You don’t think of yourself as someone with trauma. You didn’t have a catastrophic childhood, or at least, not one you can point to. What you have is a body that won’t rest, a mind that won’t slow down, and a bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of sleep seems to fix. You have a motor running inside you that never quite shuts off.
This is not anxiety. This is not “just how you are.” This is your nervous system, still protecting you from a threat that ended years ago.
THE BODY THAT WON’T REST
- You can’t sit still. Stillness feels genuinely unsafe.
- You have a motor that never turns off, running on adrenaline long past empty.
- You startle easily. A loud noise, a car horn, and your whole body reacts as if there’s real danger.
- You are physically sensitive to touch, sound, light, or texture. Certain fabrics, loud restaurants, or unexpected physical contact feel genuinely overwhelming, not because you’re dramatic, but because your nervous system is perpetually on guard.
- You grind your teeth, clench your jaw, hold your breath, or carry chronic tension in your neck and shoulders, and have for years.
- You are exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. This is nervous system exhaustion, not ordinary tiredness.
THE MIND THAT WON’T SLOW DOWN
- Your mind races at night. You replay conversations, rehearse future scenarios, and prepare for catastrophes that never come.
- You scan rooms when you enter them. You read people’s moods the moment you walk in, automatically, without trying.
- You have a hard time being present. You’re there, but also somewhere else, monitoring, managing, predicting.
- You dissociate in small ways, checking out mid-conversation, losing track of time, feeling strangely detached from your own life.
THE EMOTIONS THAT CONFUSE EVERYONE (INCLUDING YOU)
- You feel intense guilt or shame for things that aren’t your fault.
- You flip quickly between feeling everything and feeling nothing.
- You have a very hard time identifying what you actually feel. “How are you?” is genuinely a hard question.
- You feel responsible for other people’s emotions. Their discomfort is your emergency.
THE PATTERNS IN RELATIONSHIPS
- You over-explain, over-apologize, and brace for anger even when none is coming.
- You feel deeply uncomfortable receiving care or genuine compliments.
- Conflict feels catastrophic, even when it’s minor. A disagreement can feel like abandonment.
- You are fiercely independent, not because you want to be, but because needing people never felt safe.
THE WAYS IT SHOWS UP IN YOUR SUCCESS
- You achieve constantly but feel chronically not enough.
- Rest feels like laziness. Stillness feels like danger. Productivity feels like safety.
- You are the one everyone relies on, and secretly wonders what would happen if you fell apart.
- You are wonderful at taking care of others. Yourself? That’s harder.
If you read this and feel seen, this is not who you are. This is what happened to you. And it can change.
I’m Erin Drum, LCSW, a licensed trauma therapist and EMDR clinician at Transformative Therapy Solutions. Using EMDR therapy and trauma-informed treatment, we work at the level of the nervous system, where these patterns actually live, so they can finally, genuinely shift.