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In the last decade, the mental health profession has grown much more focused upon and sensitive to the impact of trauma, leading to trauma-informed approaches proliferating throughout the treatment world. We know about trauma's effects on adults: depression, struggles with emotional regulation and intimate relationships, anxiety, addictions, acting-out behaviors.

Trauma is always in the eye of the beholder—where what is traumatic for one may be less so for someone else. Regardless of the level or diagnosis, beyond the emotional scars, there is another element of the trauma process: the trauma shapes how you see the world and relationships; you unconsciously decide how to protect yourself from future pain.

Here are seven of the most common stances on trauma adults take:

#1: There’s me and me.

The world is a hostile place, and people can’t be trusted to help you: there’s me and me, and I take care of me. This is a stance of self-sufficiency, super independence, never expecting or asking for help, and never fully leaning into a relationship.

#2: Don’t get close.

If independence keeps you from needing others, this takes it one step further by keeping others at arm's distance. I often hear partners complain that while they, as a couple, get along, they feel they really don't know their partner. Trauma leads to relationships that are superficial, filled with acquaintances but not friends, and intimate relationships without real intimacy. If you learn that people close to you can hurt or leave you, you may decide that the problem is closeness itself which you need to avoid.

#3: Be a control freak.

I feel safe when I have control. Here is where the person is rigid in the way they run their lives—heavy on routines and the right ways of doing things—and controlling of others—constantly micromanaging. If the world and others can be unpredictable and dangerous, control is the antidote.

#4: Always look around corners.

Control is one way of managing life’s unpredictability, but so is hypervigilance—always looking ahead, worrying about what bad things can happen next. This is common and understandable: If you grew up in an unsafe or chaotic environment, one of your only defenses as a child was to be alert to the environment: Has dad been drinking? Is mom in a bad mood? If so, I need to stay in the room, not show them that spelling test, and walk on eggshells.

While this helps you as a child, you don’t turn it off as an adult. You’re wired to still look around corners, always finding something to worry about. Such a situation could result in anxiety.

#5: I’m happy if you’re happy.

I see many who come to therapy who were the "good" child in the family, simply because they are tired of being good. For those with trauma, if the constant message to you is that it was what you did that made others angry or upset, the need to be careful about what you do to avoid upsetting others is ten times stronger. You fine-tune your hypervigilance to be acutely sensitive to the moods and needs of everyone around you. You accommodate, be "nice", are over-responsible, self-critical, or perfectionistic—you do whatever you need to do to avoid conflict and confrontation. Whatever anger or resentment you have, you internalize or blame yourself for. You silence your voice and give away who you are to feel safe around others.

#6: Be a bully.

Rather than worrying about making others happy, you act like you don’t give a damn. This is control reinforced with a strong dose of anger, but most often driven by anxiety. Rather than going the route of pleasing and accommodating, you swing to the other side and go on offense and fight mode: I intimidate you before you can intimidate me; I hit you before you can hit me.

#7: Take what you get.

Accommodation requires some interaction and some energy; you need to do something to shape the relationship to make it safe. Here, there’s none; you’re the stick floating down the river. You give up, become passive, and let others run your life; you take what you get. This is the ultimate resignation, the ultimate state of victimhood, yet a choice.

Time to upgrade

Like old software in a computer, these coping styles were what was available when you were young and had limited power. Also like old software, they no longer give you what you need to live in the larger world, the flexibility you need to be an adult. Is it time to upgrade your own personal software? If so, how?

The starting point is acknowledging your coping style—your bully behavior, over-responsibility and accommodation, super independence, or passivity. Next, you want to take baby steps to expand your world and behaviors. Start by doing the opposite of what you tend to do: Ask for help, take the risk of opening up and being vulnerable, control your temper, speak up, and set boundaries rather than going along. It doesn’t matter where or even how you start as long as you step outside your comfort zone, go against your grain. Adopt an attitude of curiosity and experimentation rather than a forced march or a pressured make-over.

Finally, do now with those close to you what you couldn’t do with your parents—let them know what you need, what you feel, what you like and don’t like. By taking this risk, you not only have the opportunity to get what you need and help others understand you, but you begin to find that the world and others are not always as scary and dangerous as you always thought.