What Are the Symptoms of Trauma?
We all experience bad days now and then. However, if you experienced a traumatic event or a series of traumatic events in your past, this can significantly harm your mental health and well-being. Trauma, left untreated, can leave you feeling distressed and can negatively impact virtually all areas of your life for the worse. Therefore, if you suspect you may be struggling with unresolved trauma, it’s important to seek professional support to better manage your symptoms of trauma.
At Sanctuary Wellness, we are a mental health and wellness treatment center in Knoxville committed to helping patients better manage their mental illness symptoms. We offer a range of outpatient treatment services to best help patients wherever they may be on their recovery journey. You don’t have to suffer in silence with your trauma symptoms.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you on your road to recovery.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is so much more than a bad memory or experience in your past. A traumatic event, or a series of traumatic events, is extremely disturbing and can significantly impact your psychological and physical well-being for the worse. Oftentimes, trauma can arise through having flashbacks or nightmares about your trauma.
Trauma can encompass a wide range of experiences from single events to a series of traumatic experiences over days, weeks, months, or even years. Some examples of situations that can be traumatic include a car accident, sexual or physical abuse, violence, natural disasters, and in general most life-threatening situations. Veterans typically suffer from trauma or PTSD from witnessing first-hand the brutal reality of war and violence.
You should never to try ignore your trauma, hoping it will just go away with time. This is because typically trauma symptoms with time will only get worse and more drastically harm your health and quality of life. That’s why it’s so critical to seek trauma treatment sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you risk not only disrupting your own life but oftentimes fracturing other family members and loved ones closest to you.
Common Symptoms of Trauma
Sometimes, it can be difficult to differentiate trauma from having a bad memory. However, it’s important to recognize that bad memories and trauma are different. Trauma brings about an extremely distressing emotional and psychological response that typically lasts, or stays with, a person until it is healed.
If you suspect you may be struggling with trauma, below are some common symptoms of trauma to be aware of:
- Having reoccurring and unwanted memories of a traumatic event
- Having flashbacks of an event as if it were happening again
- Having nightmares about your trauma
- Avoiding certain people, places, or situations because of your trauma
- Avoiding talking or thinking about your traumatic event
- Feeling hopeless or detached from your life
- Feeling emotionally numb
- Always being on guard for fear of trauma occurring again
- Engaging in self-destructive behavior such as drug abuse to cope
- Having difficulty sleeping or concentrating
If you suspect you may be struggling with symptoms of trauma, it’s critical you seek professional support to better manage your trauma. Otherwise, failure to safely and effectively manage your trauma symptoms may lead you to seek out other unhealthy coping strategies, such as abusing drugs or alcohol, to cope with your trauma. Unfortunately, over time abusing drugs or alcohol to cope with your trauma can quickly lead to developing a drug dependency and struggling with addiction.
Top-Rated Knoxville Mental Health Treatment
If you are struggling with trauma, you should never feel ashamed or embarrassed asking for help. Trauma, left untreated, can significantly hurt your physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being for the worse. Not to mention, many people who struggle with unresolved trauma may try to abuse drugs or alcohol to cope with their trauma, which inevitably leads to greater harm to your physical and mental well-being.
At Sanctuary Wellness, we are a mental health trauma treatment center that offers a range of comprehensive outpatient treatment options to best help as many patients as possible. Trauma can significantly interfere with your health and quality of life for the worse. Let us help you better manage your trauma symptoms so you can get back to leading a happier, healthier life.
Contact us today to start your recovery journey.