The Trauma Blind Spot: Could Unresolved Trauma Be Driving Your Anxiety, Depression, or Other Symptoms?

Did you know that more than 80% of people whose symptoms meet full criteria for PTSD also meet the criteria for at least one other diagnosis — most commonly depression, anxiety, or a substance use disorder? That's not four separate problems. It's often one nervous system response, given several different diagnoses.

My Own Blind Spot

I didn't have a diagnosis of depression or anxiety. But what I did have was ADHD and an autoimmune disease — Multiple Sclerosis.

The ADHD was likely my nervous system on high alert, because it’s difficult to focus when you are in flight or flight. The MS resulted from decades of elevated cortisol and stress hormones running unchecked, that resulted in physical inflammation and immune system dysfunction.  

I'd been in therapy for most of my adult life. I was doing the work. I thought I understood my own trauma fairly well.

I figured I didn’t have any PTSD anymore, because I wasn’t having flashbacks or nightmares about the trauma anymore. 

Then one day, I was sitting with my neurofeedback therapist, feeling about as relaxed as I ever feel. No crisis. No stress response I could point to. Just an ordinary day. The electrodes on my head told a different story.

He looked at my readings and told me something I didn't expect: I was in fight-or-flight. Not triggered into it. Not reacting to something in that moment. Living in it — as my baseline, every day, whether anything was happening or not.

On top of counseling, I’d spent years working as a licensed clinician and written a book on trauma in 2021. And I still had no idea my nervous system had been running on high alert for so long that it no longer felt like alert at all. It just felt like me—my norm.

That's the thing nobody tells you about chronic dysregulation: it doesn't announce itself. It doesn't feel like danger once it becomes constant. It becomes normal.

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