Hi, guys. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist for Trauma. In today’s article, I’m going to be recapping some of the things I learned from Bessel van der Kolk about trauma.

And we’re going to be talking about eight signs that you’re traumatized. If you’re curious, stay tuned in your mind.

All right, guys. So recently I did a two-day intensive training with Bessel van der Kolk, the author of the book that I’ve recommended. The body keeps the score, and he is a medical doctor who talks about the brain and talks about trauma.

Now, I wanted to take some of the things that I learned and put them into terms that would be universal, both for therapists who are working with clients who are traumatized, as well as people who may be experiencing trauma themselves or have people that they care about that they suspect may be traumatized. During this intensive training, I learned so much over these two days.

So I might be doing multiple articles. If you like me to, let me know. And I’m going to jump right into those eight signs that you may be traumatized.

Disassociation Or Numbing

This is when I have clients come to me and say, I don’t feel anything. And sometimes clients can actually be very high functioning and still have this feeling of numbness. I’ve had clients explain it to me because I’m moving in the world and things are happening and my body might be responding, but my mind is just not connected with what’s happening in my body.

Maybe there are certain things that they know should scare them, or there are certain things that they know should bring them pleasure, and they just cannot experience that. That’s because your parasympathetic functions have shut down.

And that, again, can be a result of trauma, which is that you are unable to fully feel what’s happening within you. It could be tough even. But really I’m seeing it more often with emotional responses, just that feeling of numbness, almost like an out-of-body experience.

I can write a whole separate article talking about ways to address these trauma responses, but I will say with parasympathetic responses, if you’ve been shut down, there are certain things that you could try to kind of reengage your parasympathetic system. Something like Acupuncture, for example, might be a way to reconnect your mind and body so that you don’t feel as disassociated.

Body In An Aroused State

Here’s a big one I want to take a little time talking about, which is that your body is always in an aroused state, and this is really in response to danger. It’s a perceived sense of danger. And so if your body is constantly in a state of arousal, imagine when you are like running and your heart is beating, you’re sweating. Imagine someone who’s experienced that feeling 24/7.

No one can survive with those high adrenaline levels, those high Cortisol levels. No one can survive doing that. So they try to find alternative ways of calming down since their body is not able to naturally do it on its own. When it recognizes that there is no sense of danger, that’s the problem, is that the bond is not recognizing that you’re no longer in a space of danger. So how do they address it?

They try to manually calm down. This is where I might have clients who are perpetually masturbating, for example. The feeling of masturbating is giving them a break from that arousal state. They might turn to drugs to calm down from alcohol. They might cut themself, right?

So sometimes we can’t make sense of why a person would become a cutter, for example. But if your body is always on high alert, then the process of pain, at least, is a very streamlined, centralized feeling that you can understand and make sense of.

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And it can distract from the feeling of anxiety and angst that they’re having within their body with no explanation. Similarly, starving yourself might be another way of centralizing that pain in your stomach. And so these are ways that we try to address that feeling of arousal to calm ourselves.

And so sometimes, especially with people who might have to deal with addicts and things that might not make sense to them, why you would continuously make these choices? But when you’re dealing with so much arousal in your body that it’s overwhelming, you look for a way of escape, for dealing and processing. So that, I thought, was very interesting from the training.

Self-Loathing

Another concept that Van der Kolk would often go back to is that when a person is traumatized, whether that be in childhood or adulthood, whether it be physical assault, whether it be sexual assault, whether it be a natural disaster, whatever form of trauma we’re talking about, people often find a way to blame themselves for their trauma.

So had I put my seatbelt on, had I just not talked back to my parent, had I XYZ, then maybe this trauma wouldn’t have happened to me. So self-loathing is another major predictor that a person is still in a traumatized state.

Stuck In The Past

You might be rigidly stuck in the past. This is really the direct work of your thalamus and your prefrontal cortex in the brain. The thalamus is your sensory integration.

So this is how you recognize, for example, if you are touching a pet, you are feeling fur, or if you hear a whooshing sound, you might be able to recognize it as a car. That’s what your thalamus does, that’s part of its job is that sensory integration so you can make sense of the things happening around your senses.

Your prefrontal cortex is the timekeeper. So this is the part of your brain that helps you view things chronologically. When you have experienced severe trauma, you may be in a position where you’re rigidly stuck in the past in ways that we’ll talk about later, that affect you in other ways, but essentially, it can be hard for you.

For example, if you see a long pipe, your brain rationally would let you know I’m near a water hose. But if you have been bitten by a snake in the past, or you had a family member who may be told you a story that traumatized you about them being bitten by a snake, you might jump, scream, run, or think that you’re seeing a snake, right?

And if this is continuously happening where you’re seeing something that is relatively benign, but you are jumping to moments in the past that this was actually a danger for you, then that might be another sign that you are traumatized. Being rigidly stuck in the past, difficulty integrating what’s happening to you right now.

Speechless Terror

Speechless terror is activated by a certain part of our brain where when we are in a certain situation that feels traumatizing or feels dangerous, we might resort to not being able to speak at all, becoming mute in certain situations. So if you recognize that maybe typically you’re a very verbal person and able to speak, but in certain situations, you completely shut down and cannot speak, that might let you know that there are situations from your past or maybe the situation you’re experiencing within that moment that has been traumatizing.

Loss Of Self

This is a really important thing to pay attention to because one thing that van der Kolk talked about in the training is that when you’ve lost a sense of yourself, that also means that you lose a sense of other. If you can’t acknowledge or discern what is you, it’s hard for you to separate and distinguish what is other.

So there might be situations where that situation or person might be a danger, but you view yourself as the danger because you cannot distinguish between the two. So if you feel like you have lost a major sense of yourself, your identity, and who you are, particularly within the world, so you can make sense of the world around you, that could be a result of trauma.

Physical Immobility

One of the things that Vander Colt talked about was having certain traumas be physical, where you are actually told by your perpetrator not to move. And so if you are in certain situations like that could be physical or sexual trauma.

Maybe even if you were in a car accident, something like that, where if you would have moved, then maybe you would have gotten caught with the charge of glass or maybe if you were getting a spanking. And if you would move, you get hit in the face, hitting the eye. You learn that your safest response is not to move at all.

So again, if you find yourself in certain situations, let’s say you’re driving and you’ve been in a car accident before, and you notice when a certain colored car passes you, you completely freeze up. Physical immobility may be a sign that you might have trauma work that you need to begin the process of doing.

Difficulty Learning New Information

And lastly, the most important, important one for me as a therapist, the thing I needed to hear to process some of the work that I’m doing with clients is difficulty learning new information. This is one of those things that was very relevant to me as a therapist because often I have clients that I’m seeing where it feels like we’re making breakthroughs.

It feels like they are learning new things that should help them make decisions that they’re more proud of. But what we see instead is that there’s almost this cyclical nature to break through, get into the real world, practice the change, and get right back to their regular homeostasis or status quo. And so when that happens, it can be really frustrating because you’re thinking, hey, I was really excited to write this part in the progress section of the note and now we’re right back where we started.

But when a person has experienced trauma, it’s difficult for their mind to process new information and learn new information. That’s why a lot of times when you are working with or dealing with people who were traumatized, especially at young ages, some of the ways that they cope with that might feel immature to another person who is more fully developed.

That’s because their learning process may have been stunted at that age where they’re not continuing to develop due to having to be preoccupied. Again, with a lot of the things, we talked about earlier. If you’re rigidly stuck in the past, if you can’t turn off those alarm signals in your body, that’s so much that you’re having to deal with on a consistent basis.

That being able to actually able to incorporate and integrate new information into the timekeeping that chronological understanding of life might be impossible for them at a certain point because they’re overwhelmed with things that have happened to them in their past. So those are eight signs that you might be either working with someone who’s traumatized, be traumatized, or living life navigating life with someone who’s still in a position of trauma.

And if you all would like me to do a follow-up article with some of the things that van der Kolk recommended for dealing with trauma and spoiler alert, it’s not just therapy, let me know and I’d be happy to do a follow-up article for you.

I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, and it is my sincerest joy to be able to bring you guys these sorts of topics I love learning. So being able to share what I’m learning with you all is a passion that I have and is what keeps me motivated on this channel. So let me know what other things you want to learn about and I will try to find sources to bring that information to you.