Emotional Pain Pattern Recognition Guide

Veterans of the Storm: Emotional Pain Pattern Recognition Guide

This guide helps peer coaches and clinicians identify emotional patterns across major diagnostic categories based on written responses in the unified assessment. These patterns reflect underlying emotional injuries and neurological traits commonly misdiagnosed or overlooked in veterans.

ADHD

·       - Emotional overthinking and spiraling over small tasks

·       - Shame or guilt about executive dysfunction

·       - Task avoidance with mental overload

·       - Common phrases: “I try but I can’t,” “My brain won’t stop,” “I feel paralyzed”

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)

·       - Deep emotional injury from rejection, criticism, or abandonment

·       - Sudden emotional collapse, shutdown, or self-erasure

·       - Common phrases: “I feel like I don’t exist,” “I disappeared after that,” “I regret saying anything”

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

·       - Panic or desperation when facing disconnection or perceived abandonment

·       - Identity instability, black-and-white thinking, impulsive emotion

·       - Common phrases: “I begged them not to leave,” “I turn into a different person,” “I said things I didn’t mean”

Bipolar Disorder

·       - Cyclical highs and lows not tied to emotional triggers

·       - Periods of euphoria or impulsivity followed by unexplained depression

·       - Common phrases: “I was on top of the world… then I crashed,” “It didn’t make sense to me”

Depression

·       - Emotional flatness, hopelessness, or numbness

·       - Withdrawal from life and loss of interest in anything

·       - Common phrases: “I feel like I’m fading,” “Nothing matters anymore,” “I can’t feel anything”

Anxiety

·       - Racing thoughts, tension, over-preparation

·       - Avoidance or spiraling under pressure

·       - Common phrases: “What if they hate me?” “I keep replaying the same moment,” “I can’t relax”

Trauma-Related Collapse

·       - Emotional shutdown, detachment, or dissociation

·       - Survival response of numbing, freezing, or identity detachment

·       - Common phrases: “I left my body,” “I don’t feel real,” “I shut down so I wouldn’t break”