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How Does Trauma Present in Everyday Life?

September 21, 2025

Trauma isn’t always just something you experience and set aside before carrying on with your life as usual. Despite your attempts at normalcy, it can often creep in at unexpected moments, changing how you react, respond, communicate, and function. In essence, it can impact every facet of your life. 

trauma

Whether you’re experiencing trauma or want to support someone who is, awareness of how it presents can help you know when to seek help. Here are just some of the many ways it can show itself: 

Withdrawal

Before being able to process their trauma with EMDR therapy and other therapeutic approaches, many people who experience a traumatic event and are diagnosed with PTSD withdraw and isolate themselves. They lose interest in the activities they once loved and even stop spending time with their friends and family (Klein, 2023). 

Negative Emotions

Negative emotions and trauma go hand-in-hand. You can experience fear, especially fear of reliving the experience that resulted in trauma. Anxiety is also common, as well as anger, hopelessness, and shame. Some people even feel guilty. Guilt is often associated with a negative view of one’s actions during a traumatic event (Fine et al., 2023).

Mood Swings

Mood swings after a traumatic event are common. You may notice or experience emotional numbness, mood changes, and irritability. Mood swings can be expected early after a traumatic experience. As trauma activates our fight, flight, or freeze response, the nervous system can remain on high alert or quickly transition into a state of numbness. These shifts can result in unpredictable emotions where you feel sad or agitated one moment, then calm the next. 

Trauma can also affect the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, as well as the hippocampus, responsible for memory, and the prefrontal cortex, which we need for emotion regulation and reasoning. The impact on these parts of the brain makes it harder to control and predict our emotional responses (Belleau et al., 2020). 

Sleep Disturbances

Out of all of the most common ways in which trauma presents itself in our everyday lives, sleep disturbances are certainly among the most common. For days, weeks, months, or even years, trauma keeps our bodies in a state of high alert, making it harder to feel relaxed enough to fall asleep or stay asleep (Koffel et al., 2016).

Stress hormones and adrenaline levels can also be high, making it even more challenging to rest. Some people even experience hypervigilance and safety concerns after a traumatic event that prevents them from falling asleep. 

Poor Concentration

Poor concentration is connected to the impact that trauma has on both the brain and body. When your nervous system is on high alert, your brain is constantly scanning for dangers, making it harder to focus on other things. 

Trauma can also result in unwanted memories, rumination, and flashbacks. Even when you initially focus on something else, your mind can keep drifting back to your trauma. Trauma can also temporarily change the parts of our brain responsible for focus and concentration because the brain is prioritizing threat detection. 

Physical Pain

While many of the feelings we have after a traumatic event are related to our mental health, some are also physical. Increased cortisol levels, muscle tension from hyperarousal, and being in survival mode for so long can mean that some people feel chronic pain. The pain can be further exacerbated by poor sleep and coexisting conditions that accompany trauma, like anxiety and depression. 

Trauma can insert itself into our everyday lives in so many different ways, including through our sleep, mood, and even pain. If you relate to any of these symptoms above, seek help from a trusted mental health professional. 

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