those changes requires consistent, repeated new experiences, whether through therapy, safe relationships, or both.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, about 37% of people with PTSD experience severe symptoms. Healing from that level of impact does not happen in a few sessions. But with the right approach, progress is steady and real. Working with a therapist trained in trauma counseling gives your brain the structured, safe environment it needs to begin building new patterns.

How Do I Know if I Should Seek Trauma Therapy?

If you experience any of the following it may be beneficial for you to see a professional who can help you sort through your experiences and move forward in life:

• You are easily startled
• Flashbacks or nightmares of the event
• Feeling afraid but not knowing why
• A generalized distrust in yourself, others, and the world
• Hypervigilance
• You notice a pattern of unhealthy relationships throughout your life
• Feelings of restment
• Unmanaged anger
• Avoidance of certain people, places, or things
• Unexplainable body aches and pains
• Chronic pain, inflammation, or fatigue
• Easily triggered
• Persistent feelings of sadness 

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, reaching out to a professional can help you determine if trauma therapy is right for you.

Written by Autumn Walsh, MSW. Autumn is accepting patients at our Pittsburgh location as well as online.

What Are Signs You Are Healing From Trauma?

The signs you are healing from trauma include feeling safer in your own body, reacting less intensely to triggers, sleeping more soundly, and being able to talk about your experience without feeling overwhelmed.

Healing does not mean you forget what happened. It means the memory no longer hijacks your emotions or your day. You start noticing that things that used to send you into a spiral now feel manageable. You may find yourself setting boundaries more easily, saying no without guilt, or allowing yourself to enjoy things you used to avoid.

Other signs of healing include feeling more connected to the people around you, being able to sit with uncomfortable emotions without shutting down, and noticing that your body feels less tense or on guard. These shifts often happen gradually, so it helps to look back over weeks or months rather than comparing day to day.

Research on neuroplasticity confirms that the brain can form new, healthier pathways with the right support. The changes may be small at first, but they build on each other over time. If you are noticing even a few of these signs, that is real progress. A licensed therapist can help you recognize the progress you are making and guide you through the parts of healing that still feel difficult.

Interested in Starting Trauma Therapy?

Fill out the form below or contact us at 412-322-2129 to begin trauma counseling.

References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, September 17). Infographic: 6 guiding principles to a trauma-informed approach. https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/infographics/6_principles_trauma_info.htm
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma: The innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences. North Atlantic Books.
American Psychological Association (2017, July 31). https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/narrative-exposure-therapy
Psychology Today (2022, May 20). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/internal-family-systems-therapy
Bartella, A. (2011, October). Sensorimotor psychotherapy: A somatic path to treat trauma. The Trauma & Mental Health Report. Retrieved from https://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2011/10/sensorimotor-psychotherapy-a-somatic-path-to-trauma-treatment/