When Stress isn’t the Problem—and How Trauma-Informed Therapy Can Help

Do you feel like everything is going well but still feel “off”, numb, stuck, overwhelmed, or ashamed?

Are you functioning well in one area of your life while you feel like you are struggling in other areas?

Have you tried using coping skills or making lifestyle changes but still aren’t achieving your desired outcomes?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this post is for you. As an ambitious, goal-oriented adult, you may believe that stress is keeping you from the life you desire. But the issue may be unresolved trauma.

What is stress?

In Stress and Mental Health: What Your Body is Telling You and When Therapy May Help, we discussed our view of stress as an adaptive process that provides you with information.

As a process, there are four main components:

1. Some type of challenge (can be internal—perfectionism, external—unemployment or both—struggling with unemployment because of beliefs about what it means to be unemployed)
2. An evaluation of the event/trigger as a challenge, which then labels a stimulus as a stressor (can be positive—lifting heavier weights or negative—termination of an important relationship)
3. A response (e.g., heart racing, fear, worry, shallow breathing, positive or negative thoughts)
4. recovery

The level of control you have over this process will depend on a number of factors. A few factors include the nature of the trigger, the timing (e.g., during childhood or adulthood), frequency (once or multiple times), and/or duration (for five minutes or for several years) of exposure.

How a stressor affects you will also depend on your coping skills and support.

Your personal experiences, in combination with your genetics and physiology, you’ve learned different ways to think, feel, and behave that have helped you adapt to different stressors. But sometimes these adaptations can create additional issues if they remain after the stressor has passed.

When your behavioral, emotional, or thought patterns begin to make functioning in any area of your life more difficult, then stress may not be the problem.

How are stress and trauma different?

If you are struggling with old behaviors and patterns that are no longer serving you, then you may be dealing with trauma.

Stress and trauma are related but they are not the same.

Like stress, there is a trigger, an evaluation, and reaction. Unlike stress,

• The event—also called a potentially traumatic or traumatic event—involves a threat to your safety or security.
• The response may feel uncontrollable and involve a long-lasting change in your thoughts, values, beliefs, and/or behaviors.
• Recovery may not occur or be delayed.

People tend to use the word trauma to refer to either the event or the response. For the sake of clarity, we will refer to the event as a potentially traumatic event and the response as a trauma response.

Potentially traumatic experiences could include:

• Early environments that required emotional suppression or hyper independence
• Repeated exposure to uncertainty
• High responsibility with limited support
• Exposure to an environment that relies on using guilt or shame for motivation
• Constant exposure to loud noises, violence, or anger

If you’ve experienced a potentially traumatic event, then whatever thoughts/behavior/patterns you used helped you adapt to your environment.

But now, they may be keeping you stuck.

What Trauma-related Patterns Can Look Like in High-Functioning Adults

What do you think of when you think about the effects of trauma?

You may think about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and imagine someone who’s been in a serious car accident, combat, or abusive relationship.

PTSD is just one possible outcome. PTSD is a collection of symptoms that someone may experience. Unfortunately, this trauma symptom profile doesn’t capture the full range of trauma-related responses someone exposed to traumatic events may experience.

If any of the following describes you: goal-driven, successful, high achiever, successful, ambitious, high earner, then you have a unique set of experiences, expectations, values, and beliefs that shape how you respond.

High-performing adults are especially good at functioning around dysfunction.

It’s not uncommon for high achievers to adapt by being highly capable, controlled, and productive. Trauma-related issues don’t always look like dysfunction.

You can function at a high level and still exhibit trauma-related patterns. Trauma responses can look like:

1. Feeling bad for resting or struggling to rest
2. Struggling to be vulnerable/difficulty receiving help
3. Constantly being on the lookout for something bad
4. Having unexplained physical symptoms
5. Never feeling successful enough

And the list goes on.

These are not character flaws or mindset issues. These represent adaptations that have kept you safe and secure—and now it may be time to update how you adapt to challenges.

What Trauma-Informed Strategies Do Differently

Have you tried thinking positively, reading self-help books, watching YouTube videos on how to manage stress, or ignoring how you’ve been feeling?

These strategies can be helpful short-term; but if there is a deeper core issue, then there is only so much these strategies can do.

As a high achiever, these strategies make sense. But if the issue is deeper, then self-help strategies are less likely to help you achieve your desired outcome.

Trauma therapies, like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), use techniques that may not be included in traditional therapies. For example, EMDR engages the nervous system and taps into memory circuits to build new connections.

Rather than focusing on symptom management, trauma-informed approaches emphasize:

• Bottom-up processing (body-to-brain)
• Focus on re-establishing internal sense of safety, peace, and security
• Understanding the function of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Evidence-based trauma-focused therapies, like EMDR, are effective, deliberate, and collaborative.

If your coping strategies are no longer working for you and need updating, it may be time to receive professional support.

If you’d like to learn more about trauma-focused therapy and you live in North Carolina, complete the inquiry form today to get started.