What is Complex PTSD?
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sometimes abbreviated as C-PTSD or cPTSD is also known as complex psychological trauma.
Over the last 10 years there has been a significant increase in the awareness of CPTSD among the general public, within the mental health community at large, and among the scientific literature. Don’t take my word for it, check out this link to see how interest in healing from CPTSD has gone from basically non-existent in 2013 to mainstream today.
Complex trauma has gained worldwide recognition by a factor of nearly 100 times in the last decade. When I first began studying CPTSD way back then, this space felt empty and I could not have imagined that there were millions of people silently suffering all on their own. Without the words to describe what had happened to them. People are talking about mental health more than ever nowadays.Te notion that we have to tamp our traumas down, forced to silently hold it all deep in our bodies and minds for fear that we are the only ones who are broken by things that happened long ago is a thing of the past. People are more willing to seek out information online and from trauma informed therapists like me. There has been a growing recognition that looking after our mental health is just as important as looking after our physical health, and that one can definitely impact the other.
What is CPTSD?
Complex trauma results from exposure to repetitive or prolonged stressors, unlike traditional PTSD. Complex-PTSD represents extreme forms of traumatic stressors and due to the the nature and timing of the trauma it frequently involves harm or abandonment by caregivers or other ostensibly responsible adults, and occurs at developmentally vulnerable times in a person’s life, such as early childhood or adolescence.
Following exposure to complex psychological trauma, changes in the mind, emotions, the body and relationships can result.
These problems can include disassociation - issues with staying present in the moment, living in the past, the future or getting lost in mindless activities to numb the pain.
Emotional dysregulation - problems with keeping one’s cool under stressful situations
Somatic distress - that manifests as physical problems within the body. Stomach aches, inablility to sleep well, etc.
Relationship problems or spiritual alienation - problems with family members, strain within family relationships, cut-offs and estrangement is not unusual. This element of complex trauma is often so wildly painful because it takes young children years, sometimes decades to realize that what happened to them was wrong, that they didn’t do anything to cause these problems. And yet, it informed how they behaved and what paths they chose, long before any of that stuff made any sense.
The increase in awareness about what CPTSD is has contributed to its distinction from traditional PTSD.