Anxiety, Overwhelm & Numbness

For those of us with complex trauma, anxiety can be an emotional flashback to childhood. Instead of fixing or managing it, we needs to listen and respond to what it needs.

Much of what passes for "healing" or "personal development" can cross into risky territory for those of us with complex trauma.

It took me decades to realize that my high sensation seeking wasn't healing, but a sophisticated form of avoidance.

It’s a trap to focus on high performance as a way to gain love, safety, and belonging. There's always another task to excel at or a new level of high-performance to attain.

Trying for perfection distorts our ability to connect with others. We focus on a rigid and unattainable ideal instead of allowing ourselves to be seen in all our messiness and vulnerability. Often, this comes from a deep fear of rejection or abandonment.

Those of us with complex trauma or developmental trauma from childhood may have crafted beliefs about ourselves, relationships, and the world from these experiences. We may have learned some version of, "I don't matter," "My needs don't matter," or "No one cares what I think."

When we’re healing from shutdown, we naturally move through momentary aggression on our way to feeling safe with others again. That’s because activation from the original stress response (that caused the shutdown) is still locked in the body. The stress response needs to release and complete before we return to our natural state of wellbeing.

Hypervigilance is a state of high alertness that never stops. People who experience hypervigilance can't relax or let their guard down. We don't feel safe because we believe that at any moment, something bad is about to happen.

If you don’t know how to complete the cycle, the stress is going to build and build, until you’ve reached your threshold and collapse with overwhelm. As a leader, unless you know how to complete a stress cycle, you are eventually going to burn out.