6 Toxic Things People Do That Reveal Trauma Response

Understand the root cause of your toxic habits so you can finally address them.

Photo by Mohammad Faruque on Unsplash

Some of our habits didn’t just come about by chance; they’re responses to trauma.

They came about from how we’ve learned to cope with or respond to past traumatic experiences. Over time, these responses became a blueprint for how we interact with ourselves and others.

Your trauma responses are those sets of behaviors you engage in when faced with a situation that resembles an experience that caused the behavior in the first place.

You were serially cheated on and betrayed in the past, for example. Now, you’ve learned not to trust people.

This learned behavior becomes a way to protect yourself every time you’re in a situation that requires you to exercise trust.

It turns out many people have habits or engage in certain behaviors without realizing these actions are deeply rooted in trauma.

Here are six such habits that often signal underlying trauma:

You think you have to prove yourself to earn love or be cared for.