Trauma Symptoms: What Unresolved Trauma Does to Your Body and Mind

Written by Roland Bal

Unresolved traumatic stress disrupts the nervous system and emotional balance. It puts the nervous system on high alert; this is accompanied by a whole list of inhibited tendencies which manifest as anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, inability to relax, emotional flooding, sleeplessness, rage, and hostility. Once that energy is negatively discharged, the nervous system often spirals into a depressed state accompanied by lethargy, deadness, disconnection, exhaustion, and depression.

This is the cycle. Whichever way trauma enters the body or mind, all aspects of the human being are involved. Most often, you are not dealing with one symptom only, but with various symptoms that flow from one into the other, seemingly endlessly. Understanding this cycle — and that the symptoms are not separate problems but expressions of one underlying pattern — is the first step toward making sense of what you are experiencing.

The Activation Symptoms

When the nervous system is in its activated, hyperaroused state, the following symptoms are common. These are the "fight or flight" expressions of unresolved trauma.

Hypervigilance

To be constantly on guard and on the lookout for potential danger. It is a common behavioural symptom of those living with unresolved trauma. The nervous system remains on high alert as a protective mechanism, scanning for threats even when none are present.

Flashbacks and Nightmares

Flashbacks are intrusive thoughts and memories that bring those suffering from traumatic stress face to face with fraught, overwhelming feelings of fear and helplessness. In theory, this is consciousness trying to come to terms with what is alive in the system. Unfortunately, in practice, it often leads to further psychological darkness and withdrawal symptoms. Nightmares are flashbacks in the dream state.

Panic

Panic attacks go a step further than anxiety attacks do. They are often triggered by events or circumstances that are associated with past traumatic experience. This can be either on an unconscious level or consciously experienced with intrusive and overwhelming thoughts and feelings derived from past incidents. This often results in a variety of obsessive coping behaviours and/or addictions such as people avoidance, excessive washing, house cleaning, or substance abuse.

Emotional Flooding

This occurs when emotion becomes too intense to be contained, or when there is a mixture of emotions emerging simultaneously. This can happen during or after the onset of trauma. Caution is advised for when this might happen during the therapeutic process, as it could easily lead to overwhelming emotional convulsions and possible retraumatisation.

Anger

Anger is an emotion that attempts to reclaim lost boundaries when they have been breached, or are about to be breached. In a healthy expression, there is no need for that emotion to keep acting itself out. With severely overwhelming cases, where no sense of containment can be reestablished, anger can be acted out repeatedly, without resolution. In this case, the anger only holds up a perceived notion of protection to prevent getting into touch with deeper emotions like sadness, and an overpowering sense of helplessness.

Amnesia

The occurrence of amnesia is when you cannot recall or do not have access to your memory. Usually it is only partial, but in severe cases, people can even forget their identity. This is something that can definitely happen to people living with unresolved trauma. I have seen, many times during treatment, that people go blank at a certain point during recall. It is a survival mechanism in order to block off certain memories that are associated with overwhelming emotions. That said, while carefully unfolding the therapeutic process and tracking sensations, it is very probable that they will remember that which previously seemed inaccessible.

Emotional Instability

This state indicates that a sense of containment has been lost. Emotional instability shows itself as a continuous movement from one emotional state to another, often to wide-ranging extremes. There is constant opting in or out of the current emotional state through intense levels of identification. Persistent emotional instability can lead to further complications when left unaddressed.

Victimisation

When trauma has not been resolved, a mindset of victimisation can persist even long after the event. You will see, quite often, that this role of "the victim" is played out as a well-structured character in order to attract attention, and does not necessarily connect with the actual crisis moment. Keep in mind, though, that at the core of this mindset there is emotional residue at play. Having been hurt in the past makes a person vulnerable to further hurt later on in life.

The Physical Symptoms

Trauma does not live only in the mind. When stress as a result of trauma is unresolved, it settles in the body's tissues which results in residual patterns of constriction. These constriction patterns can be the cause of physical discomfort in and of themselves, or take up so much energy that they inhibit proper functioning of other systems in the body — think of the immune system, nervous system and/or digestive system.

Chronic Pain

The most common chronic incidents of pain related to unresolved trauma are in the joints, fibromyalgia and headaches/migraines. The body holds what the mind cannot process, and these pain patterns are often the physical signature of emotional residue that has not been met.

Exhaustion and Fatigue

Traumatic stress, be it developmental or from a single event, takes up enormous amounts of energy. It is like an identity that needs to be constantly fed to keep itself alive. No amount of sleep will remove the feeling of exhaustion as its cause is on a mental-emotional level. The nervous system is burning through its resources maintaining the survival pattern, and what is left for daily life is whatever remains.

Severe Somatic Reactions

Looking deeply into the effects of unresolved traumatic stress, these can contribute to a wide variety of physical conditions including heart problems, organ dysfunction, and autoimmune diseases. It is epidemic if you ask me.

Hysterical Seizures

In the context of unresolved trauma, these are a result of an extreme internal conflict that results in the overwhelming of the nervous system and resembles an epileptic seizure. They can also be marked by convulsive shaking, tremors and an inability to communicate with others. Shock and the processes of trauma can also include some of these symptoms but to a qualitatively different degree.

The Collapse Symptoms

When the activation phase has run its course, the nervous system often collapses into a depressed, shut-down state. This is not a separate condition — it is the other side of the same cycle.

Lethargy and Depression

Trauma causes a breach in the normal flow of energised resilience within the nervous system. It will often lead to hyperactivation followed by a "breakdown" when exhaustion starts to set in. A person may linger in this state in order to avoid dealing with high activation and associated feelings caused by trauma. Depression here is directly related to a burned-out state after the fight/flight activation.

Emotional Numbness

When an emotionally disruptive state with an accompanying highly energised charge of the nervous system continues for too long, it can produce further dissociation, which leads to an emotionally numbing state of inertia. This is a survival strategy to cope with the overwhelming effects of traumatic stress. This state is perceived as disembodiment and being extremely out of touch with one's ability to feel physical and emotional sensations.

Disconnection and Depersonalisation

Being disconnected from one's feelings and emotions often goes together with being in denial of one's state of mind. Depersonalisation is a more severe form — sufferers report that it is as if their feelings, emotions and sensations are separate from themselves. This state can be, and often is, triggered by high anxiety levels. It comprises a breakdown of the sense of self.

Dissociative Identities

This is where the dissociative behaviour, as a result of trauma, takes on a life of its own. The separation becomes so marked as to give off the appearance of separate identities taking control. Dissociative identities are most often associated with developmental trauma, where there has been repeated exposure to traumatic incidences over a prolonged period.

Complex Syndromes

Dissociation is a process of fragmentation where a person living with unresolved trauma is forced out of embodiment and feeling into emotion and thought. When there is no resolve and there has been repeated exposure to traumatic events, this state can lead to dissociated emotional and thought states and emotional deadness. Complex syndromes are most often associated with developmental trauma and can include anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, and a range of other conditions that are really expressions of one underlying traumatic pattern.

The Behavioural Symptoms

Avoidance

Avoidance is very much related to procrastinating about giving full attention to the close at hand, in favour of something that is less immediate. Avoidance behaviour is likely to involve a certain sense of trepidation in coming face to face with "oneself." This action may relate directly to an inner state of confusion, or through association.

Social Withdrawal

To interact with and relate to people is, for most of us, self-confronting, and can be too overwhelming while living with unresolved trauma. On the other side of the spectrum, people who are overtly extrovert might seek constant social engagement in order to sublimate their own problems. Either way, the natural capacity for connection has been compromised by the nervous system's need to protect itself.

Sleeplessness

It is not uncommon to be constantly on high alert while living with unresolved trauma. This state of hypervigilance serves as a protective mechanism. To relax would entail confronting the emotions associated with the traumatic event or period in one's life, as a result of which, those who carry unresolved trauma are likely to have disturbed sleep or insomnia.

Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage is often related to a lack of trust, feeling incompetent, and/or actions that bring about feelings of overwhelming helplessness. Self-sabotage can manifest as making excuses, forgetting, falling sick, and even getting into difficulties or accidents prior to the arranged set of intentions or actions.

Denial

Denial is clearly a coping mechanism to avoid dealing with the emotional strain of traumatic stress. Unfortunately, it often becomes a conditioned response — a habit — and will be used not only when there is an association with past traumatic incidents, but throughout everyday life and social interactions.

Negative Self-Image

The effects of trauma disconnect us. When we do not feel well in our body and disruptive body-mind states are internalised, it is not long before our psyche starts incorporating its way into our sense of self. Thus, not feeling well bodily will in time be interpreted as "I am not well," "I am not good enough" and can develop into self-loathing and self-hatred.

Self-Harm

Self-harm follows a state of self-loathing and hatred, but in an outwardly expressed form. By self-mutilation one can seek release from internal turmoil and conflict. The act of self-inflicted pain can therefore involve a sense of temporary pleasure and become addictive. It might also be an attempt to seek help and attention from the people who are close to us.

Suicidal Ideation

Being suicidal is when you have thoughts of wanting to take your own life. The effects of trauma can be so overwhelming that a person feels compelled to end his or her life. Suicidal tendencies are often present with those living with severe unresolved trauma and its accompanying mental-emotional states.

Sexual Dysfunction

Sexuality most often involves a sense of bonding with and connecting to another human being. While living with unresolved trauma, to bond and connect can result in too much of that which is emotionally overwhelming, especially when the traumatic stress involves a negative body-image, sexual abuse, or assault. To maintain a disconnected state as a survival strategy can result in sexual dysfunction. On the other hand, seeking sexual pleasure can also be a coping mechanism to avoid and divert away from getting into touch with deeper held emotions.

Why the Symptoms Keep Cycling

The symptoms of unresolved trauma are not random. They follow a pattern dictated by the nervous system: activation (fight/flight) followed by collapse (freeze/shutdown), and back again. This cycle continues because the underlying emotional residue has not been met and processed. Each triggering event restarts the loop, and the person is left feeling as though they are going in circles — because, at the level of the nervous system, they are.

When you begin to see the symptoms not as separate problems but as expressions of one underlying state of nervous system dysregulation, you have the beginning of a framework for working through them. The symptoms do not need to be eliminated one by one. The cycle itself needs to be understood, and the emotional charge beneath it needs to be gradually met and contained.