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5/13/2025 0 Comments

Unresolved Trauma Often Looks Like Busyness

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“You’re just waiting for joy to catch up.”

I heard that line in a podcast interview recently. The guest was facing the host as she responded to a question, but it felt like she was looking in my eyes when she answered with those words. 

Sometimes you are going through motions in life you have no idea you are going through until someone names those very motions.

I’m still here. Still doing the work. Still writing and showing up and walking my trails. Still being a dad, a friend, a helper. I’m not broken down on the side of the road - but joy? Joy has been trailing behind. Like Siri mapped it a much longer route to avoid the tolls, indifferent to the possibility that someone was desperately awaiting its arrival.

The word for this, I recently learned, is anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure from things that used to light you up. It’s one of the quieter signs of depression, especially high-functioning depression.

That makes it easy to miss.

When you're still meeting deadlines, still showing up for people, still producing - no one thinks to ask if you’ve stopped feeling. In a world where wellness is often measured by productivity, being productive can often be quite counter productive to your health.

But that’s the ache. You’re doing more “right” than ever, and still, something’s missing.

The spark. The joy. The full emotional yes.

In this interview, Dr. Judith Joseph said: “You’re not a human being anymore. You’re a human doing. You’re trying to outrun something you haven’t fully resolved.”

That one landed, too.

Because the truth is, unresolved trauma doesn’t always leave behind chaos, it often leaves behind busyness. Productive people, achievers, givers… many of us are just trying to stay ahead of a pain we don’t want to sit with. We don’t even realize how much we’ve built our lives around avoiding what hurts.

Until joy doesn’t show up. And like standing at the bus stop waiting on a bus that's ten minutes late, you start wondering - where is it?

I’ve spent years learning how my trauma shaped me. Childhood experiences I once downplayed or couldn’t name have explained so much of why I’ve kept myself busy. Not just productively busy, but protectively busy. As if constant motion could keep me ahead of the ache.

Side note, world - constant scrolling is one of the way MANY have adopted busyness to stay ahead of the ache....

But here’s the thing: you can only outrun yourself for so long.

I’ve started to understand this as a different kind of crisis, not dramatic, not loud. Just a quiet erosion of aliveness. The moments where you just know something should feel good, but it doesn't. This absence of joy doesn’t always mean failure. Sometimes, it’s a signal that our body, mind and spirit is tired of trying to outperform our pain.

It’s tempting to dismiss this. After all, the world loves functioning. Especially high-functioning. But what if the quiet erosion of joy is a crisis? What if our inability to feel pleasure, to engage deeply, to be present - what if that’s more urgent than we’ve allowed ourselves to believe?

I’ve come to believe it is.

We were wired for joy. It’s our birthright. But trauma rewires us for survival, for vigilance, for going through the motions without ever truly being in them.

And healing? Healing begins by naming what we’ve tried to outrun.

So I’m naming it.

I’ve been waiting for joy to catch up. Maybe you have, too.

The good news? I believe it can. Joy may be late. But it isn’t lost. And it’s not punishing you. It’s just been waiting for you to stop running long enough to be found.

Not by pushing harder. Not by performing better.

But by finally giving yourself permission to feel again. To rest. To receive. To be.​​
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    Robert "Keith" Cartwright

    I am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race.

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