Six Consequences of Trauma

Trauma occurs whenever you have an experience that’s so painful, overwhelming, or disruptive you don’t have time to process it in the moment. The energy of the experience needs to go somewhere, and if you’re not able to manage and release it quickly, it gets imprinted on your body and eventually integrated into your energy field.

The painful experience can be a one-time event, such as a violent rape or a financial collapse, or it can be long-term chronic state, such as an entire childhood of witnessing your father abuse your mother. It can be something that happened to you, so something that you saw happen to another person. It can also be something you did to another person. Whatever the case, the consequences can be profound.

I’d like to summarize six major types of consequence from unresolved trauma for you now.

First, traumatic experiences can result in hyper-reactivity. The fear centers in the brain work together to create emotional triggers, which when stimulated cause violent outbursts or fear-based responses such as panic attack. These outbursts can be sudden and extreme, as if someone has flipped a switch in your brain. And quite often the triggers seem to be completely unrelated to the original trauma itself. For example, the trigger could be a song that was playing on the radio when you witnessed your father beating your mother, or the cologne your uncle was wearing when he fondled you, and so on.

Second, traumatic experiences can create hypersensitivities. Anything that reminds you of the original trauma can set off physical and emotional reactions such as migraine headache, impotency, stomach ulcers, heart disease, and so on. They can also result in feelings of anxiety, fear, aversion, and disgust. If you have an exaggerated fear of conflict, or if you brace for impact any time you hear a raised voice, or if you’re easily disgusted by sex or the human body, these could be signs of hypersensitivity resulting from trauma. Hypersensitivities are different from hyper-reactivity in that the emotional outbursts are less sudden and extreme. In a sense, they’re like allergic reactions.

Third, traumatic experiences often repeat themselves over and over again on autopilot. In the Light Bridge healing system this is called a karmic loop. The repressed energy of the trauma is imprinted on the body and is integrated into a person’s overall energy pattern, in their energetic signature. And even if the trauma is repressed and may even be forgotten, it’s always present, like a tattoo inside your body. It’s like a string in a piano that’s out of tune, so when you play a song that sour note is always there. And in accordance with the Law of Attraction and other related principles, the energy you project, the energy you broadcast is reflected back to you in kind. And so the Universe constantly echoes that sour note back to you in the form of opportunities to relive that original trauma, even when you swear you’ll never let it happen again. And so, for example, many women end up dating the same abusive man over and over again in different bodies. Furthermore, this is compounded if the traumatized person feels driven to tell everyone about it. Talking about your past traumatic experiences is perfectly fine, but fixating on them or reliving them emotionally every time you tell your story invites repetition.

Fourth, traumatic experiences, especially physical, emotional, and verbal abuse, can develop into family traditions. For example, a boy who was sexually abused as a child is much more likely to become an abuser in his adult life, even if he remembers how painful it was to have been victimized. This is like a karmic loop that’s held on the family history level. And in some cases, the family tradition can even be encoded into the DNA.

Fifth, whenever there’s excessive shame or embarrassment about a traumatic experience, it can become part of your shadow. If you’re overly ashamed about having been victimized, you might project that shame onto others and try to eradicate it in them. The shadow can easily turn us into bullies, and our favorite targets are always those who are the most like us. For example, sexually abused children feel weak and helpless, and in the case of a young boy, if vulnerability is considered unmanly or shameful, then it’s no surprise that bullies love to attack the weak and vulnerable. And men who are consumed with toxic masculinity see women as the epitome of weakness and vulnerability, by nature.

Sixth, trauma has a profound impact on your identity. A traumatized child will come define himself or herself in terms of the trauma, and have absolutely no idea who he or she is separate from that experience. A feeling of emasculation a boy may feel, or the experience of being treated like a worthless piece of property a girl may experience, sets in as part of his or her victim identity, and this guarantees a life of struggle and pain. The child can eventually respond in one of two ways – through overcompensation, such as toxic masculinity or sex addiction, or through hopeless resignation. That is, the child is likely to live life as a either a victim or a victimizer until the trauma is resolved and released.

So, in summary the six consequences of unresolved trauma are one, hyper-reactivity and emotional triggers; two, hypersensitivity; three, reliving the trauma on autopilot; four, family traditions; five, an unintegrated shadow self, resulting in projection and bullying; and six, victim identity. And there are many other consequences I haven’t mentioned, as well. In short, unresolved trauma leads to a deep sense of powerlessness.