How Long Does Untreated Trauma Last?
Most people will eventually struggle with trauma. An estimated 70% of all Americans experience significant or major traumatic events at some point during their lives. And, everyone experiences traumatic events like the death of parents and grandparents. Often, that means taking time to heal and that means giving yourself time to recover from trauma.
At the same time, that trauma should heal. If your trauma doesn’t start to naturally go away on its own, it’s a sign that something deeper is wrong. For example, if you’re not seeing even slow improvement after a month, you might want to look into treatment. Left untreated, trauma that isn’t resolving on its own can turn into PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) which is a much more serious disorder that requires more significant treatment.
However, the path to trauma recovery varies per person. It’s important that you understand the path to trauma recovery, how untreated trauma works, and the steps you can take to get help if you don’t see improvement.
Talk to Your Doctor
If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, it’s important to talk to your doctor. That means discussing your health and mental health with someone who is both qualified to talk to you about it and who can set up next steps for you. Doing so right away means you’ll understand the options available to you and your doctor will know they might have to make next steps for you in the future. That will simplify the process if you end up needing help later.
Here, you want to discuss:
- What happened
- What the expected timeline should be
- How you feel now and what your doctor thinks about that
- What side-effects or long-term affects you might experience and what to do about them
- How you feel on a daily basis
If it’s already been some time since you experienced trauma, you’ll also want to discuss whether you’ve made any progress, any actual symptoms, and if things are getting worse.
Trauma means you’re at increased risk of stress, stomach and digestion issues, sleeping issues (sleeping too much or too little), cardiovascular problems, and complications like PTSD. Sitting down with your doctor to discuss those risks, your recovery, and your options will allow you to decide what the next steps for your health should be and what you can do to support recovery.
What is the Normal Recovery Timeline for Untreated Trauma?
If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, recovery can take months. In fact, if a loved one dies, recovery times for that trauma are typically 6-12 months. For other events, you’re generally looking at a shorter recovery period.
- The first two weeks are usually the worst in terms of symptoms such as anxiety, flashbacks, and fear
- For some people, this initial peak can last as long as 2 months
- Improvement starts gradually and can look like accepting things, feeling less discomfort, and being more capable or willing to push boundaries around trauma.
In most cases, the rule of thumb is that if someone isn’t showing gradual improvement after about 2 months, they aren’t going to recover on their own. That means you’ll need a mental health intervention such as counseling or therapy to help you step out of trauma and get back to your life.
For most people, that means giving it about a month to get back to feeling like yourself after a traumatic event like assault, robbery, a car accident, or a natural disaster. For others, that might look like 2 months. And for some people, it can take longer. Still, if you’re not showing gradual improvement after 2 months, you definitely want to talk to a professional.
Still, that can be further complicated by the fact that not everyone is aware they have to make steps to recover from trauma. That can mean you need counseling to even start processing trauma which can further complicate the process.
Risks of PTSD
PTSD or Post-traumatic stress disorder is a complication of trauma in which your brain and your body do not heal from trauma. Instead, you become mentally stuck in the experience of trauma with a heightened adrenal response. That can mean you experience severe anxiety, avoidance, uncontrollable thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks about the traumatic event(s) for even decades after the event. Normally, PTSD is diagnosable after about a month from a traumatic event.
Here, diagnosing PTSD depends on severity of the symptoms with severe anxiety, guilt or shame, guarded behavior, fear or anxiety, memory problems, negative thoughts, depression, flashbacks, and nightmares being key symptoms looked for. However, PTSD may also be diagnosed purely on the basis of duration of symptoms. Even mild symptoms are PTSD if you continue to experience them for a year after the traumatic event.
If you’re diagnosed with PTSD, you will need treatment. That typically means behavioral therapy like CBT and counseling to help you overcome the impacts of trauma on the brain. At the same time, that treatment can help you prevent complications of trauma to begin with.
Should You Get Treatment for Trauma?
In most cases, if you’ve experienced a traumatic event, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor. From there, you can make decisions about getting treatment or not based on your history of mental health and potential complications. You can also make sure your doctor is aware of what’s going on, so if things don’t improve, they can help you take the next steps. If you have a history of trauma, it’s probably best to immediately look into treatment. In addition, if you have a mental health problem such as depression or anxiety, that can make recovering from trauma harder. Individuals who have experienced violent crimes are also more likely to experience complications, which means you should typically take advantage of counseling offered by emergency care services.
Otherwise, the best option for deciding on treatment is to wait. Talk to your doctor about what you can do to improve things in the meantime. Then, give your brain and your body time to heal. If you’re not seeing improvements after about a month, it’s a good idea to go back to your doctor, discuss next steps, and to start looking into treatment. Everyone recovers at their own pace, but staying on top of how you’re doing, looking for improvement, and taking action if it’s not there is critical no matter what your recovery process looks like. Starting out by talking to your doctor or your therapist is always a good step. In addition, if you have the option, getting preventive care for trauma is often a good way to ensure you have the tools to prevent complications and recover as quickly as possible.
Eventually, most of us experience trauma. Recovering from that takes time. Depending on you and your mental health, recovering from trauma can take months. For some of us, that won’t happen without therapeutic interventions and counseling. There’s no single path through trauma or trauma recovery. However, it’s important to be able to reach out and get help when you need it and that means talking to medical professionals, understanding what recovery should look like, and taking steps when nothing is changing. Hopefully, this helps you create a strategy so you have that support available to you and you can get help if you need it.
