Complex PTSD Treatment and Therapy for Childhood Trauma
What is Complex PTSD?
Complex trauma results from chronic, repeated, or prolonged exposure to threatening events from which a person cannot escape. These events can occur early in life and can have a long-term effects.
Some examples of threatening events that can result in Complex Trauma are:
Abuse, neglect, and/or sexual abuse as a child
Basic needs insecurity (for example: food, clothing, shelter)
Medical neglect
Being chronically shamed, rejected, and/or misunderstood
Growing up with parents with borderline or narcissistic traits
Growing up with emotionally immature parents
Having a parent with untreated mental illness
Being parentified as a child
Covert incest (also known as emotional incest)
Experiencing family separation
Being exposed to prolonged domestic violence
Experiencing chronic discrimination
Exposure to substance misuse in the home
Religious trauma
Being threatened with violence
Exposure to violence in the community
What are the symptoms of Childhood Trauma in Adulthood?
There are a number of symptoms that overlap between PTSD and CPTSD, but they differ from each other in that someone with CPTSD will tend to experience the following:
emotional flashbacks
toxic shame
self-abandonment
a vicious inner critic
social anxiety
Below is a more extensive list of CPTSD symptoms:
Re-experiencing Symptoms
Flashbacks, overwhelming emotions (emotional flashbacks), or disturbing sensations
Nightmares and/or intrusive thoughts about traumatic events at inconvenient times
Feeling like you are reliving traumatic events or like they are still occurring
Being triggered, to the point of feeling overwhelmed
Avoidance Symptoms
Isolating yourself, and/or avoiding places or people that remind you of traumatic events
Relying on substances, alcohol or food to numb pain
Prioritizing taking care of others, but ignoring yourself
Difficulty admitting to yourself that you were abused or neglected
Being highly critical of yourself and/or overworking to distract from feeling
Persistent Perceptions of Current Threat
Being hypervigilant
Expecting the worst to happen
Being very sensitive to others' non-verbal cues (facial expressions, body language)
Affect Dysregulation
Depression, hopelessness, or anxiety
Anger and irritability
Urges to self harm and/or suicidal ideation
Negative Self-Concept
Feelings of guilt, shame, and/or poor self worth
Feeling like there is something wrong with you
Feeling like you have little to no control over your life, or that you're powerless
Dissociative Symptoms
Having difficulty concentrating or paying attention
Having moments where you stare off into space or daydream for long periods of time
Difficulty remembering large portions of your life
Feeling as though the world, people, or things feel unreal
Interpersonal Disturbances
Having difficulty dealing with rejection
Feeling afraid of being abandoned or left
Your present doesn't have to be dictated by your past. Therapy for complex trauma can help you heal.
Many people with complex trauma can get misdiagnosed throughout their lives, since many CPTSD symptoms can be similar to or overlap with other diagnoses, such as anxiety and depression.
How I help clients with CPTSD
When exploring complex trauma, I help clients identify and process what emotional, physical, and psychological needs did not get met, as well as experiences that did happen. These experiences can involve emotional, psychological, or physical acts that occurred in their lifetime.
To help my clients through this process, I use a variety of therapeutic styles as needed, including parts work and somatic, or bottom-up, techniques.
Parts Work helps people identify, get to know and understand different parts of themselves that were created through chronic trauma or stress. The goal is to build collaboration between these parts and unburden the parts that hold trauma.
Somatic, or bottom-up, techniques help clients slowly develop an awareness of body sensations into feeling states in their body, and the goal is to complete the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses that we can get stuck in due to trauma.