Everyone reacts in their own way to trauma, although fear, sadness, anger, guilt and shame are common feelings.

Fear is about feeling threatened or in danger, sadness about what has been lost, anger about things that were unjust, guilt about things we did or did not do, and shame about feeling judged.

These feelings can impact on us and get in the way of life. Noticing your feelings can help you start to change them.

Memories of traumatic events are different to everyday memories. They can feel as if parts of the trauma are happening again.

They intrude when we do not want them to, including when we’re sleeping. This can leave us feeling upset and out of control.

Recognising how memories are affecting you can help you start to manage them.

Traumatic events can leave us feeling like other people can’t be trusted, and the world is not a safe place.

We may be more on the lookout for signs of danger and find it hard to be around people.

Noticing these fears can help you start to find ways of feeling safer.

Going through something traumatic affects how we feel and think about ourselves.

We may think what happened or how it affected us was because of something wrong with us, or what we did.

When we feel bad about ourselves, we often give ourselves a hard time, and feel even worse.

Recognising this can be a step towards starting to build up a different, more helpful way of seeing yourself.

People often hear voices or see, smell or feel things, which are reminders of trauma.

Voices may be of past people who hurt us or may say negative things that are similar to what people were told in the past.

Voices and visions can leave us feeling upset, scared, confused and not in control.

Sharing your experiences is the first step towards finding a way of managing what’s going on.

Avoiding reminders of past traumatic events is a very common way of trying to push away feelings and memories about the past.

It makes sense that we want to avoid painful things, though avoidance can fuel our fears and leads to other problems.

Noticing what you avoid can help you start to do things differently.

Traumatic experiences set our minds and bodies to be on high alert for signs of threat, leaving us feeling jumpy, irritable and on edge.

Being alert is useful when we are in danger but it makes it difficult to switch-off and relax.

Noticing how you get aroused can help you start to calm things down.

Feeling numb, empty or unreal can be our mind’s automatic response to dealing with intense emotions, memories and thoughts.

It helps distance us or dissociate from painful things, and can be a way of surviving difficult experiences.

But it can be scary in itself, especially if it makes us feel unreal and confused about who we are.

Noticing these feelings can help you start to manage them.

It’s common to get caught up in thinking about what happened. Questions like ‘Why me?’, ‘Should I have done things differently?’ and ‘Will life ever be different?’ can go round and round.

These questions tend to be impossible to answer and so we get stuck.

Noticing how you get caught up in thoughts can help you start to break the cycle.

Traumatic events often involve being hurt or abused by people, which impacts on our relationships.

Trusting others can be difficult and may mean we avoid sex, or we can depend on sex too much.

Problems feeling close to people can leave us feeling isolated.

Recognising how trauma has affected your relationships can help you start to improve them.

Alcohol & drugs can be a way of trying to cope with difficult situations. This may help in the short-term although in the long run it does not change things and can cause more problems.