You might not immediately link your current symptoms to something in the past, especially if that past event happened a long time ago or doesn’t seem “bad enough” to count as trauma. But trauma can show up in many different ways that impacts our overall health and wellness. 

Complex trauma usually refers to ongoing or repeated traumatic experiences, often beginning in childhood—like emotional neglect, abuse, chronic instability, or growing up in a home where your needs weren’t consistently met. Instead of feeling like a disruption from the norm, these experiences were the norm.