What trauma can look like: 9 signs of trauma

9 signs of trauma

1 - People-pleasing

The classic trauma responses you probably know are fight and flight. But there are two more responses: freeze and appease. The appease response can look like agreement, helpfulness or taking on a leadership role. All of these behaviours can be positive, especially in a work environment, but appeasing ultimately harms the individual and their team. When someone is in the trauma state of appeasing, they may signal agreement but disagree inside. Appeasing can stop us from standing up for what we believe in, voicing concerns and asking for help. The appease response develops when someone has had experiences in the past where caring for others ensured their own survival. These experiences can come from childhood, but that is not always the case. They can also come from past or current friendships and relationships, or from past work situations. If you are familiar with the reenactment triangle or the drama triangle, people-pleasing can be a sign that someone is playing the role of the "rescuer".

2 - Getting defensive

When we think of the fight response, we probably imagine someone ready to get into a physical fight. However, our fight response often shows up as defensiveness, especially at work. Imagine a hypothetical employee who always closes up to suggestions and resists change. Colleagues might describe this person as stubborn, headstrong or indignant. In disagreements, they may not want to listen or may raise their voice.
All of these so-called personality traits can in reality be trauma responses.

3 - Running away

Flight is another common trauma response that we may associate with drastic behaviour. Often our flight response triggers feelings of anxiety or fear. For some, a flight response can feel like a strong urge to leave the situation. This urge can show up as leaving a conversation or a meeting. Without a trauma-informed perspective, we might react to this situation by saying: "That behaviour was completely inappropriate!" Then we might call a meeting to reprimand this person. This method is correction without connection. With a trauma-informed perspective, we can say: "Wow, this person must have felt very unsafe to behave like that." With the "connection before correction" model, we can create a connection through an open, honest and safe conversation before we talk about the future.

4 - Shutting down

When someone freezes as a response to trauma, they often find it hard to think. Their head may be completely empty and they do not know what to say. This situation can be frustrating for both sides. The person on the other side of this trauma response may feel like they are talking to a wall. They might assume that the other person is indifferent to the topic, or feel pushed aside.
But for the person struggling to think and speak, this can be a challenge too. While they shut down, they may feel confused or angry that their words and thoughts do not come to them.

5 - Emotional numbness

While some people experience a trauma brain as an absence of thoughts or words, others may experience an absence of emotions. Emotional numbness, low emotional intelligence and a lack of emotional awareness can all come from traumatic experiences in which allowing emotions could have been unsafe. If you or someone you know has difficulty getting in touch with their emotions, it is important to take a trauma-informed view that sees this as a natural response to past experiences and not as a personal failure, flaw or deficit.

6 - Dissociation

Dissociation is a trauma response that makes us feel cut off from ourselves. This can mean that we feel disconnected from our emotions and experiences, that we have difficulty remembering our past, or that we feel the world around us is unreal. Dissociation is one of the most common trauma responses and can last a few minutes, a few days or a few weeks. In some cases, ongoing dissociation can be a sign of a dissociative disorder.
Dissociation can help us survive traumatic experiences, but it can also become an unhealthy coping mechanism, especially when it stops us from being present.

7 - Playing the victim

Reenactment is another common trauma response, and one of the roles we can take on during a reenactment is that of the victim. The victim trauma response is the voice of helplessness. It says: "Poor me! There is nothing I can do." Victims often refuse to acknowledge their part in creating their own circumstances and push away any responsibility, while sinking into feelings of hopelessness, dejection and shame. When someone is caught in a victim mentality, they find it hard to make decisions and to recognise the power they have.

8 - Excessive independence

The flip side of excessive dependence on others is excessive independence, which can be another trauma response. Most of us can relate to how hard it is to ask for help. Hyper-independence takes the fear of relying on others to the next level.
Someone who is hyper-independent rarely or never asks for help. Even if we are proud of being independent, excessive independence can stop us from being vulnerable with others and building real relationships. Excessive independence and resistance to relying on others often develop after we have been in situations where we needed help from others and they were not there for us. Our brain now expects people not to be there to support us, so we rule out the chance of support before someone else does.

9 - Always being busy

Trauma-informed work requires self-awareness, and the moments in which we are aware of ourselves often come when we are still and quiet. For some people, these quiet and still moments are flooded with negative thoughts rather than self-knowledge. To cope with these thoughts, they keep themselves busy. Distraction can be a great coping mechanism for short-term emergencies, but avoidance can become an unhealthy coping mechanism. When we are constantly busy, rarely stop to rest, and keep the TV and music running to fill the silence in our lives, busyness is a trauma response. At work you may know someone who always throws themselves into the next project. They rarely take breaks and are always aware of how little time they seem to have. Instead of seeing this person as a problem, we can see that their trauma response is to stay busy, and we can support them in their healing.