The Long-Term Effects of
Unresolved Trauma & Emotions

Do I even have unresolved trauma & emotions?!

The biggest obstacle for people on their healing journey is that they think that because they don’t remember any bad things happening to them they don’t have unresolved trauma and emotions that need to be addressed. But just like fish don’t know that they are wet, because water is their natural habitat we humans are oblivious to how our childhoods may have been less than ideal because we were raised in them and it’s all we know.

It’s this and the four other reasons below that make that we often don’t recognize that we carry unresolved trauma and emotions, even though we all do. Every human being carries unresolved emotions and unresolved trauma to some extent. Here are some of the reasons why we don’t remember or recognize this: Click here to continue reading.

Bridging The Gap Between Scientific Research & Spiritual Knowledge

Because of the stigmatization around mental health, a distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, and other reasons many people choose the alternative route or complementary medicine to find their way out of their mental health symptoms. Acupuncture, homeopathy, and chiropractic care are wonderful ways to help the body stay balanced but they are not enough to remove the trauma imprints and really address the trauma and unresolved emotions at the level they need to be addressed in order to be released and integrated – aka healed. As long as the trauma imprints are there they will keep disrupting our physiological processes.

Many people turn to the spiritual community for healing which is an unregulated industry where anyone can set up shop whether they are qualified or not. Sadly, a lot of what is being offered as healing or therapy does not work because many of the approaches to spiritual healing are not science-based and often only exist in the realm of wishful thinking. This is why they are disregarded by science or because science doesn’t have the means to measure them, how do you scientifically prove reincarnation for example?

Across the whole scope of humanity, there’s a lot of mental, emotional, and spiritual bypassing going on when it comes to unresolved trauma and emotions, it’s not only within the spiritual community that this form of escapism is prevalent. It’s what Freud called the pleasure principle the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs. It’s within our human nature to seek to avoid pain, which is why all forms of bypassing are so common within ourselves, our families of origin, and even society at large.

Although science does have some catching up to do when it comes to alternative approaches, it also offers those on the healing journey and those working as healers and therapists a deeper understanding of the interplay of processes within our multidimensional bodies, i.e. the mental, emotional, physical, vibrational and causal body. A scientific perspective cannot be absent from a holistic view, as it’s how we connect the seen with the unseen or the physical with the metaphysical and the spiritual.

Multidimensional healing

Within my work as a Soul Embodiment Therapist, I have found that ancestral trauma and past life trauma still impact our multidimensional bodies even when we did not experience the trauma firsthand but instead inherited the trauma imprint through our ancestors or past life predecessors.

Epigenetic research corroborates this with various research that show the effect of passed-down ancestral trauma on the mental, emotional, and physical body. Ancient Vedic knowledge explains how the same is true on a past life or Soul path level. So, not only are we dealing with current life trauma, but also past life, as well as ancestral trauma and stuck emotions, that are still being held within the subconscious mind and the physical body which is creating havoc in our lives and our mental as well as physical health.

Healing is not a luxury

Unresolved emotions and trauma not only make our lives more difficult mentally and emotionally, pulling in the people, situations, and experiences we need to heal what was left unresolved which keeps us stuck in drama cycles. It can actually shorten lives because of the impact of unresolved trauma and emotions on the physical body. Extensive trauma-related research shows that unaddressed trauma is the hidden cause of most preventable illnesses, and is associated with eight of the 10 leading causes of death, including heart, lung, and kidney disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, suicide, and accidental overdose.

Healing is often considered to be a luxury, but scientific research shows it’s a necessity to pull out the trauma imprints by the root. Because most of our trauma imprints are held deep within the subconscious we often don’t know that they are there until we go look for them. The physical body however will always give us telltale signs that something is amiss and this is where the research linked below can help us get a deeper understanding of how what we are subconsciously holding on to is affecting us on a mental, emotional, and physical level.

How to use this resource

This resource page serves to bring together the currently available scientific research that shows us the long-term effects of our unresolved trauma and emotions on the body, the psyche, and the brain. Because research papers aren’t always the easiest to read, there are also articles based on scientific research for easy reference for those seeking guidance in their own healing journey and for professionals to be able to share with their clients.

Below are many of the ways that unresolved trauma and emotions play out in our mind, hearts, psyche, and body. It also shows how many of our mental, emotional, and physical issues either stem from or are negatively impacted by our unresolved (childhood) trauma and how healing our unresolved trauma and emotions can positively impact if not completely cure the issues we face.

Instructions for using this resource:
Open any topic box to find the linked scientific research and articles on that topic, by clicking on the ⊕ icon. Click on the title you want to read to open the link in a new browser tab. You may need to allow your browser to open a new tab, if this has been disabled. Share article and research links by simply copying and pasting them to email or on social media.