Red flags that may signal unprocessed emotions

When it comes to understanding emotional trauma, there’s no one-size-fits-all description, but recognising the patterns can help you identify it. It’s possible for emotional trauma to arise from a single distressing experience, or develop gradually through a series of events. Trauma is subjective – what deeply affects one person may have no impact on another. The trigger could be anything from the loss of a pet to domestic abuse – each person processes experiences differently.

When trauma goes unprocessed, it becomes embedded in the nervous system, often going unnoticed for weeks, months, or even years. While much of our understanding about trauma’s effects comes from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research, you don’t need a clinical diagnosis to experience its impact. The signs discussed can manifest with any type of unresolved trauma, regardless of whether it meets the criteria for PTSD.

1. Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance – the state of being constantly on guard, or being extremely alert to potential danger – is considered a maladaptive coping mechanism. At one point, being alert to potential dangers may have served you well. For example, if you grew up in an unpredictable household, you may have been highly-attuned to changes in moods as a way to protect yourself. Over a prolonged period, this heightened state can be harmful. Signs of hypervigilance include: sweating, increased heart rate, and feeling jumpy, or very fearful.

2. Numbing

If you feel emotionally detached from certain memories, behaviours, or thoughts, this can leave you feeling numb. This can be a sign of unresolved trauma, because it suggests that your brain has sought safety by disconnecting from uncomfortable emotions. Because the act of numbing stops you from experiencing what’s going on inside emotionally, there can be a tendency for others (and yourself) to judge the impact of trauma as less severe than it actually is.

3. Seeking control

A traumatic event can leave you feeling powerless, and you likely never want to experience that again. In an attempt to mitigate this risk of losing your power, you might find yourself needing to be in control, all the time. This could present as overscheduling, never deviating from a plan, always sticking to what you know instead of trying new things, or obsessing over people and things to the point where it damages your mental health.

4. Disturbed sleep

Nightmares and sleep disturbances are common responses to trauma. Research on PTSD patients, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, found that insomnia, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, and restless leg syndrome all frequently occur in people with unresolved trauma.

5. Unexplained physical illness

A systematic review, published in Psychosomatic Medicine, reported that people with PTSD were twice as likely to have functional somatic syndrome (a group of chronic diagnoses with no identifiable organic cause) – such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. Often, the physical symptoms of trauma present earlier than emotional responses, meaning trauma will remain unresolved while the bodily symptoms are addressed.