It's hard...

If you feel like you are losing the battle against your depression, you might find yourself asking, 'Why is this happening to you?

It's easy to think that your depression is getting worse because you are doing something wrong when in fact the underlying cause might by issues from your past. Past painful issues that are keeping your depression alive without you knowing it.

Over the last 25 years of working as a mental health practitioner, I have come across hundreds of people who were diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression who then went on to recover when attention was finally focused on healing their trauma issue.

Now here is the question...

Could it be possible that the reason you keep getting depressed is because you've got untreated trauma issues?

In this article, I’ll show you 8 clear signs that your depression is rooted in past trauma issues. And at the end, I reveal what you must do to stop trauma from hampering your life with depression.

Ready let's go...

1. You're really good at keeping to exercise routines

How this links to past trauma:
Your parent's toxic behaviour caused you to feel powerless a lot of the time. You often felt like the only control you had was to run away. In an attempt to control the situation, you learned to run away from things that upset you and that made you feel powerless.

In this way, you became good at running away. You learnt to run away from pain, rejection, hurt, and shame. You learnt to run away from your feelings. You ran away from your feelings so much that you no longer allowed yourself to experience them. You never learned to experience them, and so they remained buried deep inside you.

How this can cause depression to get worse:  

Regular exercise gives you a sense of accomplishment and helps you boost your dopamine which makes you feel better about yourself. 

Unfortunately, exercise can easily turn into an addiction that prevents you from getting to the roots of your depression. Because whenever something affects you, you go for a run to deal with it. You feel better and may even be inspired by some superficial knowledge. But because you never dig deep enough, you depression is kept alive and keeps revolving back.

 2. You are extremely good at making progress

How this links to past trauma:

Having parents who were always abusive, cold and mean pushed you to realize you were on your own in this world. You had to fend for yourself and you became determined to show the toxic parent that you were going to make it. You don't need anyone. In fact, relying on anyone became a weakness you cannot tolerate. Hence you pushed yourself to achieve so you would never have to rely on anybody.

How this can cause depression to get worse:

Achieving goals can feel very rewarding. It boosts your sense of satisfaction and confidence.

However, this can also result in anxiety about meeting your own expectations. You get so focused on the next achievement that your brain starts to undermine positive experiences. And this leads to feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and guilt.

3. You're really good at sticking to what you know (Like the same Jobs)

How this links to past trauma:

Your parents criticized you badly for every little mistake you made. They were critical, controlling and belittling. In response to these actions, you learned that you need to control your environment so that you won't disappoint your family.

How this can cause depression to get worse:

To control your environment effectively, you learnt to stick to familiar things. Doing this helped you avoid situations that might confirm that you are not good at what you do. And enabled you to appear reliable, loyal, and hard-working.

But it also causes you to avoid situations that might challenge you. So you never learn how to deal with failure, rejection, and disappointment. So whenever you fail, it tends to hit you harder than everyone else. In addition, because you keep sticking with the same old things, you live an unfulfilled life that makes life feel meaningless and depressing.

3. You always present your best self to appeal to others.

How this links to past trauma:

As a child, you felt like no one liked you. Your parents often ridiculed you for being too sensitive or weird. They told you you were stupid, ugly, and worthless. You began to believe these things about yourself. You didn't like yourself, so you tried to pretend to be someone else to make people like you.  And you have been stuck in this role for most of your life.

How this can cause depression to get worse:

 You've grown to believe that people like to be around those they perceive as successful, bubbly and confident. So you are always doing your best to make people like you and think that you are nice, kind, and likeable.

But this doesn't give you any freedom to relax and be yourself. You feel like you are always walking on eggshells. And because your self-esteem is fragile, it's easy for other people's opinions to have a big impact on you.

4. You've developed a sixth sense for things that could  cause you to fail

How this links to past trauma:
Your parents would lash out at the most unpredictable times. Or you were severely bullied at school at unexpected times. And this lasted over a long period of time. You had to become good at preempting when your parent would lose their temper, or you'd be hit or abused.

And because of this, you develop a sixth sense for things that could go wrong and cause you to fail. You develop a preoccupation with safety and anything that might go wrong. This makes it super difficult to enjoy life because you always feel you are living in danger

How this can cause depression to get worse:  

You became very good at preventing failure in many things you do by working hard and covering all your bases. You may develop the ability to work harder and push yourself for longer. 

To the onlooker, this appears like you have a strong work ethic and determination to complete your work and may increase your value in the organisations you work with.

Sadly, this has resulted in you putting pressure on yourself to perform at your best. This leads to frequent burnout and high-stress levels. Feeling constantly tired makes it super hard to be resilient leading to feelings of inadequacy and depression.

7. You've developed a keen eye for the things you need to fix in yourself

How this links to past trauma:

Your parents never encouraged your efforts or ambitions. Instead, they were constantly critical, belittling and demeaning. You felt like they thought you were stupid. 

In response to all this, you learned to be hard on yourself. You have a keen eye for what is wrong with you. And you fix things quickly and efficiently before someone else criticizes you for the bad thing.

How this can cause depression to get worse:

 This helps to boost your self-respect and self-worth because you are at least doing something to improve yourself.
But it can also lead to perfectionism. You're so focused on doing everything perfectly that you can't enjoy the process of improving yourself. You get bogged down in trying to achieve perfection. And this prevents you from enjoying life because you have to focus on yourself instead of focusing on things that interest you.

6. You're extremely good at accepting people as they are

How this links to past trauma:

Since you were constantly put down, humiliated, and belittled. And then forced to respect them, your parents conditioned you to accept other people's mistreatment of you as if it is normal.
Hence, It became your norm to neglect your needs and feelings. Giving you a core belief that you were not important

How this can cause depression to get worse:  

Accepting others helps you to feel accepted. It almost feels like people are doing you a great favour by associating with you so their defects do not matter. But this can often lead to condoning abusive relationships and accepting other people's mistreatment of you. Which creates a never-ending cycle of bad relationships.

8. You are a very reliable person

How this links to past trauma: 

You were often disappointed by your parents who were unreliable and untrustworthy. You gave them so many opportunities to prove that they loved you. But it was a consistent letdown after letdown.

How this can cause depression to get worse: Knowing how painful it was to be disappointed like this, you set out to never be a disappointment to others. You wouldn't want other people to feel the pain you are so familiar with.As such, you strive to be trusted and valued. So you put a lot of effort into making sure you don't disappoint anybody.

However, your reliability makes you take on more responsibilities than you can handle. Hence, you are often exhausted and overworked. Which makes it hard to maintain balance in your life. And the lack of balance promotes feelings of frustration, hopelessness, and sadness.

How to stop past trauma issues from keeping you depressed (follow these 3 steps)

 Step 1: Go complete my Trauma quiz...

In my experience, I have come across a total of 167 subtle behaviours that block recovery from trauma.  

Why is this important?

Because you may be working real hard to change one or two of those behaviours whilst there are another 20 subtle ones blocking your full healing from depression.

Meaning nothing you do will work.

Click here to take the 3-minute quiz now

Step 2: Watch this video to see how you can use the quiz results to stop yourself from getting depressed over and over bwcause of trauma issues.

Step 3: Register for the masterclass here...

In the master class you will learn to deal with your past emotional trauma so you no longer have to be depressed and feel suicidal. You will overcome any sense of guilt and develop a strong sense of self-worth that will enable you to feel more confident and self-reliant... And gain a greater sense of control over your own life.

Imagne overcoming all your personal challengesand experiencing a rich, rewarding life that is full of love and success. See yourself waking up everyday with a sense of fulfillment and self-confidence Feeling truly happy and satisfied with yourself...

‍

‍