Trauma is felt by the neurological system as a physical sensation. In other words, your hyper-alert state persists as anxiety-like symptoms such as heart palpitations, tension, restlessness, nightmares, shivers, muscle aches, and racing thoughts.
Anxiety
All of this tension may appear to be unjust. We understand that grieving over the loss of a relationship is natural, but the goal is that once we have the courage to let go of someone we care about but know is toxic, narcissistic, or emotionally unavailable, we will feel some relief. Please bear with me. Your body is trying to tell you that you still feel threatened on the inside. Because this anxious state is so intimately linked to the trauma bond, it may feel a little strange.
Feeling Helpless
The part of the brain that processes information, puts things into perspective, and interacts with you in narrative form shuts down when you are exposed to personal tragedy. You've been placed in crisis activation mode, but you're unable to cope with the pressure.
This is why avoiding contact is so crucial. When you're exposed to something that reminds you of your ex-partner, your nervous system releases energy to indicate the presence of a threat, but it inhibits you from deliberately putting that threat into context with what's going on right now. It can be difficult to learn new things or process knowledge when you're in this state.
Because trauma lacks a sense of time, trauma attachments do not "heal with time." Expect to get triggered from time to time. When it comes to processing the breakup, feeling triggered does not imply you've gone back to square one. It indicates that you are suffering from traumatic anxiety, which makes you feel frozen and immobile once more. Even if the current stressor is no longer present, this can make you feel gloomy. Don't give up. Even a smidgeon of awareness of what is truly going on will assist you unfreeze out of this state, and the more awareness you have, the more automatic and manageable it will become.
Replaying the same scene over
You are unable to consciously realize that the traumatic incident occurred in the past because you are unable to place your physiological pain in a time and place context. This makes it difficult to distinguish between prior trauma and current stressors. Behind the scenes, your body may be experiencing today's hectic day as a flashback to a previous traumatic event, as though the trauma has resurfaced.
After a trauma bond, life moves on. Other individuals and situations will cause you to become stressed and apprehensive, which you will subconsciously identify with the trauma bond. This is why difficult days and setbacks make you feel more more like you're lacking the trauma link.
Trauma is similar to being in a trance. It causes you to become less conscious of your current situation, body sensations, and emotions. You will gradually become more conscious of when these flashbacks occur as you begin to feel more safe, grounded, and present. You'll be less engrossed in what's going on in your life, and you'll be able to separate your previous distress from what's going on now.
Patterns of the Trauma
An animal enters a review state after going into fight, flight, or freeze and releasing all of the energy conjured up by its nervous system to get out of a harmful situation. The goal is to figure out what happened and to take something away from it. Humans who have been traumatized go through this process as well, but the review takes place in a highly agitated and agitated state since the energy from the incident has not been released.
This explains why it's so tough to move on from what happened, why you're having obsessive thoughts, rehearsing old scripts, and why you feel isolated and abandoned long after a devastating breakup. While you're still in a thinking about the trauma, you're processing the trauma bond.
This is why discussing about trauma, reviewing the incident with others, and recycling anger will not help you feel better, but will just retraumatize you further. Because you can't stop thinking about the trauma bond, you may feel as if you've lost something crucial. This repetitive reliving is normal and healthy, but it should only be done when you're not anxious and feel rooted, secure, and present.
The remedy to obsessive reliving is to understand that trauma is a physiological state that exists within the body. It disables your ability to think clearly once it is turned on. There's nothing wrong with attempting to figure out what happened, but you should be aware that doing so in this provoked state may make you feel obligated to do so.