Emotional shock or trauma is a form of acute stress that can occur after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, whether emotional or physical, such as an accident, the death of a loved one, separation, betrayal, divorce, sexual abuse, assault, or a violent event such as a mugging, etc.

In addition to the shock caused by a serious event, there are also traumas created by seemingly minor but no less important situations, as if left untreated, they can affect the growth of our inner selves. Trauma occurs when the situation overwhelms a person’s emotions and they become imprinted in the brain as an unresolved or unresolved situation. This is when the information cannot be cognitively processed by the victim.

In children, emotional trauma can be caused by various situations, some of which may seem unimportant to an adult, however, they are important for the children’s emotions, such as fights between parents, feelings of rejection, insecurity in their personality, injustices at home, mockery towards themselves or their creations, moving house, death of pets or loved ones, changing schools, social isolation, abuse, culture shock, separation, loneliness, overprotection, abandonment, violence or physical and/or verbal aggression, high expectations of others towards him/her, etc.

How to recognize when there is trauma?

• Having recurring thoughts about parts of the traumatic event
• Avoid stimuli associated with trauma
• Emotional blockage
• Hyperarousal: startles, difficulty sleeping, irritability
• Anxiety
• Change in social behavior

Psychological effects of emotional shock or trauma:

An unresolved trauma causes changes in the organism’s biology such as:

• Hormonal changes
• Changes in memory processes. There is a tendency to constantly relive the event.
• Emotional changes that can affect social relationships. Guilt, detachment, irritability, distrust, etc.
• Post-traumatic stress

Recurring thoughts of emotional shock or trauma

Traumatic memories remain in the brain as fragmented recordings, not as a chronological account of the actual, concrete events. Memory tends to recall things according to the victim’s perception, and partial memories of sights, smells, or sounds may remain.

In trauma, the information is stored as an unresolved event, so the brain often tries to find a solution by constantly reliving the event, leaving the victim with constant, chaotic, partial memories. These recurring or unwanted ruminating thoughts cause nightmares and memory impairments. Garbage or parasitic thoughts affect the person’s consciousness, negatively impacting their adjustment to daily life.

Things get worse when you engage in mental conversations with those negative thoughts without a clear intention to resolve them and only increase resentment or experiences from the past.

Other people, instead of having constant recurrence in their thoughts, tend to suffer from dissociative amnesia, which can be a total or partial erasure of memory of the traumatic event, leaving gaps in their recollection of the events. However, even if they are able to return to their normal lives, some stimulus may, even years later, partially reactivate memories of the trauma.

How to overcome emotional shock or trauma:

Mainly two things are needed:

1. Recognize what happened
2. Have the will to overcome it

“What is killed will be resurrected, what is transmuted is changed forever.” I particularly like this phrase because it tells us that to truly change, we must transmute and not try to hide or pretend. Trauma must be transmuted at its root.

Having the will to generate a transmutation, I first suggest making the following points as clear as possible:

• Resignation
• Acceptance
• Understanding
• Learning
• Forgiveness. Compassion
• Eliminate junk thoughts // I recommend the book “El dragón Violeta”
• Activities that make us happy

The above points can be grounded and taken into psychological therapy and some strategies to follow can also be:

• Seeking therapeutic help
• Stay away from toxic people
• Leave justice in divine hands
• Objective venting with trusted family or friends
• Change the perception of the past to a positive one
• Focus on positive projects for the future
• Help others
• See the past with love

View the past with love. When we understand that all of us who are born will die, we have a different perception of things. Our human time is finite, and we must make the most of our time here, be happy, and do what we love. Just like you, we are all learning.