Author: Lori Jean Glass

Think of a kid throwing a temper tantrum for no apparent reason, or at least not one significant enough to cause such a reaction. The feelings of most adults can be just as overwhelming, and some adults’ use coping mechanisms that can boil down to “sweeping it under the rug.” These folks might’ve outgrown temper tantrums, yet the storms inside them can seem just as overwhelming.

Unlike most children, adults are capable of identifying and managing their emotions. This doesn’t mean merely controlling, suppressing, or hiding them. It means understanding our triggers or the underlying causes of our fears and other distressing feelings. It also means learning what vulnerability management is and then changing our behavior and thought patterns to create optimal conditions for learning to recognize and identify our emotions. That way, we can address the reasons behind them, and change our response and behavior accordingly.

What Is Emotional Regulation?

Emotional regulation encompasses various actions we undertake to control the expression of our feelings. This ability may involve analyzing or rethinking certain challenging situations to influence the intensity of distressing emotions like anxiety or anger. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we succeed in changing our feelings; we simply learn to hide some or all visible signs. And, hiding our emotions can be incredibly unhealthy.  

By learning to actually mitigate emotions that are hardest to control, like anger, anxiety, resentment, or deep sadness, we could prevent them from turning into more severe mental health issues. Instead of bottling them up, we can learn how to deal with them in healthier ways that will contribute to our personal well-being and more stable relationships with others.

How Can I Regulate My Emotions?

With a certain amount of practice, we can learn to influence our emotional state or regulate our feelings. Experts in this field use two terms to explain this process: down-regulation and up-regulation. Down-regulation means reducing the intensity of emotions, while up-regulation means amplifying them.

Each of these two ways is used in different circumstances. For example, people usually try to downregulate distressing emotions like sadness, anger, and fear by recalling pleasurable or amusing memories or ideas – thinking about something that makes them calm or happy. This method is used to distract oneself from anxiety or sadness.

In other types of situations, people need to upregulate their emotions or make them more intense. This is more common in situations of imminent danger or other kinds of challenging experiences that require a dose of adrenaline.

The main issue with this type of emotion control is that it’s usually done unconsciously to cope with demanding situations. And all of us do it many times a day. We use various emotion regulation strategies, some of which are harmless, while others can cause damage to our well-being and mental health. To adapt to the environment we live in, the stress we’re exposed to, and the countless emotions we feel throughout the day, we need to approach the situation more strategically.

Which Skills Are Essential For Emotional Management?

To be able to practice emotional management, we have to set up the conditions that allow us to apply positive coping skills and practice emotional and vulnerability management. This task will get easier over time if you make sure to set up the environment by:

• Taking care of your physical needs and paying attention to your physical symptoms. This includes getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, being physically active, and exercising. As a result, you will feel better and healthier, and regulating your mood will become less challenging.
• Understand your developmental parts so you can understand where the deregulating emotions come from. This is helpful so you can be aware of why the feelings are so intense.  Let’s say in your childhood you had a father who left you. This will most likely activate the abandonment button that was installed inside of you whenever your partner leaves or threatens to leave.  Your reaction can be heightened as a result. 
• Including activities that build a sense of achievement into your life. This can be any type of hobby or simply doing one single thing each day that makes you feel content. Sometimes our days are filled with multiple small moments we fail to notice or disregard as irrelevant. Pay attention to things that bring you joy, no matter how small they seem. If you start noticing them, their cumulative effect can increase your positivity.
• Focusing on changing thought patterns instead of changing feelings themselves. This could be a more challenging task. Most of us don’t realize that we can change the way we think about things. The truth is that we can change how we experience certain situations by deconstructing our feelings. That means analyzing what happened and how it led to us feeling a certain way.

For example, think about what made you feel that way when you’re upset. What did you think when the distressing event happened? Try to notice the correlation between your thinking and how those thoughts make you feel.

How Can I Manage My Vulnerability?

The best way to manage your emotions and, by extension, your vulnerability is by acknowledging what the meaning of vulnerability is and adopting certain behaviors that can help you identify your emotions and change the way you think about them and act on them. The essential skills to work on are:

• Making yourself slow down for a moment and take a breath. This creates a space between the trigger and your reaction.
• Taking a moment to notice what you’re feeling. Try to catch your physical reactions and locate the body parts that were ‘woken up’ by the activation. For example, do you feel like you can’t breathe? Is your heart racing? Is your stomach upset? Do you feel a sudden headache or tension in your neck? Are you clenching your fists or grinding your teeth? Our bodies react instinctively and by noticing what you feel and where you feel it you’ll be able to identify the type of emotion you’re experiencing.
• Naming the feeling. After taking the time to notice what you’re feeling, you can now identify it. What would you call the emotion you’re experiencing? Is it sadness, fear, anger, or disappointment? Is it a mixture of feelings? If you’re scared, what are you afraid of? If you can identify your emotions, you’ll also be better equipped to share them with others.
• Accepting it. All the emotions we feel are human and natural. Don’t be ashamed of them or try to resist them. It’s important to accept what you’re feeling and to know it’s perfectly valid. Try to have the same compassion for yourself as you would for others.
• Practicing mindfulness. This might sound confusing, however what it actually means is being aware of the moment and yourself within it. Try to pay attention to what’s happening inside and around you, and to be aware of it as an impartial observer, without judgment.

In time, you’ll be able to keep your composure in distressing situations and respond to them calmly without falling into the trap of overwhelming negative emotions and thought patterns.

Emotion Regulation And Change Behavior Patterns

Learning to understand your emotions and respond to them in a healthy manner is not an impossible task. However overwhelming it may feel in certain moments, emotion regulation and vulnerability management help us identify and understand our feelings, leading to well-being and personal growth. This also allows us to open up to others and share our authentic selves with them, helping us achieve mutual understanding, deeper connections, and solid, healthy relationships.

If you’re struggling to achieve meaningful connection and trust with your friends, family, or partner, allow yourself to escape the overwhelming stress of daily life and devote a few days to self-discovery in one of the intimate Glass House retreats. If you prefer to deal with your vulnerability and emotional management issues in private individual sessions, our experienced relationship advocates will guide you in the right direction and remain at your disposal whenever you need them.

We usually think we protect ourselves by not showing vulnerability. People can’t hurt us if they don’t know our weaknesses is a phrase many have expressed. However, to truly understand what vulnerability is and its impact on our emotional well-being and relationships, we must first explore why so many people are afraid of it.

Despite the persistent cliché that the fear of intimacy is typically a male issue, the truth is that women fear intimacy just as much as men. Even though both men and women may initially seem more attractive when they present themselves as mysterious and enigmatic, that usually doesn’t work in the long run. Reality eventually sets in. Healthy relationships require honesty and openness. Without them, all the challenges of lasting romantic partnerships or marriages can become unsurpassable obstacles.

This doesn’t mean you need to completely forget about having any boundaries. The types of relationships we have with people in our lives are significantly different. Setting healthy boundaries is equally important as being open and vulnerable as it protects us from getting into abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships. Vulnerability doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be manipulated by people who know precisely how to hurt us. So, all the more reason to understand what vulnerability means.

Is Vulnerability Bad?

Why do so many people feel instant unease at the very thought of vulnerability? Does it mean it’s bad if it feels scary and uncomfortable? There certainly are situations and people that would prove this point. Maybe bad experiences have already happened too many times to be able to expect anything else. Meaning, you opened up and shared how you really felt with a partner and it was weaponized against you.  Or you shared how you felt about a friend who hurt you directly to them and they ghosted you for it.  Many examples show how for some, being vulnerable and then hurt by it makes the concept of vulnerability confusing to many. At PIVOT we talk about transparency with discernment.  

It’s not uncommon for vulnerability to be marked as a weakness, even in early childhood, and those feelings become so deeply rooted in our subconsciousness that we feel such a strong urge to resist revealing our fragile emotions to anyone, even the people we’re closest with.

Ask yourself this: Who knows your deepest fears and what hurts you the most? How many people truly know you? You can even have great friends, long-term relationships, and even let people in up to a certain point. Still, your bare, most genuine selves remain buried deep, causing challenges you might not be aware of.

Can Vulnerability Improve My Relationship?

Allowing yourself to be completely truthful with important people in your life, like your family, close friends, and particularly your romantic partner, may feel like exposing all your weaknesses and giving them a chance to hurt you. However, think about all the times you wished someone was more open about their emotions. So many conflicts can be solved more easily if both sides share their true thoughts and feelings.

If you allow yourself to be open to this type of change, you might find that people in your life feel more confident to do the same. For example, in partner relationships, sharing your feelings, needs, and pain, and having your partner do the same might help you understand new perspectives and turn miscommunication and quarrels into seeing each other’s point of view and doing your best not to cause them any unnecessary heartache.

What Are The Positive Effects Of Vulnerability On Relationships?

One of the most apparent benefits of vulnerability in relationships begins by releasing the burden of all the hidden emotions and unspoken words you’ve been pushing down for years. This can make us deeply unhappy and resentful toward others. However, if you liberate your vulnerability, you liberate yourself to be a better friend, partner, or parent.

Romantic relationships particularly benefit from the intimacy and closeness that vulnerability can create. This is, of course, a two-way street. If your partner doesn’t seem ready to open up just yet, you can lead by example. Your openness may give them the initial feeling of control and allow them to show their own vulnerability.

Letting someone genuinely know you can deepen your relationship. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of your relationship and makes communication more accessible and straightforward. You will be able to understand why your partner acts in a certain way, what drives their reactions, and, more importantly, you will know how to be there for them when they truly need you. Hopefully, you’ll experience these positive effects too. The big question for you is, do you know yourself well enough to share all of what makes you, you? 

How Can I Be More Vulnerable In My Relationship?

You might be thinking that all this sounds great in theory, yet real life doesn’t work that way. Like many other complex tasks, this one also requires determination, persistence, and maybe even a leap of faith. The truth is that being vulnerable carries the risk of getting hurt. However, so do many other things you couldn’t imagine your life without.

Let’s look at steps you could take to slowly start building this habit, step by step, in a way that won’t overwhelm you. If building vulnerability in your relationship is a goal you strive for, this is how you could begin by:

• Being introspective. Getting to know yourself first is essential if you wish to let another person in. Explore your feelings and the reasons behind them. Many childhood or past life experiences could be the underlying issues affecting your current behavior towards your partner. Look for your emotional triggers and the way you respond to them. You might realize that you’ve been blaming your partner for things they have no control over. 
• Taking your time. Sharing your deepest feelings requires trust. Take it one step at a time and feel out the responses you get from your partner. Begin with revealing one thing you’d like to share.  Try not to emotionally bomb your partner with all that you have to say in one setting! As you start feeling safe and understood, you will be able to share more, and your partner will too. 
• Speaking up. Give your partner insight into significant moments while they’re happening. If they do or say something you’re uncomfortable with, let them know. If you’re the only one who knows that you’re hurt, how can you work on changing the behavior patterns that bother you? Be respectful when you speak-up.  Criticizing your partner won’t help.  
• Sharing fears. However scary it may feel to bare yourself like this, remember that shutting down can make you feel insecure and influence your reactions and behaviors in unhealthy ways that could send a wrong message to your partner.
• Expressing your needs. If you let your partner know what you need, you will allow them to decide how to respond and meet those needs. And, realistic expectations matter. 
• Not running from conflict. Instead, allow yourself to feel some discomfort. This will enable you to practice healthy communication and behavior patterns. Stand strong with an open heart and stay in the uncomfortableness of it all.  You WILL get through it the more you practice.

How To Achieve True Intimacy In Your Relationship By Learning To Show Vulnerability

If you’re not sure what actual vulnerability in your relationship is or how to influence it in a way that will improve your communication and intimacy, you’re not alone. This issue is a tough one for many people and learning to share your feelings, even the difficult or painful ones, does require courage. If you’re prepared to take this risk, know that it can bring incredible benefits to your relationship, PIVOT’s relationship advocates are there to guide you through this process. It’s important to remember that you’re not the only one feeling reluctant or even terrified of the prospect of showing your true self to other people. You’ll realize how many people battle these same issues by attending one of our small group workshops guided by experienced Glass House coaches. The first steps might be hard but deepening the connection with your partner is worth it.

As we grow up, most of us get a new perspective on specific events that happened during our childhoods and learn to see them in a new light with the wisdom and rational thinking that enables us to recognize the reasons behind certain emotions and behaviors.

However, for some people, certain childhood events carry substantial emotional burdens that are hard to let go of even when they understand the underlying causes of unpleasant emotions, leading to trouble with healing from developmental traumas. In some instances, including severe traumatic events, it’s also possible to be unaware of how those childhood emotions and fears shape us into and through adulthood.  Some people may find themselves fighting the wrong fight, needing “proof” that someone is trustworthy, feeling like it’s “never enough” and so on…

What Are The Signs And Types Of Childhood Trauma?

People who experience trauma as children may be able to overcome it with maturity, time, or professional help if needed. Others may not even be aware of how they were affected by childhood events. As a result, they could continue to suffer the consequences and carry negative feelings into adulthood. This is why it’s essential to recognize the signs of childhood trauma. It can be the first step toward healing and rebuilding relationships with yourself, others, and the world around you. If it is suppressed, then typically one may develop an avoidant style in relationships with others.  Avoid getting hurt, therefore, don’t get too close. 

When it comes to different types of childhood trauma, they range from neglect and lack of attention to causing physical harm to a child. In each case, the damage to a child’s emotional, mental, and physical health can be severe. The most serious examples of childhood trauma include:

• Abuse. Verbal, emotional, or physical abuse; sexual abuse or incest.
• Severe neglect or abandonment.
• Dysfunctional home life, parents fighting, domestic violence, or separation from a parent.
• Dysfunctional social environment, like school shootings, bullying, poverty, war, or racism.
• Death or illness of a loved one – parent, sibling, or other close people in a child’s life.
• Witnessing a death, suicide, or murder.
• A serious illness that isolates a child from friends, school, or other areas of their life.
• Accidents like car crashes, fires, and other sudden terrifying events.
• Natural disasters like earthquakes or floods that affect entire communities can be particularly distressing for a child and make them feel unsafe.

Any kind of violence or sudden disaster can be severely traumatic for a child, even when it doesn’t appear so at the time. Children may hide or suppress their emotions, primarily if they’ve been taught that expressing them is a sign of weakness.

Unsurprisingly the most common signs of childhood developmental trauma are:

• Lack of trust in other people.
• Mood swings and unstable emotions.
• Unfulfilling and toxic relationships.
• Anger and aggression.
• Substance use or other self-harming behavior.
• Attention and focus issues.

What Are The Potential Impacts Of Childhood Trauma?

All types of traumas cause inevitable damage to the person experiencing them. The extent to which traumatic events will affect someone will naturally depend on each person’s character, coping mechanisms, and ability to examine the events that lead to traumatization rationally. The consequences of traumatic events can last a lifetime, affecting a person mentally, physically, and socially.

Since children’s brains haven’t had the chance to develop fully, they’re primarily driven by emotions. As a result, a child lacks the capacity to look for reasons behind the traumatic events, which is why the impact of developmental trauma on a child is considerably more profound than on a grownup.

The physical effects of trauma can be just as severe as the emotional ones. The stress a child is subjected to can impair the immune system development, as well as the nervous system. This can significantly raise the risk of illness later in life, particularly chronic ones like:

• Asthma
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Pulmonary disease
• Stroke
• Autoimmune diseases
• Cancer.

As far as mental and emotional health is concerned, the most common consequences can include:

• Anxiety, panic attacks, or depression.
• Insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, sleep problems.
• Lack of energy.
• Low self-esteem.
• Feelings of guilt or shame.
• Withdrawing from others.
• Inability to identify, control and express emotions.
• Intense reactions and anger control issues.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• Obsessive or compulsive disorders.
• High irritability and stress levels.
• High-risk behaviors, substance use, or self-harm.

People exposed to complex trauma as children may become dissociated or disconnected from their sensory experiences and thoughts. As a result, they can lose their sense of self or even have trouble remembering certain parts of their lives.

Another critical aspect of childhood trauma is the tendency to affect the ability to form healthy relationships. For example, people who experience traumatic events in early life might suffer from trust issues and have problems interacting with people in a healthy way.

The fear children experience can make them believe that the world is a dangerous place and that people can’t be trusted. This fear can affect all their relationships and make it hard to form deep and meaningful friendships and healthy romantic relationships.

Can You Overcome Childhood Trauma?

Overcoming trauma can be difficult for some people because lasting brain changes make a much deeper imprint in early childhood. A child’s brain is not fully developed, so any traumatic experience can cause drastic alteration or lead to neurological or psychiatric pathology. In addition, various parts of the brain respond to terrifying events. As a result, affected areas become permanently altered, disrupting normal psychological and emotional development.

If these changes are quite severe, overcoming childhood trauma may require challenging and usually prolonged professional therapy. The main goal of such treatment is to understand the changes that have caused emotional and behavioral issues. Once the problems are identified, recovery can begin. This can be a long and challenging journey that may require significant effort and patience.  Know this – you can get help and change your adult patterns!  

How Do I Heal Childhood Traumas?

Healing from childhood trauma can be a lengthy process for many people. This is because all those negative emotions get seeded deep into the subconscious while your brain is still not fully formed. Even recognizing and identifying your issues is a huge step toward recovery.

Unfortunately, simply being aware of the reasons behind your emotional distress isn’t enough for it to go away. Instead, it’s necessary to adopt new, healthier thought patterns that will guide you to healthier behavior patterns and more meaningful relationships with people. PIVOT from habitual actions to healthy actions. 

However, the most important relationship you need to address is the one you have with yourself, your self-image, and your self-worth. And, really understand and differentiate between your developmental parts! This is certainly not an easy task, as you must process all the distressing emotions stuck in your mind and body all your life. Only after finding a way to beat the sadness, fear, shame, or anger can you learn to love yourself and truly open yourself to loving others.

The healing journey will take you through acknowledging the trauma and accepting that it’s not your fault and doesn’t determine who you are as a person. First, it’s necessary to stop suppressing your emotions and address them, as painful as they might be. You might realize they’re not as terrifying as they seemed buried deep down. As you reveal them to yourself and others, you can start to let go of the pain, guilt, and shame and allow yourself to be your true self – not perfect, yet free of fear.

How To Heal From Trauma With PIVOT Support And Guidance

If you’ve recognized that your childhood trauma experiences are affecting your life and relationships, you’ve already made a step toward healing. Addressing it and learning to think more positively about yourself and others is something you can practice and learn in our Glass House retreat workshops.

Practicing self-love with people on the same journey can feel liberating and help you find the strength you didn’t know you had before. However, if you don’t feel ready to open up in front of others, you can opt for private individual sessions with our expert coaches, who will guide you to healing every step of the way.

We’re all permanently affected by the family dynamics we experience in childhood and early life. Some of us can recognize where our emotional or behavioral issues come from. Sometimes we can pinpoint elements of our parents’ behavior that led to them. However, that awareness itself doesn’t help improve our negative emotions. Nobody’s a perfect parent, and while some might be better at it than others, there are also other factors to consider.

First of all, you might not be fully aware of the kind of childhood your own parents had. They could carry a lot of damage caused by their parents, and this is where the saying “Hurt people hurt people” is particularly evident. Your parents or grandparents may have endured emotional or physical pain and failed to learn how to cope with it in a healthy way. They may have passed it down to you through their behavior because it’s the only way they know.

Even if additional trauma isn’t present, intergenerational trauma can still be passed on. It may go back further than your parents or grandparents, reverberating across many generations, caused by many different events. As a result, it’s possible to experience and live with trauma symptoms and behavior patterns, struggling to recover from emotional trauma even though you personally didn’t experience a traumatic event yourself.

What Is Intergenerational Trauma?

Intergenerational trauma is the type of trauma that gets passed on from trauma survivors to their children or other descendants. It’s also known as secondary traumatization or historical trauma, when it refers to traumatic events related to racial, ethnic, or cultural oppression. Again, the historical context is essential here, whether it’s about family or more extensive community history.

Intergenerational trauma doesn’t have to be limited to parents or grandparents; it can go further down the family line. As a result, you might feel all the signs and symptoms of a traumatized person without even realizing where all the fear and other accompanying distressing emotions come from.

The point of a trauma response is to be adaptive. Unfortunately, it can turn into something severely harmful when it becomes ever-present in your life. If persistent feelings of high alertness, fear, and expecting danger sound familiar, this could be a sign of intergenerational trauma.

What Can Contribute To Intergenerational Trauma?

The range of life circumstances and hardships that can be passed on to one’s offspring in the form of intergenerational trauma is quite broad. It can include smaller groups of people, like one’s immediate family, or entire communities, like religious, racial, or national ones.

When it comes to family dynamics, the common factors that contribute to developing trauma and passing it on to the next generations include:

• Witnessing or experiencing verbal, physical, or sexual abuse.
• Emotional or physical neglect or abandonment, particularly in early life and childhood.
• Loss of a loved one, like the death of a parent or sibling.

However, there are also large-scale, traumatic historical events that affect entire communities. Their influence can transfer beyond the people that survived them. The list of traumatic events most commonly includes:

• Wars.
• Forced migration.
• Different types of oppression, like systemic racism or other types of discrimination.
• Ethnic cleansing or genocide.
• Cultural genocide.
• Enslavement.
• Separation of children from their families.
• Natural disasters.
• Lasting famine or poverty.
• Major global or national crises.

What Are The Signs And Symptoms Of Intergenerational Trauma?

If it feels like you’re having a more difficult time dealing with the usual life hardships than most people you know, you might be experiencing the effects of trauma. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of intergenerational trauma is particularly important as it may cause problems in your relationships with other people due to communication issues. It can also cause unresolved distress in your romantic relationships and affect your parenting style.

The most common signs that point to intergenerational trauma are a bit different than the common trauma symptoms and can significantly differ from case to case. In addition, they can sometimes be difficult to spot because they’re also typical for other mental health conditions like depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, they usually include the following:

• Emotional numbness or having a tough time identifying and expressing feelings.
• A sense of detachment from your feelings and body.
• Heightened response to stress, not being able to control emotions.
• Feeling helpless and vulnerable.
• Low self-esteem, shame, guilt.
• Difficulty connecting with others, trusting them, and building healthy relationships.
• Feeling isolated.
• Risky behavior, substance use.
• Nightmares.
• Intrusive thoughts, thinking about death or suicide.

All these symptoms can severely affect your well-being. Regarding your mental health and sense of self, intergenerational trauma can cause considerable problems, particularly if you’re unaware of its origin. Only by identifying and addressing these feelings can you begin healing and minimizing the chances of passing them down to your children.

Can You Avoid Passing Such Trauma On?

You might not have experienced any trauma yourself. However, being informed about how it transfers and manifests can help you make sense of your feelings and behaviors and how you relate to other people and the environment you live in.

When someone experiences severe trauma, their DNA activates genes to help them survive. This is known as the fright, flight, or freeze response. These genes pass on to the next generations to prepare them for potential danger.

Those genes are meant to keep us safe, so the survival mode can be encoded in the family DNA and passed down to multiple generations. The downside is that it can cause constant fear and anticipation of danger. In addition, being stuck in this survival response can be highly stressful and harmful to one’s mental and physical health.

Recognizing and acknowledging the symptoms can make you aware of what you’re dealing with and what kind of help you might need to address your issues. You can minimize the chances of perpetuating the cycle of intergenerational trauma by being informed about the signs and the effects of trauma. That way, you can find appropriate expert guidance to help you change the way you think and respond to triggers.

How to Recover From Emotional Trauma And Minimize The Chances Of Passing It On

Healing from trauma requires adopting some healthier coping mechanisms, more positive thoughts, and behavior patterns. You can learn how to avoid triggers or respond to them in less harmful ways that won’t put pressure on yourself and your relationships with others. This is particularly important regarding the family you create, your romantic partner and your children. Our experienced relationship advocates can help you identify and address the issues that are causing the problems in private, individual sessions.

However, don’t forget that intergenerational trauma is not uncommon, and many other people are going through similar experiences. It might make you feel better to hear their stories and tackle the issues in one of our small group workshops guided by PIVOT coaches. Realizing that other people are facing these same challenges can create additional motivation and strength. You can learn how to cope with them and start healing – for your own well-being and that of your family and children.

Many people experience difficulties that stem from diverse types of trauma without even realizing what causes trauma and what kind of effect it can have on one’s emotional, mental, and physical well-being. For example, consequences of trauma, particularly a complex one, can interfere with your ability to form healthy relationships with people or damage existing relationships with your family, partner, or close friends.

Trauma develops after experiencing a highly distressing experience. In such situations, both your mind and body get overwhelmed with fear which causes the “flight, fight, or freeze” response. This is the way your body faces any perceived danger, and it’s also your brain’s way of preparing for a physical reaction to it.

What Does Complex Trauma Represent?

Complex trauma often stems from childhood or early life traumatic events that occur for an extended period of time. It’s usually caused by a series of traumatic events rather than a single one. In many cases, those events occur during longer periods: months, years, and sometimes they even spread through several generations of a single family.

The problem for people dealing with complex trauma is that the memories of the traumatic events don’t stay in the past. If the distress experienced was severely damaging, it could cause the body and the brain to react in the same way, causing identical emotions and reactions to get triggered even in situations that don’t objectively present a serious threat.

This happens because complex trauma profoundly impacts your nervous system. When a traumatic experience happens, the limbic system in the brain activates. This set of structures in your brain is involved in emotional responses, memory, and arousal. It is particularly important when it comes to behavior necessary for survival.

What Is The Difference Between Trauma And Complex Trauma?

Typically, after a traumatic event has passed, stress hormones return to normal levels, and flight, fight, or freeze mode shuts down. The danger is gone, emotions calm down, and cognitive functions can return to normal. However, sometimes this doesn’t happen, and some people’s “survival” mode becomes their normal state. If a person is unable to return to a usual, emotionally balanced state, this often points to complex trauma.

This means that the limbic system stays continuously engaged long after the traumatic event has passed. As a result, both the brain and body suffer the consequences of this coping mechanism meant to keep you safe in objectively dangerous situations. These lasting effects are what make the trauma complex.

According to psychiatrists, complex trauma is similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and usually has the same or similar symptoms. Some of the signs that can help you recognize it are:

• Anxiety.
• Flashbacks.
• Actively avoiding places, people, or situations that remind you of traumatic events.
• Memory problems.
• Hyperarousal, being constantly on edge or alert.
• Trouble sleeping or having nightmares.

What Are Examples Of Complex Trauma?

Complex trauma commonly stems from childhood experiences, yet it’s not unusual for it to form in adulthood as well. It can emerge from any situation that causes a continuous sense of fear, helplessness, and powerlessness to defend yourself or escape the situation. If these feelings and fears go unaddressed and unresolved, they may become a permanent cause of problems in partner relationships, friendships, and family relations.

Some of the most frequent traumatic experiences that cause lasting damage to one’s emotional well-being and mental health can be caused by events like:

• Childhood neglect, abandonment, or abuse.
• Taking on adult roles as a child.
• Sexual abuse.
• Physical or emotional abuse.
• Medical trauma or abuse.
• Torture, kidnapping, trafficking, being held captive.
• Wars, civil unrest areas, genocide campaigns.

Childhood trauma is a particularly severe cause of complex trauma because it starts before the individual’s brain has had a chance to develop fully. Children don’t have defense mechanisms and the ability to think things through rationally. Instead, they are driven by emotions, and if those emotions are fear and distress, their worldview can be permanently distorted. As a result, all relationships become viewed as unstable and people as unreliable.

What Does Complex Trauma Do To A Person?

Every trauma leaves its mark on a person. However, what does being traumatized mean? Not knowing this makes it challenging to recognize the signs and identify the effects it has on their lives. In addition, experiencing complex trauma can leave grave consequences that may interfere with your daily functioning and relationships with others and yourself.

Complex trauma can:

• Make it hard to manage your emotions. This includes identifying, expressing, and controlling emotions or becoming easily overwhelmed. Stress reactions are common, as well as anger, fear, and anxiety. Not knowing how to cope with these feelings can lead to depression.
• Cause relationship problems due to attachment and trust issues. Some might feel that people, in general, are untrustworthy and unreliable, even dangerous. It’s not uncommon to also have issues with authority figures like teachers or police officers.
• Influence your physical health, even in the long term. Unfortunately, complex trauma can cause chronic illnesses like heart conditions, cancer, or early death, partly due to risky behavior.
• Change one’s behavior and cause intense reactions. Affected individuals might be unable to calm down even when there’s no significant threat. Instead, they may act impulsively and unpredictably. High-risk behaviors are also common, like illegal activities, substance use, unsafe sexual conduct, or even self-harm.
• Influence cognitive and problem-solving abilities. People may have trouble thinking clearly and rationally or lack the capacity to calmly think things through when faced with a problem or difficulty.
• Lead to memory problems. Some people can even completely forget the traumatic experiences that happened to them or keep having gaps in memory or personal history.
• Create a distorted sense of self and poor self-image. People may feel worthless and blame themselves for the trauma they experienced. They might feel shame, guilt, and low self-esteem.
• Cause a person to have no sense of meaning and value, feel hopeless, have no sense of control, and have negative expectations.
• Cause depersonalization or dissociation. This means feeling disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, or body. For example, people may feel like they’re in a dream or otherwise unreal or altered state.
• Cause derealization, feeling detached from your surroundings.
• Influence the immune system. Abnormal stress levels can cause the body to automatically respond to ordinary stress levels as it would to extreme stress and cause rapid breathing or heart racing in regular situations.
•  Create permanent physical symptoms like an upset stomach or headaches.

How To Overcome Complex Trauma Through Individual Or Group Coaching

You might be experiencing emotional hardships that prevent you from having healthy relationships with other people. They could be causing constant unrest and crises in your romantic relationships as well. In that case, it might be a good idea to address the root cause of your problems. 

However, no two people are the same, and you might feel like nobody can understand what you went through. This is why PIVOT offers personalized individual coaching sessions to help you regain your strength and the ability to form trusting relationships and healthy attachments. You can also take part in small group workshops. Hearing about other people’s experiences can help you realize that you’re not alone and that healing is possible. In addition, the guidance of our experienced Glass House coaches can help you regain a sense of stability and safety.

All traumatic events, both individual and collective, are frightening experiences that cause great distress to those who go through them. They usually involve life-threatening situations, illness, death, abuse, or injury. While all these things can happen on an individual level to a single person, they can also happen to a large number of people at the same time. However, collective trauma is most commonly experienced by smaller groups of people, mostly families, friend groups, or colleagues.

The type of emotions collective traumas can cause and the long-term scars they leave are similar to those inflicted by individual trauma, but there are also specific characteristics of collective trauma. These specifics can be perceived in the way severe trauma is experienced, as well as the ways people overcome it, both as a community and as individuals.

What Is Collective Trauma?

Collective trauma is the result of a large-scale traumatic event that affects entire groups of people. This can happen in a situation like natural catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, wars, disease outbreaks, pandemics, terrorist attacks, mass and school shootings, hostage situations, recessions, and so on. However, collective traumas can also happen after traumatic events within a family or a group of friends, usually after a death or a severe accident of a loved one.

There have also been numerous collective trauma experienced throughout history that can transfer onto the next generation, deeply shaping entire communities. Some of the most powerful examples are events like slavery, the holocaust, famine, and multiple occurrences of genocide and religious persecution.

However, not all people inside the affected group get equally traumatized. This can depend both on the objective circumstances of what they went through, as well as their individual capacity to cope with traumatic events. While some members of the collective directly experience sickness, death, injury, or loss of a loved one, or their whole family, others feel the repercussions in diverse ways – indirectly. Some of the indirect ways to experience collective trauma could be job loss, financial difficulties, or temporary separation from family members and friends.

What Are The Signs And Symptoms Of Collective Trauma?

Communities and groups of people can be affected by shared traumatic experiences in several different ways. Emotional and psychological symptoms of collective trauma are not that different from the ones caused by individual severe trauma, and they commonly include:

• Fear
• Grief
• Anxiety
• Depression

However, there’s another important aspect of collective traumas. Events that cause it can permanently change the way a certain community or a group of people sees itself. Just like individual trauma can influence one’s self-image, collective trauma can transfer through generations of collective memory and affect the way future generations view themselves too.

It goes as far as causing greater collective and individual fear. It can change the functioning and the dynamic of the group itself, relationships between people inside the group, but also with other groups as well. Both the traumatized generation and the future generations can adopt higher alertness for any potential dangers or threats, and heightened feelings of vulnerability. Collective trauma can even influence the general feeling of national or ethnic pride.

Symptoms that point to collective traumatization are:

• Panic
• Hopelessness
• Helplessness
• Disorientation
• Stress
• Existential crisis
• Collective PTSD (post-traumatic disorder)

How Does Collective Trauma Affect Our Mental Health?

The effects of collective trauma on mental and physiological health are two-sided. This is where group trauma can get quite individual and personal. Since some people are better equipped to deal with the impact of events that transpired, the intensity of trauma-related feelings won’t be the same for everybody involved. Some will handle difficult situations better than others and are better equipped to deal with the consequences.

This generally depends on individual personalities, coping mechanisms, emotional health and well-being, as well as personal resilience. However, and this is a particularly important aspect, the way people deal with collective trauma will also depend on their socioeconomic background and other factors that determine their position in society.

Experts agree that collective trauma is harmful to the mental health of everyone experiencing it, and some factors that contribute to that are:

• The general feeling of despair and hopelessness.
• Arguments and conflicting opinions inside the group about the best way to deal with the event in question.
• Oversaturation with disturbing images repeatedly shown in the news and other media.

Adolescents and children experience psychological and emotional repercussions of collective trauma more severely than adults. This is mostly due to the fact that they still haven’t had a chance to develop healthy coping mechanisms. Since these age groups are more vulnerable to trauma in general because their brain is still developing, they’re more susceptible to the influence of stress hormones. Unhealthy coping mechanisms might turn to risky or self-destructive behaviors like drinking, substance use, or eating disorders.

How Do I Cope With Collective Trauma?

Coping with collective trauma has two sides – how you cope as an individual and how you cope as part of the group that experienced the traumatic event. People who look at the event as a way to band together and work toward the common good usually heal faster from the traumatic experience. Some may even feel like they came out of it stronger.

Some of the positive aspects of shared trauma are the newfound solidarities caused by a shared experience of pain and distress. And it’s also known that severe hardships bring people together, making them form closer relationships while working on achieving a common goal.

Some of the ways that could heal ease the burden of collective trauma-related emotions include:

• Talking to people who can relate to your experience and feelings, finding support networks.
• Participating in group efforts strengthens community relationships.
• Expressing shared values but also sharing feelings of sadness, anxiety, and fear.
• Turning to all usual life routines after the danger has passed.
• Engaging in physical activity and exercise can help clear your mind of intrusive thoughts and help balance your nervous system, as trauma affects your mind, body, and your physical response to stressful emotions.
• Spending time in nature.
• Eating healthy food.
• Expressing your emotions in honest conversations with friends and family or getting professional help if necessary.
• Maintaining close relationships with family and friends.
• Being truthful about your thoughts and emotions with your partner.

Recover from collective traumatic events and find new strength to return to your life in a healthy way

If your emotional health has been affected by severe collective trauma, that may have affected the way you observe the world, other people, and yourself in it, causing you to experience difficulty building or maintaining healthy relationships with new people as well as those who’ve been in your life for quite some time now. Relationships with your partner, friends, and family could all suffer the consequences of collective trauma even if you experienced it together.

To begin healing as a collective, you also need to heal as an individual. Trauma treatment and recovery may be a long and arduous process for some, but with the support and guidance of our PIVOT coaches, you gradually learn to adapt to your new self, inevitably changed by the severe trauma you experienced. PIVOT’s small group workshops are a perfect solution for dealing with collective drama. You can feel the support of people who know what you’re going through, and with professional guidance from our experienced coaches come out of it more resilient.