What is trauma blocking? (2023)

What is trauma blocking?

Some people's efforts to block residual feelings of trauma may look like adapting avoidance behavior to avoid feelings of pain, also called trauma blocking. What is Trauma blocking? Trauma blocking is an effort to block out and overwhelm residual painful feelings due to trauma.

Blocking out memories can be a way of coping with the trauma. Memory loss from childhood trauma can affect your life in many ways. Your memory loss may even make you believe that you were never a victim of childhood trauma. Physical, emotional, and psychological trauma can all play a factor with memory loss.

There are three main types of trauma: Acute, Chronic, or Complex.

Scientists believe suppressed memories are created by a process called state-dependent learning. When the brain creates memories in a certain mood or state, particularly of stress or trauma, those memories become inaccessible in a normal state of consciousness.

Dissociative amnesia occurs when a person blocks out certain events, often associated with stress or trauma, leaving the person unable to remember important personal information.

regularly feel numb or blank. feel nervous, low, or stressed a lot of the time, even if you aren't sure why. have a tendency to forget things. experience unease or discomfort when other people tell you about their feelings.

What can trigger repressed memories?

Stress and fear can cause your brain to vividly remember events to protect you later in life. However, the brain can also repress or push traumatic memories aside, allowing a person to cope and move forward.

Trauma can make you more vulnerable to developing mental health problems. It can also directly cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some people misuse alcohol, drugs, or self-harm to cope with difficult memories and emotions. Depending on how you're affected, trauma may cause difficulties in your daily life.

Physical injuries are among the most prevalent individual traumas.

Neglected past trauma can have a large effect on your future health. The psychological and physical responses it triggers can make you susceptible to severe health conditions including stroke, heart attack, weight problems, diabetes, and cancer, according to a Harvard Medical School research study.

Trauma is difficult to heal from. It's meant to be. Trauma is the way that our brains and bodies adapt to an experience or environment of life-threatening powerlessness: to situations of overwhelm that are extremely dangerous to our survival. If our brains and bodies don't take that seriously, we won't stay alive.

The energy of the trauma is stored in our bodies' tissues (primarily muscles and fascia) until it can be released. This stored trauma typically leads to pain and progressively erodes a body's health. Emotions are the vehicles the body relies on to find balance after a trauma.

Brain areas implicated in the stress response include the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. Traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in these brain areas. Traumatic stress is associated with increased cortisol and norepinephrine responses to subsequent stressors.

When a person experiences a traumatic event, adrenaline rushes through the body and the memory is imprinted into the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system. The amygdala holds the emotional significance of the event, including the intensity and impulse of emotion.

The most common areas we tend to hold stress are in the neck, shoulders, hips, hands and feet. Planning one of your stretch sessions around these areas can help calm your mind and calm your body. When we experience stressful situations whether in a moment or over time, we tend to feel tension in the neck.

How do you reconnect your body after trauma?

The emotion of anger is associated with the choleric humor and can cause resentment and irritability. It is believed that this emotion is stored in the liver and gall bladder, which contain bile. Anger can cause headaches and hypertension which can in turn affect the stomach and the spleen.

Neck tension is often connected to throat chakra issues such as the inability to communicate clearly or be your authentic self around others. Fear and anxiety are also frequently stored in this area, particularly as a physical response to danger (as the neck is a vulnerable area) or strange environments.

It won't rid you of PTSD and your fears, but let your tears flow and you'll maybe feel a little better afterwards. 'Crying for long periods of time releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain.

Reemergence of memories usually means that there was some form of trauma, abuse, neglect or emotional hurt that was experienced years ago, but was repressed because you were not in a safe or stable enough place to heal it.

Childhood trauma also results in feeling disconnected, and being unable to relate to others. Studies have shown that adults that experience childhood trauma were more likely to struggle controlling emotions, and had heightened anxiety, depression, and anger.

Without treatment, repeated childhood exposure to traumatic events can affect the brain and nervous system and increase health-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, eating disorders, substance use, and high-risk activities).

Cognitive Signs of Unhealed Trauma

You may experience nightmares or flashbacks that take you back to the traumatic event. Furthermore, you may struggle with mood swings, as well as disorientation and confusion, which can make it challenging to perform daily tasks.

How do you fix unhealed trauma?

Yes, unresolved childhood trauma can be healed. Seek out therapy with someone psychoanalytically or psychodynamically trained. A therapist who understands the impact of childhood experiences on adult life, particularly traumatic ones. Have several consultations to see if you feel empathically understood.

Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.

According to McLaughlin, if the brain registers an overwhelming trauma, then it can essentially block that memory in a process called dissociation -- or detachment from reality. "The brain will attempt to protect itself," she added.

Stress and fear can cause your brain to vividly remember events to protect you later in life. However, the brain can also repress or push traumatic memories aside, allowing a person to cope and move forward.

Use trauma-focused talk therapy to help recover repressed memories. It's a slow process, but talking out your experiences and feelings can help you slowly unravel memories that are hidden in your mind. Your therapist will listen as you talk about your current issues, as well as your past.

Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.

Longer term, there's an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, says Victoria. And avoiding emotions can also lead to problems with “memory, aggression, anxiety and depression”. A study from the University of Texas found that by not acknowledging our emotions we're making them stronger.

What mental disorders are caused by childhood trauma?

When a person experiences a traumatic event, adrenaline rushes through the body and the memory is imprinted into the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system. The amygdala holds the emotional significance of the event, including the intensity and impulse of emotion.

The answer is yes—under certain circumstances. For more than a hundred years, doctors, scientists and other observers have reported the connection between trauma and forgetting. But only in the past 10 years have scientific studies demonstrated a connection between childhood trauma and amnesia.

Reemergence of memories usually means that there was some form of trauma, abuse, neglect or emotional hurt that was experienced years ago, but was repressed because you were not in a safe or stable enough place to heal it.

Signs that you've been traumatized can vary from typical symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, to a vague sense that your feelings of fear or anger seem exaggerated. Something to ask yourself is, does your level of fear or anger seem larger, more dramatic than seems appropriate to the situation.

Researchers find evidence that neural systems actively remove memories, which suggests that forgetting may be the default mode of the brain.

Your lapses may well have very treatable causes. Severe stress, depression, a vitamin B12 deficiency, too little or too much sleep, some prescription drugs and infections can all play a role. Even if those factors don't explain your memory lapses, you don't need to simply resign yourself to memory loss as you age.

Physical injuries are among the most prevalent individual traumas. Millions of emergency room (ER) visits each year relate directly to physical injuries.