Celebrating Symptoms, Forgetting Wounds - When Trauma Hides Behind Our Victories

There is a strange quality to trauma, something almost sly, as if it were a trickster living quietly in the folds of our life. You might think that trauma is about the moment it first happened, the blow that shattered the skin, the scream that cut through the air, the betrayal that left us gasping. But in truth, most of us do not sit with the wound itself. We do not wake up every day rehearsing the exact moment of impact. What we live with is its smoke, its shadows, the marks it leaves scattered across the patterns of our daily behaviour. Trauma does not often appear with a sign saying “here I am, remember me.” Instead, it pushes us to look elsewhere. It tells us, with a firm grip, that the real problem is in the drinking, or the arguments, or the panic attacks that come out of nowhere. It says, “fix this mess in front of you,” and it distracts us from where it quietly hums in the background.

And of course, most of us oblige. How could we not? If your body is burning with anxiety or your relationships keep collapsing, that is where your attention will naturally go. You will say, “this is what I must solve.” You will search for comfort in substances, or you will throw yourself into repairing another broken connection, or you will gather all your strength to quiet your mind enough to sleep. And when you manage it, even just for a while, it feels like triumph. It feels like you are steering the ship again. That sensation of success, that sense of “I have made progress,” is like water to a parched throat. It gives you direction, something tangible to point to. We tell stories of these moments the way an athlete might describe a victory, as if the accomplishment is proof that we are heading toward the light. We might even dress it up in motivational language, share it with others, perhaps even imagine ourselves giving a speech on how far we’ve come, holding up our strategies and our perseverance as a lesson.

But beneath this celebration, the old wound sits, waiting. And the thing about trauma is that it is patient. It can wait years. It can wait decades. It does not shout when you are too busy to listen. It grins quietly, as you put all your energy into sweeping away the symptoms it created, because it knows that symptoms are only the branches, never the roots. While you are caught in the thrill of trimming those branches, trauma is gathering its strength, preparing to sprout new ones. And each time, they may grow in a slightly different direction, which makes you believe you are encountering a new issue altogether.

Think of how this plays out. A person might spend years battling a dependence on alcohol. They devote themselves to recovery, build strategies, measure progress by the number of sober days. And then, after years of discipline, perhaps they achieve what looked like victory. But soon enough, something else slips in. Perhaps anger becomes the new companion, or depression deepens, or the body develops unexplained illnesses. The individual, bewildered, says, “I thought I conquered this. Why does it keep finding me?” But trauma has not been defeated, it has only shifted its costume. It is still there, still waiting for you to sit down and turn to it directly.

There is a cruel kind of genius in this. Trauma pushes us into survival mode. It whispers that the past is too much to face, that to stare into it would tear us apart, so instead it gives us substitutes. It says, “Here, focus on your present crisis. Solve this. Keep yourself busy with fixing the damage as it erupts.” And on the surface, this can feel almost noble. You might tell yourself, “I am someone who looks forward, who refuses to wallow, who presses on.” There is pride in becoming the forward-thinker, the one who rises above circumstances, the one who finds lessons in hardship and creates visions of a brighter future. That is what makes it such a convincing mask. To the outside world, it can look like resilience. Inside, it feels like control. But behind it all, the true wound has never been touched.

I think of it like an old house with a cracked foundation. You can paint the walls, replace the furniture, even put up new curtains that let in the most beautiful light. For a while, you may feel proud of the changes. Friends visit and compliment the way everything looks refreshed. Yet the foundation has not been repaired. Over time, no matter how carefully you redecorate, the cracks will creep back, because they are not caused by the paint or the chairs or the curtains. They come from deep below, from the thing that holds the house up. Trauma works in this same quiet way.

What makes it so difficult is that trauma is not just pain from the past, it is also fear of returning to that pain. It is the mind’s way of protecting itself, saying, “I cannot allow you to face this directly, because if you did, it would overwhelm you.” So it reroutes your focus. You become very good at identifying the symptoms that live in the present: the unhealthy patterns, the strained relationships, the struggles with self-worth. And while addressing those matters does indeed bring a sense of order, the true wound remains sealed in the basement. The more skilled you become at symptom management, the more trauma can rest undisturbed.

There is something almost theatrical about the way trauma sets the stage. You become the narrator of your own resilience story. You speak of how you managed to overcome hardship, and in some sense you have. You have fought battles, and those battles are real. But trauma is like a director hiding offstage, smiling at how convincing the performance is, pleased that the audience applauds the play rather than asking about the playwright. While you deliver your speech about overcoming one difficulty, trauma is already at work writing the next act.

It is not that we are fools for celebrating these victories. They matter. Addressing substance misuse or toxic relationships or panic attacks is meaningful. Those achievements deserve recognition, because they do create breathing space. They allow us to live more safely, more steadily. But trauma, clever as it is, uses even this breathing space to gather itself, to plot its next expression. It hides behind the applause, knowing that as long as the spotlight stays on the symptom, no one will turn their eyes toward the darkness backstage.

Now, if you’ve read so far, you might think I am suggesting that the whole enterprise of healing is hopeless, that no matter what you do, trauma will always be one step ahead. But that is not the truth. What I am saying is that there is a distinction between managing the echoes and facing the original sound. The former gives relief, but the latter brings peace. And that is where things become uncomfortable, because peace does not come from polishing the surface. It comes from being willing to sit with what happened, to let yourself feel the thing you have been trained to avoid. That is the hardest part, because the very design of trauma is to prevent you from looking there.

Consider the mind of someone who survived childhood neglect. They may have grown up always feeling they needed to prove their worth. As an adult, they throw themselves into achievements, collecting successes like shields against the shame they once carried. On the outside, they may appear confident, high-functioning, perhaps even inspiring. Yet underneath, the child who felt invisible is still there, waiting to be noticed, waiting for someone, even the adult self, to turn and say, “I see you. I know you were not cared for the way you should have been.” Until that acknowledgement arrives, the achievements keep piling up, but the emptiness never truly fills.

The same pattern appears in relationships. Someone who experienced betrayal may spend years carefully learning how to communicate, how to avoid conflict, how to maintain harmony. They become skilled in conflict resolution, admired for their maturity. And yet, intimacy feels fragile. They may wonder why trust never feels complete. The reason is that they are treating the symptom, not the wound. The true work would mean going back into the memory of betrayal itself, grieving it, letting the pain of that loss be fully felt. Only then does trust stop being a skill you perform and start becoming a state of being.

Why do we avoid this direct encounter? Because the wound is terrifying. Trauma teaches us that to revisit the original event is to risk annihilation. It convinces us that survival is only possible through distraction. So we live in distraction, even when that distraction looks productive, even when it earns applause. It takes immense courage to stop, to let go of the symptom for a moment, and to sit in silence with the original wound. For many, it requires support, someone who can be present while the old terror rises. Alone, the fear can feel unbearable. But accompanied, it becomes survivable. And with each encounter, the terror lessens.

I sometimes think of trauma like a shadowed figure that has been following you for decades. You keep seeing its reflection in the corner of your eye, always through symptoms, never directly. You run from it, you try to outpace it, you even learn to joke about it. But one day, you stop. You turn around, and you let yourself truly look. At first, the figure looms, larger than life. But the longer you stand with it, the smaller it becomes. You realise that it was never as enormous as it appeared, only magnified by your refusal to face it. Over time, its power shrinks, not because you conquered it with willpower, but because you allowed yourself to recognise it without turning away.

This is why I say trauma grins in the dark. It knows that as long as your eyes are elsewhere, it holds the advantage. It knows that every victory you claim over a symptom, while valuable, is also a diversion from the source. It is not malicious in the way a villain might be. It is more mechanical, more automatic, like a reflex that has been set in motion and keeps playing itself out. Its grin is not cruel, but sly, as if it knows the rules of the game better than you do. The question becomes whether you are willing to stop playing its game altogether, to break the pattern by turning your gaze inward, past the symptoms, past the distractions, to the place where it all began.

And here is the part that feels most difficult to explain without slipping into sentimentality. Facing trauma is not about destroying it. It is not about erasing it from existence. That is impossible. What is possible is learning to live with it honestly, without disguises. When you face the wound directly, it ceases to be an enemy. It becomes something like a scar. A scar does not vanish, but it stops bleeding. You can run your fingers over it and know the story it carries, but it no longer defines your every step. Trauma that has been faced is like that. It remains part of you, but it loses its grip on the way your life unfolds.

And so I return to that image: trauma lurking, grinning, waiting while we manage symptoms and celebrate small victories. It is not wrong to take those victories. They matter. They keep us afloat. But we must also remember that the true healing is not in silencing the symptom, but in listening to the silence beneath it. The question is never simply, “how do I fix what is happening right now,” but also, “what original wound keeps asking to be acknowledged?”

There is a humility in recognising this. It strips away the illusion of control. It reminds us that human beings are not machines that can be fine-tuned by addressing faulty parts. We are layered, complicated creatures, carrying histories that continue to breathe inside us. The work of healing is not just forward motion, not just speeches about triumph, but also the quiet turning back, the willingness to sit in the basement of the house and say, “this is where the cracks began.”

And when you do, something shifts. The grin in the dark begins to fade. Not because trauma has disappeared, but because it no longer has the power to keep you looking away. You become capable of holding both truths: that you have made progress in the present, and that you are brave enough to face the past. That is the kind of strength that no motivational speech can fully capture, because it is not flashy, not triumphant in appearance. It is steady, quiet, and profoundly real.