How unhealed trauma affects your daily life

One of the consequences of trauma is a dysregulated nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is perfectly designed to keep you safe and alive. But it has also been discovered that the ANS stores incomplete fight/flight/freeze responses, giving our bodies the impression that we are still in danger, even when there is no danger.

Equally, a fragmented psyche with a “I” that acts through the lens of ‘Traumatised parts’ and ‘Surviving parts’, spends its whole energy unconsciously searching for a way out of situations and people that may trigger traumatic memories. Creating illusions and unhelpful meanings for everything that it encounters.

With unresolved trauma, your system is in a constant self protective mode. In this mode, missing good relationships and opportunities often become the norm.

In this state it’s quite hard to prioritise and focus on the meaningful things in life. It’s also quite impossible to plan and implement the necessary mid-long term steps to achieve what you desire in life.

A few examples of how these survival strategies can show up in your life:

• Endlessly learning and studying new things instead of implementing what you already know.

• Procrastinating on important tasks, but getting busy with inconsequential tasks.

• Getting very busy helping others, to the extent that it becomes a badge of honour, while your life keeps going nowhere.

I’m sure you get the gist. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way forever. Nervous system regulation and psyche integration is possible.

First step to changing things is recognising the problem. You are already ahead of the game just by reading this post.