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Trauma isn't just about major life-threatening events. It includes any experience that left you feeling overwhelmed, unsafe, alone, or not good enough. When these experiences aren't properly processed, they can remain active in your brain—creating anxiety, depression, and relationship problems that persist for years or even decades. Understanding how trauma works is the first step toward healing.
The term "trauma" refers to wounding or painful experiences from your past that still create discomfort for you today. Because traumatic experiences are overwhelming, the negative feelings, memories, and uncomfortable body sensations that occurred during the trauma tend to get "frozen" in your nervous system, where they remain unprocessed.
This unprocessed material is what accounts for the symptoms that get activated when your trauma gets triggered—such as fear, worry, panic, sleeplessness, sadness, anger, or relationship conflicts.
"Traumatic memories are often the underlying source of symptoms that are difficult to resolve through willpower or traditional talk therapy alone."
Trauma can range from severe to subtle. Clearly, severe trauma can cause intense symptoms. But subtle trauma can have a major impact too—especially if you have a sensitive temperament, experienced trauma at an early age, or endured ongoing trauma over time.
The types of major traumas that often underlie anxiety, depression, and relationship problems include:
Even seemingly minor events can cause traumatic responses, leading to anxiety, depression, and relationship troubles. If you've experienced a pattern of subtle but painful experiences, or if you tend to be sensitive by nature, less severe traumas can have a long-term negative impact on your sense of well-being.
Examples of subtle traumas include:
One of the main reasons that anxiety, depression, and relationship problems can be so difficult to overcome is because the memory of a traumatic experience can get "stuck" in your brain.
When a disturbing or traumatic event occurs, the brain is often unable to process the experience as it normally would. Instead, the traumatic event can get stuck in the brain in the form that it was originally experienced—complete with the sights, sounds, physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts from that moment.
Even well after a traumatic event has ended, the trauma can remain alive and active in your nervous system, creating painful symptoms that are highly sensitive to getting re-activated or "triggered" by current situations.
For example: If you were painfully criticized by a parent in the past, you may notice those same painful feelings from childhood getting re-activated when you're feeling criticized by your spouse or your boss. The intensity of your reaction isn't about the present situation—it's about the unprocessed pain from the past.
"In my work with clients over the past two decades, I've consistently seen that when current symptoms seem out of proportion to present circumstances, unresolved trauma from the past is almost always involved."
Because traumatic experiences are overwhelming, they often leave a traumatic "imprint" on you. This imprint is what accounts for your current sensitivities and symptoms.
Trauma is often at the root of negative thinking patterns (such as pessimism and catastrophizing) and self-defeating beliefs. During traumatic experiences, we form beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world that can persist long after the event has ended.
Common negative beliefs formed through trauma include:
These beliefs are like mental programs—they operate outside of your awareness yet wield enormous influence over how you think, feel, and behave. They become significant sources of anxiety, depression, and relationship problems.
Trauma can interfere with the development of key self-care and relationship skills that are essential for preventing and counteracting anxiety, depression, and relationship problems.
When you're in survival mode during and after trauma, you may not have the opportunity to develop important skills such as:
Perhaps most importantly, unresolved trauma keeps you emotionally connected to painful situations from your past. You may find yourself:
If you'd like to learn more about the impact of childhood trauma on long-term physical, emotional, and mental health, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a groundbreaking resource.
This landmark research study examined the relationship between childhood trauma and adult health outcomes in over 17,000 participants. The findings were striking: the more childhood adversity a person experienced, the higher their risk for anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and even physical health conditions in adulthood.
Learn more about the ACE Study:
Traditional talk therapy typically accesses only the left side of the brain—the logical, verbal, analytical side. While this can be helpful for gaining insights and understanding patterns, it often isn't sufficient for processing trauma.
That's because trauma and traumatic memories are stored on the right side of the brain—the emotional, non-verbal, sensory side. To truly heal from trauma, you need approaches that can access and process this right-brain material.
This is why many people find that despite years of talk therapy, their symptoms persist. The trauma itself hasn't been processed at the level where it's stored.
The good news is that traumatic memories—even those from long ago—can be effectively processed and resolved. When trauma is properly addressed, the symptoms it creates (anxiety, depression, relationship problems, negative beliefs) naturally begin to resolve as well.
Modern trauma therapies, particularly EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), are specifically designed to access and process traumatic material stored in the right side of the brain. These approaches can help you:
"After two decades of doing this work, I can tell you with confidence: it's never too late to heal from trauma. I've seen profound transformation in clients who've carried their pain for 20, 30, even 40+ years."
If you recognize yourself in any of what you've read here—if you suspect that unresolved trauma may be contributing to your anxiety, depression, or relationship struggles—I invite you to learn more about how trauma-focused therapy can help.
Phone: (503) 887-3309
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Office Location: NE Portland, Oregon
Serving: Portland metro area, including Beaverton, Hillsboro, Lake Oswego, Tigard, West Linn, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Tualatin, Gresham, and Vancouver, WA.
Telehealth available for clients throughout Oregon.
