When Words Won't Come: How Trauma Silences Our Emotional Voice
Have you ever felt something deep inside but couldn't find the words? Or maybe you knew you should feel angry or sad, but instead felt nothing at all? If trauma has touched your life, this struggle with expressing emotions might feel all too familiar.
Trauma doesn't just hurt us in the moment – it changes how we connect with and share our feelings. Understanding this connection can be the first step toward healing.
What Trauma Does to Our Emotional System
Think of your emotional system like a fire alarm. When trauma happens, this alarm gets stuck. Sometimes it goes off constantly, even when there's no real danger. Other times, it stops working altogether, leaving you feeling numb when you should feel something.
Trauma teaches our brain that emotions are dangerous. Maybe expressing anger got you hurt. Perhaps showing sadness made someone leave. Or being happy felt unsafe because something bad always followed good moments. Your brain learned to protect you by shutting down emotional expression.
This isn't weakness – it's survival. Your mind did what it needed to do to keep you safe. But what once protected you might now be holding you back from deeper connections and healing.
The Many Faces of Emotional Shutdown
Trauma affects emotional expression in different ways. Some people become completely numb, feeling like they're watching life from behind glass. Others feel emotions intensely but can't put them into words. Many swing between these extremes.
You might recognize these patterns:
The Minimizer: "It wasn't that bad" or "Other people have it worse." You downplay your feelings and experiences, making them seem smaller than they are.
The Exploder: Emotions build up until they burst out in ways that feel scary or out of control. Afterward, you might feel ashamed and shut down even more.
The Intellectualizer You analyze your feelings instead of feeling them. You can explain why you should be angry, but you can't access the actual emotion.
The People-Reader: You're great at understanding others' emotions but completely lost when it comes to your own feelings.
Why This Happens
Trauma disrupts the normal development of emotional skills. Children learn to name and express feelings through safe relationships. When trauma interrupts this process, we miss crucial learning opportunities.
The parts of our brain responsible for language and emotion can become disconnected after trauma. It's like having a phone line cut between two important areas. The emotion center feels something, but the language center can't receive the message clearly enough to put it into words.
Shame plays a huge role too. Trauma often comes with messages that our feelings are wrong, too much, or dangerous. We internalize these messages and learn to hide our emotional truth, even from ourselves.
The Cost of Emotional Silence
When we can't express emotions, they don't disappear – they go underground. Unexpressed feelings often show up as physical symptoms like chest and stomach pain. They also come out in relationship problems, or destructive behaviors. You might struggle with chronic pain, have trouble sleeping, or find yourself pushing people away without knowing why.
Relationships suffer when we can't share our inner world and it ads to further feelings of disconnect and isolation. Partners, friends, and family members want to know and support us, but they can't help with feelings we can't express. This creates distance and misunderstanding.
Most importantly, we lose touch with ourselves. Emotions are information – they tell us what matters, what hurts, and what we need. Without access to this internal guidance system, making decisions and understanding ourselves becomes much harder.
Finding Your Voice Again
Recovery isn't about becoming an emotional volcano. It's about developing a healthy relationship with your feelings – one where you can notice, understand, and express them safely.
Start small. Practice naming basic emotions throughout the day. "I notice I feel frustrated waiting in this line" or "This music makes me feel peaceful." Building this vocabulary creates new pathways in your brain.
Find safe people and spaces to practice emotional expression. This might be with a therapist, trusted friend, or support group. Safety is crucial – your brain needs evidence that expressing feelings won't lead to harm.
Remember that healing isn't linear. Some days you'll feel more connected to your emotions than others. This is normal and expected. Be patient with yourself as you rebuild this important life skill.
Your emotions matter. Your experiences matter. And with time and support, your voice can emerge from the silence trauma created. The journey isn't easy, but it leads to deeper connections – with others and with yourself.
Ready to Break the Silence?
If you're tired of feeling disconnected from your emotions or struggling to express what's inside, you don't have to do this alone. Trauma therapy can help you rebuild that bridge between feeling and expressing, at your own pace and in your own way.
Marie E Selleck Therapy offers trauma therapy in Grand Rapids, MI as well as online in Michigan, Florida, and Arizona. She specializes in helping people reclaim their emotional voice after trauma. Together, we can work to understand your unique patterns, address the shame and guilt that keep you stuck, and develop practical tools for emotional expression that feel authentic to you.
You've survived the trauma – now let's help you thrive beyond it.
