You feel it constantly, close your eyes, and you are there again. Sleep, and it invades your dreams. Smell the wrong thing, and you crumple into a heap. Panic sets in. You are always checking your surroundings, afraid that something will happen. You are waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know it is going to; it always does. You are never going to a place like that again. You can't believe what happened. No one understands. No one can understand.
You curl up on the floor crying, feeling hopeless and alone. You can't go outside or to the grocery store. The thought of driving gives you nightmares. The sound of a loud pop causes you to grab your ears and run for cover. You sit in a room with people, but you have to be in a corner, back to a wall, watching every possible entrance. Your brain is on alert, and you feel as if it is never going to slow down.
You've seen it; I've sat with it. You walk into a restaurant with a friend, and they sit with their back against a wall. They comment on the looks of everyone who walks through the door. They notice things that mean nothing to you. Or, maybe I am describing you. Either way, the radar never gets turned off.
Is this post-traumatic stress?
You hear people talk about post-traumatic stress and think, "Yeah, that's me." "I've got trauma." Many people think about trauma as an experience from military combat or being a first responder. Those experiences often pile up, one on top of another, and repeated trauma like that can become complex post-traumatic stress. Do you know that other things are traumatic? The traffic accident where no one was hurt, but you can't get behind the wheel without thinking about it, and you feel paralyzed with fear. That feeling of being paralyzed with fear is trauma for you. You may have other things causing similar or the same symptoms: the sudden loss of a loved one, seeing a tragic event, abuse, assault, sexual assault, a miscarriage, an abortion, or chronic manipulation by someone who says they love you.
You don't have to keep living this way! You don't have to stay on high alert all of the time. There is hope for you. You can heal from your trauma, regardless of the severity, complexity, and other people's opinions of it. You know those people who tell you that you should be over it by now, or you just need to get over it? You want to tell them off or tell them to shut up. Well, they are wrong, you are struggling, but keep reading, there is hope for you and others. Healing can happen; it happens every day.
Have you ever heard someone say they have never had a traumatic experience, only to have them tell you of some horrific, life-threatening event that causes them unimaginable distress? You sit dumbfounded at the statement, and wonder how it could be anything but trauma when someone kidnapped them and held them hostage. You may not realize that you have experienced severe trauma because the definition is so broad and the word is often used lightly or recklessly.
What is trauma, really?
Merriam-Webster (n.d.) defines trauma in three different ways:
- "An injury (such as a wound) to living tissue caused by an extrinsic agent."
- "A disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury."
- "An agent, force, or mechanism that causes trauma."
The words are English, but that doesn't mean they make any sense. Consider this for a mental health definition: Any wound, particularly to the psyche, resulting in a behavioral state of emotional stress, creating debilitating interruptions in social or occupational functioning. Maybe you have experienced trauma, or you have only experienced an adverse life event. You know, bad things happen, you are bitter and angry, but you can still get through your day. Both trauma responses and responses to adverse life events can make life difficult for you to navigate.
Whether you call it a traumatic event, an adverse life event, or just a bad experience, you know it is holding you back. Maybe you realize your difficulty with coping is causing harm to your loved ones, or you don't, but it does. You just know that you are tired of being afraid all of the time. You are tired of feeling like you are jumping out of your skin. You may feel like you are dying, or wish you could die. Maybe you are even thinking the darkest of thoughts, that you might just end it all. If you are thinking that way right now, call or text 988. Someone is there around the clock.
You don't have to end it all, and you don't have to feel that way anymore. Understanding your problem and that there are solutions can give you hope. You can heal. Consider these responses to trauma, adverse life events, or bad experiences, and see if you find yourself there.
Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn?
Experts used to call your response fight or flight. Then they said the response is fight, flight, or freeze. Now, you hear people identifying four different reactions to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Yes, that last one hurts; you give in and give up. Regardless of your type of response, years after you have experienced a horrific trauma or an adverse life event, those patterns remain. They become a part of your identity even though they don't have to be.
Do you fight?
Maybe you fight in response to trauma, so you are angry. You fly off the handle at nothing and don't know why. Maybe you've even gotten aggressive and hit things or, worse, hit people you love. Do you know that anger may be a lingering reaction to bad stuff happening to you? Your behavior is not excused by your history. Remember that no matter who hurt you or how badly you were hurt, the responsibility to heal so you don't hurt other people belongs to you. Life isn't fair; that doesn't mean you get to hold on and make it unfair for people you care about, or for people you don't care about. You have a responsibility to do something about your anger so you don't bleed over onto other people. You can do something about your anger, and it is easier than you think.
I think about the young man who sat in my office, fists closed and jaw clenched as he told me about watching his father beat his mother. His body turned red as he told me the story and said that no one would ever do that to him; he was court-ordered to therapy for hitting his wife. I also watched the anger drain from his body as we used Accelerated Resolution Therapy to calm it and give him a different way to respond.
Do you freeze?
Do you freeze in response to trauma, so you are stuck? You offer no response when you face stress. Often, the smallest stressful event may cause you to get quiet and stick around, but not address the problem. You just pretend like it isn't there. Sometimes you become frozen with fear again, and you act like a groundhog, just don't move, and it will be OK. You do nothing, just act like it never even happened. You don't have to feel stuck, trapped, or frozen anymore. There is a solution: you can turn that freeze switch in your brain off.
I have a clear memory of a freeze moment for myself. My life wasn't in danger. I was in a narrow hallway in a hospital when a team appeared at a run, pushing a gurney, and needed to turn. It was like a scene you've seen on TV; I plastered myself against a wall, and they moved past me. I was frozen and couldn't step into the door beside me that would have cleared their path. They made it around me and went on their way, but I froze.
Do you run?
Will you run away when something bad happens? You get mildly bad news, you can't face it, so you leave. You run away. Have you ever been accused of running away from your problems? You don't know what to do, so you "squirrel," as it has been called: you stand still and can't decide which way to run, like a squirrel in the middle of the road. Do you run for cover and then think it won't protect you, so you look for the next place to hide? You might pack up and move, leaving everyone you know and love, just because you don't know how to manage the bad thing that happened. How many relationships have you ended by disappearing and never contacting the person again, all because something small happened? Is your trauma response flight? It is time to stop running and start living. You can get better!
I've sat in session many times and heard the same story. "Someone said something bad about me, I didn't like it, so I never went back." Sometimes it's "they were really nice to me until..." or "I thought we were friends, but they..." and the next sentence reveals the trauma, "so, I never went back." The healthy response would be something closer to, "so I talked with them to figure out what was really going on."
Do you give in?
Many of you find yourself in the latest identified group of people struggling with trauma. You fawn. You become the "people pleaser." You don't want to hurt someone's feelings. You know what it's like to be in their shoes, and you do everything you can to make them feel better. You give up what you need so other people can have what they want. You call yourself "a control freak," or "a fixer," and you have incredible compassion for those who are hurting; yes, that is a trauma response too. Most people I talk with don't realize they are coming from a place of trauma; they believe they are just very compassionate, empathic people. Some even identify as "an empath." There are healthier ways to relate to people. You can heal and continue to have that deep understanding of other people's emotions without getting lost in them.
I see it often. You see it more than you realize, and often the people pleaser doesn't realize what's happening. I think about the nurse who sat across from me. She said, "I just can't say no, ever." "I am exhausted and feel like I am dying." "My husband is exhausted for me; people text me at all hours of the day and night." She is a good nurse. She gets requests all weekend long from family or church members asking her for an antibiotic rather than going to urgent care. Before we used Accelerated Resolution Therapy to treat her trauma, I explained something. I explained that she would be able to say "no" and that she would lose her relationships with people who were taking advantage of her. I got a thank-you text about a year later.
Can you really heal permanently?
Are you aware that there is help, fast help? Accelerated Resolution Therapy can help. With Accelerated Resolution Therapy, you don't have to retell your story over and over again. You watch it one last time. You allow your brain to slow down, look at the problem, resolve it, and put it away. The memory doesn't disappear, but the feelings do. You allow your brain to rest, reorganize itself, and turn that fight-or-flight switch off. In a randomized controlled trial with combat veterans, participants saw major reductions in post-traumatic stress symptoms after an average of 3.7 sessions (Kip et al., 2013).
Some of you have only been struggling for a few days or weeks, but most of you have been fighting, running away, freezing, or fawning (giving in) for years, and you have come to think some version of "that's just who I am," or "that's just how I was made." You were made for so much more.
You can be free from the bondage of your trauma or adverse life experiences. There are three criteria for Accelerated Resolution Therapy to work:
- You have to be able to move your eyes side to side.
- You have to be able to hold a thought, and if you are still reading, then you can hold a thought.
- Most important of all, you have to want to change. Your desire to change is the primary predictor of success.
I am Vickie, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Maryville, TN, and I help people from Knoxville and the surrounding communities heal from their trauma and adverse life experiences. I can help you. Click the link at the top of the page so we can talk.
Clinical Content Disclaimer
All clinical content on this website is written or reviewed by Vickie Starkey, LMFT, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Tennessee since 2005 (License #579). Vickie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology from Carson-Newman College (1989) and a Master of Divinity in Psychology and Counseling from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (1995), and is a Certified Master ART Practitioner since 2023. This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment. Verify my license here: https://internet.health.tn.gov/Licensure/
Crisis Resource
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency room. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
References
Kip, K. E., Rosenzweig, L., Hernandez, D. F., Shuman, A., Sullivan, K. L., Long, C. J., Taylor, J., McGhee, S., Girling, S. A., Wittenberg, T., Sahebzamani, F. M., Lengacher, C. A., Kadel, R., & Diamond, D. M. (2013). Randomized controlled trial of accelerated resolution therapy (ART) for symptoms of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Military Medicine, 178(12), 1298–1309. https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-13-00298
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Trauma. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved July 10, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trauma