Understanding Trauma: When the Past Lives in the Present
Trauma isn't just about what happened to you; it's about what stays with you afterward. It's the way your body remembers, even when your mind tries to forget. It's the hypervigilance, the nightmares, the sudden flood of panic when something triggers a memory. Trauma changes how you see yourself, others, and the world. But with the right support, you can build the skills to manage symptoms and live a fulfilling life.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma occurs when an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, leaving a lasting impact on your nervous system, sense of self, and sense of safety. Trauma can stem from a single event (acute trauma) like an accident, assault, or natural disaster, or from ongoing experiences (complex trauma) like childhood abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or systemic oppression.
Not everyone who goes through a difficult experience develops trauma, and that's okay. Trauma isn't about the objective severity of an event; it's about how that event affected you personally. Your response is valid regardless of whether you or others think what happened was "bad enough" to cause trauma.
How Trauma Shows Up
Trauma affects the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. Common signs include:
Re-Experiencing: Intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, or feeling like the event is happening again when triggered.
Avoidance: Going out of your way to avoid people, places, situations, or even thoughts and feelings that remind you of the trauma. This might look like isolation, emotional numbness, or constant busyness.
Hypervigilance: Being constantly on guard, scanning for danger, feeling jumpy or easily startled, having difficulty sleeping, or struggling to relax even in safe situations.
Negative Changes in Thoughts and Mood: Persistent negative beliefs about yourself or the world, feeling detached from others, loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed, difficulty experiencing positive emotions, or intense shame and guilt.
Changes in Physical Arousal: Irritability, angry outbursts, reckless behavior, difficulty concentrating, or being easily overwhelmed.
Trauma lives in more than just the mind
Trauma isn't just stored in your thoughts; it lives in your body. You might experience chronic pain, tension, digestive issues, or unexplained physical symptoms. Your nervous system may stay stuck in survival mode (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn), making it hard to feel truly safe even when there's no current threat. Effective trauma treatment works with both mind and body.
Complex Trauma: When It's Not Just One Event
While PTSD typically results from specific traumatic events, Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) develops from prolonged, repeated trauma, especially in situations where escape wasn't possible. This might include childhood abuse or neglect, domestic violence, being held captive, or ongoing community violence.
C-PTSD often includes additional symptoms beyond PTSD, such as difficulty regulating emotions, persistent negative self-perception, relationship struggles, and feeling fundamentally different from others. Healing from complex trauma often requires a longer, more nuanced approach.
Common Misconceptions About Trauma
"I should be over it by now." Trauma doesn't have a timeline. Healing happens when it happens, not when you think it should.
"It wasn't that bad." Trauma isn't a competition. Your pain is valid regardless of what others have been through.
"Talking about it will make it worse." While diving into trauma memories before you're ready can be retraumatizing, working through trauma with skilled support in a safe environment helps your nervous system process what happened.
"I'm broken." You're not broken. Your responses are adaptive survival mechanisms that once helped you cope. They might not serve you anymore, but they protected you when you needed it.
How Trauma Therapy Helps
Trauma therapy isn't about reliving the worst moments of your life in detail. It's about helping your nervous system recognize that the danger has passed, processing what happened in a way that reduces its emotional charge, and building new neural pathways for safety and connection.
Effective approaches include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Helps reprocess traumatic memories so they become less distressing and more integrated into your life story.
Somatic Approaches: Work with body-based experiences to release stored trauma and help your nervous system return to regulation.
Building Safety and Stabilization: Before processing trauma, we work on grounding techniques, emotional regulation skills, and creating internal and external safety.
Narrative Work: When you're ready, putting your story into words in a safe, supportive environment can help you reclaim your narrative.
Addressing Beliefs: Trauma often leaves us with deeply held negative beliefs about ourselves. Therapy helps identify and challenge these beliefs.
Next Steps
Healing from trauma doesn't mean forgetting what happened or pretending it didn't affect you. It means the memories no longer control your present. It means your nervous system can settle. It means reclaiming your life, your relationships, and your sense of self.
Recovery isn't linear. There will be hard days. But with patience, support, and the right therapeutic approach, you can move from surviving to truly living. You deserve to feel safe in your own body, to trust yourself and others, and to build a future not defined by your past.
At Theory and Method, we specialize in trauma-informed care that honors your pace, respects your story, and supports genuine healing. You don't have to carry this alone.
Theory & Method offers trauma therapy including EMDR in Salt Lake City and Reno. Contact us to begin your healing journey.