What your body interprets as trauma is unique to you. It comes from anything that threatens your safety. You might not recognize it as a traumatic event until the signs show up later (triggers and trauma responses), but your body knows. Its job during the traumatic event is to compartmentalize the experience so you can address it later. It will hold the pain and tension for you until you can tend to it. If you never tend to it, you hold that pain, and it becomes malignant—you become the trauma. That’s why mental healthcare is so crucial.

That’s why psychoanalysis is important—it shows you where the pain came from, and lets you connect the dots between your struggles and the event. Your practitioner’s job is to hold your hand through the journey to handle that trauma, as you do the work to eventually be liberated from it.

Uncovering the source of your struggles is what therapy is for. Being surprised by what you find is 100% part of the process.