How I Stopped Guessing My Trauma Triggers (And Started Tracking Them Like Data)

I’m in my mid-30s, and I’ve spent the last decade in and out of therapy, trying to untangle a mess of childhood stuff, a messy breakup, and a couple of “I’m fine” burnouts that were anything but. I’d journal for a week, then drop it. I’d download mood apps and stop using them after three days. What finally stuck surprised me: a tiny tool called traumatest.

I first found traumatest through a random forum thread at 2 a.m., in that classic “something is wrong but I can’t name it” spiral. The idea was simple: instead of treating trauma like a mysterious fog, start logging patterns—what triggered me, how intense it felt, what my body did, how long it lasted. No lofty wellness quotes, just structured reflection.

The first time I used traumatest, it honestly felt a bit clinical. Answer some questions, score a few scales, see a neat little snapshot of how my nervous system was actually doing. But that was exactly what I needed. Instead of “I had a bad week,” I could see, in black and white, that certain meetings, certain messages, and certain social situations lit me up like a Christmas tree.

Over a few weeks, traumatest quietly became part of my routine. Five minutes after work, I’d check in. Patterns started jumping out: I wasn’t “randomly anxious”; I was consistently triggered by specific tones of voice, certain deadlines, even particular times of day. That gave my therapist something concrete to work with, and it gave me language beyond “I feel off.”

Is traumatest a replacement for therapy? No. But it’s the first tool that made me feel like an active participant in my own healing instead of a passive patient waiting to be “fixed.” If you’re in that weird space where you know something’s wrong but you can’t quite map it, traumatest is a surprisingly grounded place to start.