It's actually not surprising that a part of you would feel that you are faking it. Truth is, you most likely had a lot more control over your emotions, probably had to in order to keep going.

It's important to keep in mind that a "traumatic" event or even several mini to more threatening trauma's can cause more stress and stress can affect the brain negatively over long periods. Perhaps a good comparison would be to think about how if your computer gets too many viruses and begins to get slow. Actually, comparing the brain with a computer is helpful because computers were designed to work a lot like a human being's brain. The only thing computers don't have is "emotions", but that is being worked on too as I am typing this.

The thing about emotions is that when a human being is having an emotional experience, a human being is more driven to seek out other human beings for support/comfort. We as human beings take a long time to develop, we survive best when we form groups and connect emotionally. A young child has a better chance of surviving when having a built in reminder where the child gets frightened and has a desire to get help from the parent, to look for safety and encouragement and also slowly learn how to reduce "stress" so that "learning and achieving" can take place.

The most important part of development is not so much how fast one learns, but to understand that each human being actually learns by "doing and experiencing". While human beings are designed like many other living things in "survival of the fittest", often it is this aspect that can become "harmful" in that "if" there is too much focus on "competing" and not enough nurturing that supports each human being to learn and gain at whatever capacity that human being "can" learn and gain, then "stress" begins to interfere with how a human being develops their own understanding of self and ability to learn and gain and problem solve.

Ceara, you are correct in that if someone who has been traumatized enough where that individual struggles with post traumatic stress and doesn't get the right help/support/validation for whatever that individual has experienced that traumatized them to where they struggle and find themselves overwhelmed and often debilitated, it can serve to further traumatize them.

When someone has experienced a trauma or several traumas where their ability to manage "stress" and maintain a sense of personal balance is disrupted, it is very important that individual have access to an environment where they can feel SAFE and have the time and support to evaluate and process whatever they need to regain a sense of "balance" again.

Unfortunately, when a human being is experiencing "emotional" distress and they NEED to have another human being present to ALLOW them to feel/grieve/and express normal human emotions, often they are considered "weak" instead of recognizing the genuine need to just be able to FEEL. Many individuals, EVEN PROFESSIONALS, shy away from an individual who is experiencing emotional stress/duress. This has more to do with their "lack" of understanding the symptoms, and, what that individuals needs to help them regain a sense of their ability to feel more emotionally balanced.

When someone experiences PTSD, that means there is a deep LOSS and a significant NEED to GREIVE that loss no matter what is involved in that loss. Often it can take time for someone struggling to find their way through what a loss/trauma meant to them "personally". Often an individual who is struggling can get VERY CONFUSED as with PTSD, they find themselves having significant challenges they do not understand.