3 Signs You Might Be Struggling With Trauma (Even If Nothing "Bad" Happened)
With all the advancements in mental health (including tools like IFS, EMDR, and psychedelic-assisted therapies), we're also expanding our understanding of what trauma actually is.
So often, when people hear the word "trauma," they think of acute events: physical or sexual abuse, violence, natural disasters. And while those experiences are absolutely traumatic, I also work with many people who haven't experienced anything that severe on the surface but still carry the deep imprint of trauma in their bodies and relationships.
This is what I often refer to as "trauma through absence."
What Is Trauma Through Absence?
Trauma through absence is the pain of what wasn't there. The supportive, attuned, emotionally present caregivers we needed.
It's growing up in a family system where your feelings weren't welcomed or mirrored back. Where anger was punished, sadness was dismissed, or joy felt too big to express safely.
It's being part of a rigid religious or spiritual community where your sense of self was shaped more by fear, control, or shame than by love and curiosity.
These experiences typically reflect a failure to meet a child's basic emotional needs, a lack of emotional responsiveness to distress, and ignoring a child's social and emotional developmental needs. Researchers call this emotional neglect. Studies show that childhood emotional neglect is surprisingly common, affecting approximately 18% of people globally. Yet it often goes unrecognized because it's defined by what didn't happen rather than what did.
In these environments, somewhere along the way, many of us learned:
In order to stay connected, I have to become someone else
My real needs are too much
To be accepted, I must shrink or disappear
So while no one may have "done anything" to us in the obvious sense, we carry the burden of constantly managing our emotions, hiding parts of ourselves, and working overtime to feel safe or worthy.
This kind of absence leaves an invisible but powerful mark.
Why Emotional Neglect Is Traumatic
You might be wondering: Can something that didn't happen really be considered trauma?
The research is clear: yes, it can.
Studies on childhood emotional neglect show that it can be just as harmful (and sometimes more harmful) than more obvious forms of abuse. This is because emotional neglect happens during critical periods of brain development when children are completely dependent on caregivers for help regulating emotions, managing stress, and developing a sense of self.
When children don't receive adequate emotional attunement and co-regulation from caregivers, their developing brains literally wire differently. Research shows that emotional neglect is associated with difficulties in emotion recognition, problems with emotional regulation, and changes in brain regions responsible for emotional processing and self-perception.
Here’s a simpler way to think about it: when infants and young children don't have a responsive caregiver, their stress response system becomes repeatedly activated. Over time, this can result in lasting changes that increase risk for depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and other mental health challenges well into adulthood.
Perhaps most significantly, emotional neglect can lead to what researchers call "complex trauma." That's trauma that results from prolonged, repeated experiences rather than a single event. Complex trauma affects multiple areas of development: how we regulate our emotions, how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we experience safety in the world.
3 Ways Unresolved Trauma Might Be Impacting Your Life Today
Hypervigilance Disguised as Overworking
You might feel constantly on edge, like the only way to avoid failure, disappointment, or rejection is to stay busy, stay perfect, stay ahead.
Overworking becomes a way to manage a nervous system that never quite feels safe.
This isn't about being ambitious or driven. It's different. It's the feeling that if you stop, if you slow down, something bad will happen. That your worth is directly tied to your productivity. That rest feels dangerous or somehow undeserved.
Research on complex trauma shows that when children grow up in environments where love and acceptance felt conditional (where they had to perform, achieve, or behave a certain way to receive care), hypervigilance often becomes a survival strategy. Your nervous system learned early on that the only way to stay safe was to stay vigilant, to anticipate needs, to manage everything perfectly.
You might notice:
Difficulty delegating or asking for help (because deep down, you believe you have to do everything yourself)
An inability to truly relax, even on vacation or weekends
Physical symptoms like tension headaches, jaw clenching, or digestive issues
A sense that "enough" is always just out of reach, no matter what you accomplish
This pattern is exhausting, but it makes sense. Your system is working overtime to create the safety and approval it never reliably received.
Difficulty Being Alone With Yourself
Stillness can feel unbearable. Without the distractions of work, people, or screens, what rises up might be a wave of emptiness, fear, or even shame.
So you avoid those quiet moments by staying in motion, whether through numbing behaviors, caretaking others, drinking, diving into intense relationships, or scrolling endlessly through social media.
It may not look like avoidance from the outside, but inside, the feeling is similar to other trauma responses: "If I sit with this too long, something bad will happen."
Studies on emotional neglect reveal why this happens. When our emotional experiences weren't witnessed, validated, or responded to as children, we often learned to disconnect from our inner world. Being alone with ourselves can feel threatening because we never developed a secure internal sense of being "okay" on our own.
Research on attachment and trauma shows that children who experience emotional neglect often develop what's called "insecure attachment,” meaning they have difficulty trusting that their needs matter and that they're worthy of care. As adults, this can manifest as:
Constantly seeking external validation to feel okay
Difficulty identifying what you're actually feeling
A vague sense of emptiness or "something missing"
Fear of being abandoned or rejected, leading to people-pleasing
Feeling safer in chaos or intensity than in calm
The avoidance of being with yourself isn't a character flaw. It's your system trying to protect you from the painful experience of not having been truly seen or held in your emotional experience as a child.
Shame and Guilt Masquerading as Perfectionism
You might carry a deep belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. That no matter what you do, you're never quite enough. That you're always somehow falling short.
This inner narrative often stems from early experiences where love, safety, or belonging felt conditional. Where you had to suppress your truth or emotions to maintain connection.
Perfectionism, in this context, is often less about striving and more about surviving.
Research on the relationship between trauma and perfectionism reveals a powerful connection. Studies show that perfectionism can serve as a defense mechanism for trauma survivors: a way to protect against the agony of being perceived as a failure or being wrong. For children who experienced emotional neglect or conditional love, perfectionism becomes a way to regain some sense of control and to avoid the pain of feeling "not good enough."
The link between shame and trauma is particularly significant. Shame (the feeling that "I am bad" as opposed to guilt, which is "I did something bad") is deeply connected to complex trauma. When children's emotions and authentic selves weren't welcomed or were met with criticism, withdrawal, or disapproval, they often internalized the message that something is fundamentally wrong with them.
Research consistently shows a strong association between shame and post-traumatic stress symptoms. In fact, some trauma researchers argue that certain types of trauma (especially interpersonal trauma and childhood emotional neglect) should be understood not just as anxiety disorders but also as shame disorders.
You might notice perfectionism showing up as:
Never feeling satisfied with your accomplishments
Harsh self-criticism and negative self-talk
Difficulty receiving compliments or accepting praise
Procrastination or avoidance (because if you don't try, you can't fail)
Comparison and feeling like everyone else has it more "together"
Apologizing excessively, even when you've done nothing wrong
Difficulty setting boundaries because you fear disappointing others
This kind of perfectionism isn't about having high standards. It's about trying to earn the love, acceptance, and safety that should have been unconditional in the first place.
Understanding Your Experience in Context
If any of this sounds familiar, please know: You're not alone. You're not broken. And you're not imagining it.
Your nervous system adapted beautifully to protect you. These patterns made sense in the environment you grew up in. They helped you survive in a situation where your emotional needs weren't consistently met.
Hypervigilance kept you safe by helping you anticipate others' needs and avoid conflict. Avoidance of being alone protected you from feeling the pain of emotional disconnection. Perfectionism gave you a way to try to earn the love and acceptance you desperately needed.
These strategies were brilliant adaptations, but that doesn't mean you're meant to live in survival mode forever.
What Research Tells Us About Healing
The good news (and this is backed by substantial research) is that these patterns can shift. Trauma-informed therapy, particularly approaches that work with both the mind and body, has been shown to effectively reduce symptoms of complex trauma and improve quality of life.
Studies on treatments for developmental trauma show that healing involves several key components:
Building emotional regulation skills so you can learn to identify, tolerate, and work with difficult emotions rather than avoiding or being overwhelmed by them
Developing self-compassion to counteract shame through kindness toward yourself, recognizing that your responses make sense given what you experienced
Processing traumatic experiences by working through the pain of what wasn't there in a safe, supportive therapeutic relationship where you can finally be witnessed and validated
Creating new relational experiences where, through the therapeutic relationship and other safe connections, you learn that your needs matter and that you can be accepted as you truly are
Research specifically on attachment-focused EMDR and somatic approaches shows promise for addressing developmental trauma. These modalities work not just with the cognitive understanding of what happened, but with the body-based, implicit memories and nervous system patterns that hold trauma in place.
There's a Way Back to Wholeness
With the right support, you can move from:
Hypervigilance to genuine ease and presence
Avoidance of yourself to compassionate self-connection
Shame-based perfectionism to authentic self-acceptance
You can learn to feel your feelings without being overwhelmed by them. You can develop trust in yourself and others. You can discover that you don't have to earn your worth. You can simply be.
There's a way back to your own truth, wholeness, and ease. The work is gradual, sometimes challenging, but deeply transformative. You deserve the care and attunement you didn't receive then. And it's never too late to begin that healing.
If this post resonates with you, I'd be honored to support you in your healing journey.
I offer trauma-informed therapy using attachment-focused EMDR and somatic approaches to help you work through developmental trauma, reconnect with yourself, and build the capacity for genuine safety and ease.
You can schedule a free consultation via the Contact page linked above to explore whether we might be a good fit, or follow me on Instagram @thelibertyvelez for more insights on trauma, nervous system healing, and reclaiming your authentic self.
You don't have to carry this alone. Healing is possible, and you're worthy of it, exactly as you are.
Want ongoing tips and gentle encouragement for your mental health and self-care? Follow me on LinkedIn.
