Having experienced trauma in the form of child abuse first hand, I can safely say it changes you. It shapes you into the adult you will grow to be, and influences every decision you make. Most of these decisions are the subconscious kind – the ones you don’t really stop to think about, you just do. Decisions like, ‘I don’t deserve that’, or ‘I can’t do that’, are daily occurrences that have huge implications on adult life.
When you experience something traumatic, you think you are moving forward, carrying on with your day and life. The reality is, you are actually stuck in a vicious cycle of self-deprivation, which has many manifestations.
The 6 Manifestations of Trauma
Here are the types of manifestations of trauma I personally struggled with, and I see the most often amongst my clients.
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Lack of Productivity
Many people who are living with a trauma have an expectation of failure, or they at least lack the expectation of success. If you expect failure, on a subconscious level, guess what you will make sure you get? That’s right, failure. Your expectation of failure may be because of a fear of failure. More likely, it is because you don’t believe you deserve success. The trauma you are holding on to has you stuck in this loop of expecting to fail, succeeding with that failure, and then believing you deserve to fail because of all the failure you have experienced!
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Dwindling efforts
When you are ‘stuck’, you may start tasks with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. You feel very positive about the project, at first. Efforts quickly begin to dwindle, likely because of the internal mantra that is telling you that you can’t do it, you won’t succeed, and you don’t deserve to succeed. Again, when you listen to this mantra, your effort is not 100%, impacting the success of the project or task. Of course, the outcome is going to be disappointing, which will fuel your belief that you don’t deserve success.
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Reluctance to lead
A reluctance to head projects, preferring instead to delegate major tasks to others, is a way of taking the pressure, and the blame, off of you ‘when’ it fails. This is directly linked to the expectation of failure, which turns into a fear of failure. You may even have a fear of success. Think about that for a second – a fear of success. Why? The reasons are plentiful, but some include not knowing what success looks like, and fearing that unknown, to a fear of ‘the other shoe dropping’. You know this one – if something good happens, then it’s only a matter of time before it is balanced out with something bad to bring you back to reality. Sorry to say, but you don’t have a concept of success being the reality.
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Passive Work Ethic
It’s not that you don’t work hard. You might be the hardest working person in your department. The problem is, you don’t seek promotion, ultimately because of, again, the fear of failure, or success. You have convinced yourself that you don’t want the extra work, responsibility, or hours. You love what you do and you don’t want to do something else. You are choosing to appreciate your current position. Sound familiar? Are you though? Are you really happy where you are? Do you appreciate your current position? Is it that you don’t want the ‘extra’ work, or are you fearing the ‘new’ work and your ability to do it, and do it well?
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Holding back
If the above manifestations are ringing true to you, you are not being the best version of yourself. If this is the case, you are contributing to the vicious cycle – you won’t bring forth your best self, so you are not getting the best results. This feeds back into the mind set of not bringing forth your best… See it? Where does the cycle end?
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Silent Suffering
When I came out about my experiences with child abuse, there wasn’t a single person who said they always thought something was happening back then, or that I always came across as dealing with something very traumatic. No. I had the exact opposite response. EVERYONE who commented, and there were many, expressed how surprised they were that I had that background and had been dealing with that. They couldn’t have known because I wasn’t walking around advertising it.
You probably are not advertising your trauma either. What does that really do for us? Eventually it makes us feel like we shouldn’t talk about it. Other people might become uncomfortable, or may judge us. So instead, we will just deal with it on our own.
Do you know what shocked me the most about the responses to my story? How many people told me they too had similar experiences with child abuse. All these years and I was doing my best to not speak about it (I even hid it for many years), and many of the loved ones around me could have been helping me, if only they knew. I could’ve helped them too, if only I’d known.
What if…
What if you could let go and move forward? What if you could change that mantra and that deeply rooted subconscious belief? What if you changed this pattern of waiting to see something change in your life to believe you are worth it, into believing in yourself first and then seeing the changes in your life because of your belief?
I struggled with this exact problem for a decade after my abuse. Even after I began to change my internal mantra and belief system, I struggled implementing these changes into my life for another decade. But I did it and so can you!
Books to help
In my journey, the books that had a great impact on me regarding the manifestations of my trauma, were:
If you would like help with your journey, visit my website to see how I can help. I’d love to chat with you in person and get to know your story. Book a complimentary call!
