Sometimes stress is about much more than ‘just stress’. Anxiety, stress and low mood can all be caused by undiagnosed trauma, according to author and clinical psychologist Dr Marianne Trent. ‘It’s actually easy to have experienced trauma – issues with parental mental health, family separation or parental substance misuse, for example – without necessarily knowing that you have,’ says Dr Trent. ‘A sense that your family didn’t seem “together” or “normal” like other families in the first 18 years of life could contribute to a developmental trauma presentation and, post-18, trauma can crop up more easily than people imagine. When left unprocessed, it can leave people feeling very stressed and at risk of burnout.’
There are different types of trauma – acute, chronic or developmental – and each type has a different cause, different symptoms and different treatment options.