What is Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)?

What is Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)?

C-PTSD - that’s Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - (also referred to as Developmental Trauma or Relational Trauma) refers to a type of trauma that occurs during a critical period of a person's development such as in childhood and/or adolescence. This trauma results from dysfunctional experiences that are termed - Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and are understood through several pertinent questions.

Unlike a one-time traumatic event typical of regular PTSD, the adverse childhood experiences of C-PTSD are usually chronic and ongoing over a long period of time (such as through childhood and adolescence) and can have long-lasting effects on a person’s emotional, psychological, cognitive, relational, behavioral, physical, social and spiritual development.

These effects can manifest in adulthood as, “symptoms” in various ways, including:

• Emotional dysregulation: Difficulty regulating emotions, such as intense anger, fear, or sadness, or experiencing mood swings.

• Self-esteem and identity issues: Feelings of worthlessness, shame, or confusion about one's identity can arise from developmental trauma.

• Cognitive impairments: Problems with attention, memory, and executive functioning, which can affect academic or occupational performance.

• Attachment difficulties: Challenges forming healthy attachments to caregivers or others, leading to issues with trust, intimacy, and relationships as an adult.

• Behavioral problems: Acting out, aggression, impulsivity, or other behaviors that disrupt relationships or daily functioning. Dissociations and addictions.

• Physical health issues: Developmental trauma has been linked to an increased risk of physical health problems later in life, such as chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, and cardiovascular disease.

• Social development problems: Difficulty integrating in society, poor communication skills, barriers to making connections with groups.

• Spiritual Problems: Challenges related to a person’s existential beliefs, values or sense of meaning and purpose in being alive.

**Keep in mind though, a history of adverse childhood experiences, and the resulting effects on adult functioning only look at the abuse and neglect side of your developmental picture. There is also a resilience side of childhood/adolescence wherein you had positive experiences or empowering personality characteristics growing up that helped to counteract the negative effects of the trauma. This could be a loving grandparent, friend or teacher who supports and believes in you or an interest in health, nutrition, spirituality or an innate sense of optimism or determination. Sometimes having only one of these positive influences can make all the difference in an otherwise highly dysfunctional childhood.**

Adverse Childhood Experiences

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INSPIRATION

  • "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

    — Maya Angelou

  • "It's never too late to be what you might have been."

    — George Eliot

  • “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

    — Carl Jung

  • "The deep critical thinker has become the misfit of the world, this is not a conincidence. To maintain order and control you must isolate the intellectual, the sage, the philosopher, the savant before their ideas awaken people."

    — Carl Jung

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    — Thomas A. Edison

  • "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

    — George Bernard Shaw

  • "There's a power in words. There's power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.

    — Tracy Chapman

  • "I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am."

    — Tracy Chapman

  • "The important thing about "brave" is, it doesn't mean you're not terrified."

    — Sinead O’Connor

  • "Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths."

    — Criss Jami

  • "To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment."

    — Eckart Tolle

  • "Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity."

    — Thomas J. Watson

  • "I'm not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years."

    — Haruki Murakami

  • "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

    — Aristotle

  • "[A person's] greatness lies in [their] power of thought."

    — Blaise Pascal

  • "In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."

    — Eleanor Roosevelt

  • "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."

    — David Hume

  • "Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."

    — F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • "Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be."

    — Thoreau

  • ""To find yourself, think for yourself."

    — Socrates

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  • "The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

    — Albert Einstein

  • "The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks."

    — Christoper Hitchens

  • "We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become 'unthinkable,' thinking stops and action becomes mindless."

    — J. William Fulbright

  • "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."

    — Marie Curie

  • "Obstacles, of course are developmentally necessary: they teach [people] strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience, and resourcefulness."

    — Naomi Wolf

  • "We will fail when we fail to try."

    — Rosa Parks

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