How Trauma Affects Your Mind and Body: Signs & Recovery Tools
The Lasting Weight of Trauma
Trauma leaves a mark—it doesn’t just fade because time has passed or because you’ve tried to “move on.” For many women, especially those who have survived high-control religion, relationship trauma, or childhood wounds, the impact of trauma lingers in both subtle and overwhelming ways.
It’s important to know this: if you feel weighed down by the past or if your body seems to react in ways you can’t control, you’re not broken. It’s actually common for trauma and mental health to intertwine. Understanding how trauma affects your mind and body is the first step toward recovery.
How Trauma Impacts Mental Health
The effects of trauma reach far beyond memory. Trauma changes how the brain and body function in everyday life.
The Brain: Trauma can rewire the brain’s alarm system. The amygdala becomes hypervigilant, always scanning for danger, while the prefrontal cortex—the part that helps with rational thought and decision-making—can become less active. This imbalance makes it hard to feel calm or in control.
The Nervous System: Trauma often leaves the body “stuck” in fight, flight, or freeze mode. Your heart races, muscles tense, or you shut down completely, even in safe situations.
Emotions: These physiological shifts make emotions feel bigger and harder to regulate. Anxiety, irritability, numbness, or sudden waves of sadness are all common.
When trauma is unresolved, it doesn’t stay in the past—it lives in the present through your thoughts, feelings, and body.
Common Signs and Symptoms
Many women carry trauma without realizing how much it influences daily life. Recognizing the signs can help you connect the dots:
Difficulty sleeping or constant fatigue
Feeling on edge or easily startled
Trouble concentrating or making decisions
Physical symptoms like headaches, stomach issues, or chronic pain
Overworking, perfectionism, or people-pleasing as coping strategies
Avoidance of certain people, places, or topics
Emotional numbness, or conversely, emotions that feel “too much”
If you notice yourself in these patterns, it doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means your mind and body are doing their best to protect you after difficult experiences.
How Therapy Can Help
Healing from trauma is possible, and you don’t have to do it alone. Therapy for trauma recovery offers more than just talking—it provides structured, evidence-based tools to help you feel safe again in your own mind and body.
Safety: A trauma-focused therapist creates a space where you can share your story at your own pace without judgment.
Control: Through modalities like Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), Brainspotting, or somatic therapies, you learn how to calm your nervous system and regain a sense of agency.
Resilience: Therapy doesn’t erase the past, but it helps you integrate it, so you can move forward with clarity, strength, and self-compassion.
With the right support, trauma shifts from being an invisible weight to a chapter of your story that no longer defines you.
Take the Next Step in Healing
If you’ve recognized yourself in these signs or felt the lasting effects of trauma, know that support is available. Healing doesn’t have to be a distant hope—it can begin now.
Schedule a consultation today to explore how mental health support and therapy for trauma recovery can help you feel lighter, safer, and more at home in your own body.
Jacqueline Campbell, MS, LMFT
Jacqueline Campbell is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a decade of experience supporting clients in the Chattanooga, TN area. She specializes in childhood trauma, relationship trauma, religious trauma, neurodivergence, and anxiety and uses evidence-based approaches like Accelerated Resolution Therapy, Brainspotting, and Neurofeedback to help clients heal the lingering trauma, resolve anxiety, recover from burnout, and find balance, fulfillment, and authenticity in their life and relationships. At Wild Oaks Counseling, she is committed to providing compassionate, expert care both in-person and online for clients across Tennessee, Colorado, and Florida.
