I Didn’t Know I Had Trauma — I Just Thought Something Was Wrong With Me

I didn’t get it at first.

I couldn’t explain what was happening to me. I wasn’t having flashbacks. I wasn’t shaking or crying. I was just… gone. Inside my head but not in it. Watching life instead of living it.

And it wasn’t that I was fine — I wasn’t. But I couldn’t name it. I thought I was broken. Defective. Too sensitive. Too much. Or maybe too numb.

I Googled everything. “Why do I feel unreal?” “Why can’t I connect with my body?” “Why do I feel like I’m not really here?”

The answers terrified me. Dissociation. DPDR. Trauma. I thought trauma meant war, abuse, big car crashes. Big things. Big wounds.

So I told myself:

“That’s not me. I don’t have trauma.”

But my body said otherwise.

I didn’t know trauma could mean:

• Growing up without emotional safety

• Never being taught how to self-regulate

• Holding your breath in your own home

• Being the “strong one” when inside, you were shutting down

• Freezing and fawning for years because it was the only way to survive

  
  

I didn’t know trauma could look like:

• Functioning

• Smiling

• Achieving

• Dissociating for a decade and calling it "normal"

  
  

So no — I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I just knew I didn’t feel real. I didn’t feel safe. And I didn’t feel like a person.

And when someone finally said the word “trauma,” I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or run.

Because what if they were right? What if the thing I’d been calling “just me” —was actually pain I had buried so deep I didn’t even know it was there?

I didn’t feel ready to claim the word trauma. It felt too big. Too dramatic.

But eventually,

I realized…

Trauma doesn’t care if you believe in it.

It lives in the body. And it was already there, silently shaping everything.

So I started listening. To the numbness. To the fog. To the tired, quiet part of me that whispered:

“You were hurt. And you don’t have to carry it in silence anymore.”

That’s when I began… Slowly Returning.