3 Ways Past Unresolved Trauma Can Affect You Later in Life

Trauma is a word that can describe an entire spectrum of life experiences. There’s the big T traumas like physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and then there’s the little T traumas that include really any life experience that affected you in a negative way that you still carry with you today. For some of us, many little T traumas add up over time and can have a profound affect on our life. Whether you’ve experienced big or little T traumas, they both can have a huge impact on our life. That’s why it's so important to seek help for past trauma so that they don’t have a negative impact on our lives. When we seek help for past trauma we are able to resolve that trauma and have healthy beliefs about our self. Here are some examples of how past trauma can affect us later in life:

1. Our Mental Health

   This is probably an obvious one, but any unresolved trauma we’ve experienced in our past can have a negative impact on our mental health. The affects on our mental health can include PTSD, various degrees of anxiety and depression, as well as OCD and eating disorders, just to name a few.

2. Our Relationships

   Unresolved trauma can have a significant impact on our relationships later in life. When we have unresolved trauma, we normally also have unhealthy and unresolved beliefs about ourselves, and sometimes others. These beliefs can cause us to act in unhealthy or irrational ways in future relationships.

3. Poor Self-Esteem

   Most trauma causes unhealthy and negative beliefs about ourselves that are untrue. However, if we don’t get help to work through the unresolved trauma, then we can carry these negative beliefs about ourselves throughout life. Having poor self-worth affects us in so many negative ways, including not seeing ourselves for who we really are, what we are capable of, and what we deserve. This is why it is so important to get help working through unresolved trauma, so that you can start to have healthy beliefs about yourself.

These are just 3 ways that unresolved trauma can impact our lives in negative ways. If you feel like you need to work through past trauma, consult with a therapist to learn more about your options.