How does covert trauma often show up 

• Depression / dysthymia → A background sense of emptiness, low energy, or disconnection from meaning.

• Anxiety disorders → A nervous system wired for hypervigilance, always bracing for rejection or abandonment.

• Attachment-related struggles (sometimes diagnosed as personality disorders, like borderline or avoidant) → Intense fear of closeness or abandonment, difficulty trusting, unstable sense of self.

• Complex PTSD (even if no “big T” trauma is named) → Flashbacks not of events, but of feelings: worthlessness, shame, or loneliness.

• Body Dysmorphia → the person externalizes the belief of not good enough onto their bodies

• Eating disorders / addictions → Coping strategies to fill the void or regulate feelings that were never held.

• Somatic disorders → Chronic pain, fatigue, or other body symptoms where the unspoken wound finds expression.

From a humanist lens, these aren’t “disorders” so much as adaptations to not having been seen, soothed, or valued. The system organizes itself around absence.