The Backlog We Never Processed

Unprocessed experiences don’t slot neatly into the “past.” They hang around, shaping how we feel now. Covid is a prime example: for many, it was a collective rupture that didn’t have true closure. Life lurched forward, but the grief, disorientation, and loneliness of those years didn’t get metabolised.

Trauma as unfinished business

Clinically, trauma isn’t only about what happened; it’s about what couldn’t be completed - fight, flight, protest, grief - that remains pending. In memory terms, traumatic material often lacks proper time‑stamping and integration. Instead of being filed as “then,” it stays accessible as “now.” That’s why reminders can trigger disproportionate reactions: the system treats an echo like a current threat.

Different lenses that point to the same thing:

• Pierre Janet / Bessel van der Kolk: when overwhelming events can’t be integrated into narrative memory, they persist as sensory‑emotional fragments (images, body states, impulses).

• Ehlers & Clark (cognitive model): trauma memories are poorly elaborated and strongly associative, with diminished context; everyday cues retrieve them automatically.

• Neurobiology (ANS): prolonged stress shifts baselines (allostatic load). Hyperarousal (on edge, keyed up) and hypoarousal (numb, flat) become familiar states.

These different frameworks converge on one truth: unfinished experience continues to act on the present.

Why high‑functioning people are at risk of a backlog

Many coped through Covid by doing what they’ve always done - managing, containing, carrying on - and that works short‑term. Over time though it creates a queue of unprocessed material waiting for bandwidth to be processed. Then when the world speeds back up, there’s even less space to feel... The backlog stays.

It doesn’t always look like “trauma.” It often looks like life:

• Anxiety and panic: sudden surges that seem to come “out of nowhere.”

• Burnout / flatness: productivity intact, joy absent.

• Irritability / overcontrol: tight grip on routines, low tolerance for surprises.

• Sleep changes: late nights, early waking, restless, fragmented sleep.

• Somatic expressions: jaw clenching, migraines, GI issues, chest tightness, dermatological flares, chronic muscle tension.

• Coping loops: overwork, compulsive scrolling/shopping, alcohol “to take the edge off,” withdrawing from connection.

These are adaptations - creative ways the system tries to keep you going while sidelining what hasn’t been felt.

What metabolising actually means

Metabolising is not catharsis for its own sake. The goal isn’t to just express emotions or get a quick emotional release without further integration or healing. Metabolising is a paced, regulated and structured process where the nervous system gradually updates its experience so that the trauma or distress can be integrated, registered as historical and no longer cause overwhelming reactions. This may involve paced contact with the unfinished experience so the nervous system can update: it happened, it ended, I survived, and now I can feel it without being overwhelmed. In practice that looks like:

• Stabilise first: sleep, breath, and simple rhythms to reduce allostatic load (the cumulative wear-and-tear on the body and mind from constantly having to adapt.) Safety isn’t a slogan; it’s physiological - by this we mean: safety isn’t an idea you can just declare, or offer another. It’s not saying “you’re safe now” and expecting the body to believe it. It’s physiological. Safety shows up in heart rate, breath, muscle tone, sleep patterns - whether your nervous system actually registers calm enough to shift out of survival mode.

• Titration: small doses of contact with the material, then back to regulation. Too much, too fast re‑traumatises; too little, nothing changes.

• Linking: turning fragments into sequence and meaning - moving from sensation and flash to memory and context.

• Choice: reclaimed agency in the present (what to keep, what to change), which signals to the body that “now” is different from “then.”

• Relationship: being accompanied by a regulated other while you do this work matters. Co‑regulation is a foundational human resource: we’re wired to regulate best in connection with others. While self‑regulation is possible and valuable, supportive relationship often makes integration easier and more sustainable. Safety has to be lived in the body and this often is facilitated through co-regulation with another person.

Why therapy helps here

A good therapeutic frame offers three things rarely found in busy, high‑demand lives: Protected time Attuned pacing

A steady witness.

This combination allows backlog to move from pending to processed - not in a single disclosure, but over a series of precise, bearable contacts with what was never given room. If you recognise yourself in this - functioning well while something in you feels unfinished - the work isn’t to perform strength but to reclaim integration. The goal isn’t to relive the past; it’s to restore enough coherence that the past can finally take its place behind you.

If you’ve wondered why you feel out of sync years later - it may be unfinished experience still waiting to be given room.