When Life Is Chaos (Pt 1):

Trauma, Hypervigilance, Shame, and the Hard Work of Healing

There are seasons when life feels less like a journey and more like a storm you are trying to outrun. On the surface, you may be functioning; working, parenting, showing up, doing what you must, but inside, everything feels like chaos. Your thoughts are racing, your emotions feel unpredictable, and your body is constantly preparing for danger. Even on calm days, you may feel tense, alert, or uncertain, as if peace is something you don’t fully trust.

Or maybe you’re someone who has bought into the narrative that you must be a soldier, strong, unshakable, full of grit, able to push through anything. Meanwhile, chaos, crisis, and stress are circling you on every side, even as you convince yourself that you are “fine.”

This is what it feels like to live with unhealed trauma.
It is not dramatic. It is not theatrical. It is not always obvious.
It is often quiet, internal, and deeply exhausting.

What many people don’t understand is that trauma is not only born from violence or crisis. Yes, trauma can come from a single significant event, a painful medical crisis, a sudden loss, an act of violence, or an accident that shifts your entire sense of safety in one moment. But trauma can also grow slowly, quietly, through repeated stress, emotional neglect, instability, systemic oppression, unsafe relationships, or years of internalizing messages that your voice, body, culture, or identity are not valued.

Both forms of trauma, sudden and cumulative, can alter the nervous system in profound ways.
Both can reshape how you see yourself, how you trust others, and how you move through the world.
Both can teach your body that survival is more important than connection.

As Dr. Gabor Maté explains, “Trauma is not what happens to you. It’s what happens inside you because of what happened to you.”
The inside response is what lingers.
The body remembers long after the moment is gone.

When Survival Mode Becomes a Communication Style

One of the most misunderstood effects of trauma is how deeply it impacts communication. When you are operating in survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, your brain is not prioritizing connection or clarity. It is prioritizing protection.

This means a person in trauma may not hear what is actually being said.
They hear what their nervous system has been trained to expect or guard against.

A simple question can feel like an accusation.
A gentle suggestion can feel like criticism.
A boundary can feel like abandonment.
A disagreement can feel like conflict.
A pause in a conversation can feel like rejection.
Someone offering help can feel like someone trying to control you.

Healthy communication becomes nearly impossible when your nervous system is dysregulated.
It’s not that you don’t want to communicate well; it’s that your body won’t let you. Please note, this is not your fault. Your body is doing it’s best to protect you.

This is why conversations with someone living in trauma can become explosive, reactive, or volatile. They are not reacting to the present moment; they are reacting to every moment that came before it. When the body has not healed, every interaction becomes filtered through fear, shame, and past harm.

Trauma survivors often communicate from instinct, not intention.
Their words come from pain, not clarity.
Their tone comes from fear, not disrespect.
Their defensiveness comes from protection, not hostility.

And unless healing begins, the cycle repeats:
hypervigilance → fear → misunderstanding → conflict → shame → isolation.

Charlotte: A Story About Trauma, Help, and Hypervigilance Colliding

There was a period of my life when everything inside me felt fragile. I was trying to hold myself together and build a better world for my children, me, and my community, but my world felt heavy and unsteady. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and moving through life with a nervous system stuck in survival mode. That’s when a friend entered my life; we’ll call her Charlotte.

Charlotte showed up with kindness, steadiness, and no agenda. She genuinely wanted to help. But my unhealed trauma didn’t interpret her presence as support. It interpreted her presence as exposure, as I have experienced so many times before. 

Every time she came to assist me, I felt myself tighten. I felt vulnerable, as if she would somehow discover the parts of my life that weren’t together; the chaos I hid, the financial stress I carried, the exhaustion I pushed through, the emotional weight I hadn’t yet named.

I met her help with defensiveness.
I met her compassion with irritation.
I questioned her intentions.
I panicked at her sincerity.

I found myself crying a lot alone after she would leave and emotionally exhausted from being on guard. 

Not because she was unsafe, but because my trauma was convinced that if she saw the truth, the full truth, she would judge me, expose me, or leave. I interpreted her gentleness as an intrusion. Her support felt like someone stepping too close to a wound I wasn’t ready to expose.

But Charlotte didn’t match my fear.
She didn’t run, retreat, or react.
She stood with me in the middle of the chaos and offered help without judgment. She held space without pressure. She stayed present without demanding access to the parts of me I wasn’t ready to share. She saw my defensiveness not as rejection, but as protection.

Sometimes healing begins with being seen by someone who doesn’t flinch at your mess.

Charlotte taught me what safe help looks like.
She didn’t try to fix me; she walked beside me.
She didn’t shame my reactions; she understood them.
She didn’t rush my healing; she respected it.

Her presence became the bridge between who I was in my pain and who I was becoming in healing.