Trauma can have a profound impact on our lives. When we experience traumatic events, our brains often try to protect us by suppressing or blocking the memories associated with the trauma. This is a normal protective mechanism. However, when trauma is blocked for too long, it can start to negatively impact our mental health and relationships. So how do you know if you are blocking traumatic memories or experiences? Here are some signs to look out for.
Difficulty Remembering Details of Trauma
One of the clearest signs that you may be blocking trauma is difficulty remembering specific details of traumatic events or periods in your life. For example, you may remember going through a divorce but have trouble recalling exactly what happened during that time. Or you may recall being in a car accident but cannot remember certain details like how you got to the hospital afterwards.
This memory difficulty is due to your brain trying to protect you from re-experiencing the intense emotions and sensations associated with the trauma. However, completely blocking out traumatic memories requires a lot of mental energy. Over time, this can drain your cognitive resources and leave you feeling mentally foggy.
Avoiding Reminders of Trauma
Another way to identify blocked trauma is noticing what you avoid. Do you stay away from certain people, places, objects, situations, or even thoughts related to past traumas? For instance, if you went through a bad romantic relationship, you may avoid dating altogether. Or if you witnessed a shocking accident, you may avoid driving.
Avoidance helps reduce anxiety in the short term. But when taken to the extreme, it limits your life and prevents you from properly processing traumas. Face your fears in small, manageable doses. This can help dislodge blocked memories over time.
Emotional Numbing
Trauma can leave you feeling emotionally numb and disconnected from yourself and others. You may have a sense that you are just going through the motions in life without experiencing much joy, sadness, anger, or fear. Emotional numbness is due to blocked emotions related to past trauma.
Pay attention to what people, activities, places, thoughts, or memories bring up even glimmers of emotion. This provides clues as to what your blocked feelings are related to. Resuming emotional processing little by little can help heal trauma.
Trouble Feeling Safe
Past trauma can disrupt your sense of safety in the world. You may feel unsafe in situations that realistically pose little danger in the present. For example, a car backfiring may make you jump if you once endured gun violence. Or getting close to others may panic you if you went through sexual abuse.
Identify where your safety fears come from. Remembering “I am safe now” and gradually challenging fearful thoughts can help restore a sense of security. Surround yourself with people and environments that comfort you.
Feeling There’s Something You Can’t Remember
Do you have a nagging sense that there is something important you cannot recall? Statements like “there’s something I must be blocking out about my childhood” can indicate blocked trauma. The mind may try to point us toward what needs healing while also keeping disturbing memories out of reach.
Make a timeline of your life. Look for gaps where trauma may have occurred. Seek counseling to help uncover lost memories when ready. Repressed memories may surface when you feel safe and supported.
Somatic Symptoms
Somatic symptoms are physical symptoms related to trauma held in the body. These include:
- Chronic pain like backaches or headaches
- Ongoing gastro-intestinal issues
- Gynecological symptoms
- Sexual difficulties like erectile dysfunction or vaginal pain
The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. Pay attention to when somatic symptoms worsen. This can indicate anniversaries of traumas your mind has blocked out. Therapies like EMDR and somatic experiencing can help process trauma stored in the body.
High-Risk Behaviors
Many cope with blocked trauma through high-risk behaviors such as:
- Drug, alcohol, or food abuse
- Reckless driving
- Compulsive sexual behavior
- Self-harm
These behaviors provide short-term relief by altering intolerable emotions. But long-term, they stop you from healing trauma. Get help changing harmful coping habits, so you can face suppressed memories with support.
How Trauma Gets Blocked
To understand blocked trauma, it helps to know how memory suppression happens in the brain. Here are key facts:
The Amygdala’s Role
The amygdala is the part of the brain that generates fear and threat responses. During trauma, the amygdala goes into overdrive, signaling danger.
The Hippocampus Is Impaired
The hippocampus processes memories and context. Trauma impairs its functioning. So the reasons for amygdala alarms get recorded improperly.
The Prefrontal Cortex Shuts Down
The prefrontal cortex oversees thinking, logic and memory retrieval. It often goes offline during trauma since survival takes priority.
Brain Chemicals Like Cortisol Increase
Stress hormones like cortisol rise sharply during trauma. This alters memory formation and retrieval pathways in the brain.
Why Does Blocking Happen?
We block trauma as a protective reflex. Reasons this occurs include:
- To avoid feeling emotionally overwhelmed by traumatic memories
- To avert getting retraumatized through recalling past trauma
- To steer clear of memories that shatter beliefs about self, others or the world
- To elude re-experiencing physical sensations like pain from past abuse or accidents
Blocking protects against reliving traumatic events in detail. But long-term suppression keeps us from making sense of trauma.
Problems Caused by Blocked Trauma
While blocking trauma serves a purpose in the short term, longer-lasting suppression can damage your wellbeing:
1. PTSD Symptoms
Blocked trauma is linked to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms like flashbacks, hypervigilance, and nightmares. Ongoing avoidance prevents you from fully processing the trauma.
2. Mental Health Issues
Suppressed trauma is associated with mental health struggles like depression, anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse. Trauma changes neural pathways, neurotransmitter levels, and stress hormones.
3. Physical Illness
Trauma held in the body can lead to physical problems like autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, obesity, and heart disease. Mental health and physical health are closely intertwined.
4. Relationship Difficulties
Blocked traumatic memories often resurface when triggered. This can cause problems like emotional outbursts, intimacy issues, and communication breakdowns. Getting stuck in the past strains relationships.
5. Self-Destructive Habits
To manage suppressed trauma, many turn to unhelpful habits like overeating, risky sex, drug abuse, or self-harm. Destructive behaviors provide temporary relief without addressing root causes.
Are There Benefits to Blocking Trauma?
While long-term suppression has clear drawbacks, blocking trauma does have some temporary advantages:
- Allows immediate survival after threat has passed
- Prevents emotional flooding and distress
- Enables basic functioning despite severe trauma
- Reduces risk of post-trauma psychosis or suicidality
- Gives time to develop coping skills and supports
Blocking provides urgent respite after trauma. But persisting amnesia prevents processing, so the trauma continues to quietly torment you.
How to Start Unblocking Trauma
Here are some healthy steps for easing into facing suppressed traumatic memories and emotions when ready:
1. Seek Professional Help
A therapist experienced in trauma treatment can guide reprocessing safely and gradually. EMDR, clinical hypnosis or somatic therapy can help unlock trauma. Avoid pressuring yourself to remember.
2. Express Yourself Creatively
Non-verbal outlets like art, music, dance, or writing allow trauma to surface indirectly at first. Externalizing the internal slowly acclimates you.
3. Spend Time with Safe People
Secure attachments are healing. Being around supportive people you trust lowers defenses. Trauma blocking happens less with healthy relationships.
4. Engage Mindfulness Practices
Meditation, yoga, deep breathing, and being present in nature provide calm strength for facing memories. Grounding anchors you in gentleness.
5. Make Lifestyle Changes
Ensuring proper sleep, nutrition, and exercise helps empower and regulate the nervous system. A healthy body aids trauma integration.
When to Seek Emergency Help
While gently nudging blocked trauma is one path, abruptly tearing down all defenses is not wise. Go to an emergency room right away or call a crisis hotline if you have:
- Thoughts of harming yourself or others
- Extreme emotional distress
- Detachment from reality
- Major impairments in daily functioning
- Intense flashbacks losing touch with the present
Stabilize in cases of feeling unsafe or out of control. Then resume a paced approach to facing suppressed trauma with support.
Conclusion
Blocking trauma serves an important short-term purpose: allowing us time to physically survive and emotionally protect ourselves in the aftermath. However, longer-lasting amnesia prevents coming to terms with trauma and living fully. Look for signs you may be suppressing past disturbing experiences. Then, with professional guidance, gradually start facing masked memories when ready so they no longer control you. Unblocking trauma requires courage, but frees you to engage life more meaningfully.