What is Complex Trauma?

I have had so many of you reach out to me saying, "Christie, you talk about complex trauma all the time, you have a course called Love After Complex Trauma, but...what is complex trauma?" Okay, so today we are going to do a deep dive into:

• What is complex trauma
• What makes it different from PTSD
• Why is it called "complex"?

If you grew up with childhood trauma and have received a collection of diagnoses over the years from mental health professionals like...

major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, ADHD…

it can be so disorienting. I mean, where do we even start? It’s easy to get discouraged and feel incurable–that you are just “too broken.”

Ok, if this is you, DEEP BREATH…understanding what I’m about to share with you is going to be a game changer. 

So let’s chat about complex trauma for a bit. 

Complex Trauma is defined as the exposure to multiple, interrelated, recurrent forms of traumatic experiences AND the difficulties that arise from trying to adapt to or survive these experiences. 

These experiences often begin in early childhood (but not always), are reoccur over a long period of time. And here’s the big piece: the trauma is inflicted by others (and usually by the people who are “supposed” to be trustworthy). It is relational in nature and distorts the lens through which we see all other relationships.

Examples of events leading to CPTSD are…

• childhood abuse, neglect or abandonment

• ongoing domestic violence or abuse

• repeatedly witnessing violence or abuse

• being forced or manipulated into prostitution (trading sex)

• torture, kidnapping or slavery

• being a prisoner of war.

• Being culturally dislocated

• Discrimination

• Civil unrest or war trauma

So what makes it different from PTSD?

Unlike PTSD that is due to a singular event, CPTSD is the result of living in and trying to survive a traumatic environment. It is the water you swim in.

Both CPTSD and PTSD involve re-experiencing symptoms, hypervigilance, and efforts to avoid distressing reminders of the trauma, but people with CPTSD typically have additional symptoms that can easily be confused with “who we are”.  Some of these include:

• Emotion regulation– getting super reactive in your relationships or feeling like you go from 0 to 60 without warning
• Your sense of identity–struggling with shame, guilt, and just generally not liking who you are
• And most of all, having problems in your relationships.

The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) does not capture the developmental effects of complex trauma exposure. Complex trauma involves going through life ill-equipped to regulate, experience and maintain healthy relationships, and have a clear sense of yourself.

Complex Trauma stunts your growth in key areas that help us navigate life well and leads to a slew of complications like...

• Attachment issues like having difficulty with boundaries, trust issues, relationship issues
• Physical issues like chronic illness or pain, sensorimotor development issues, asthma, skin problems, autoimmune disorders
• Regulation issues like difficulty labeling and expressing your emotions, communicating what you need, and regulating your emotions
• Dissociation issues like amnesia, impaired memory, alterations in states of consciousness
• Behavior issues like impulsivity, self-harm, aggression, sleep issues, eating disorders, substance use issues, difficulty complying with rules, reenactment of trauma
• Cognitive issues like difficulties with attention and executive functioning, problems with processing information, difficulty completing tasks, difficulty planning and anticipating problems, learning difficulties
• Identity issues like poor sense of self, low self esteem, shame, guilt, body image issues…

Can you see how experiences of complex trauma literally impacts every area of our lives? It disrupts us at our core and distorts the lens through which we experience the world. 

This is why it is so different from PTSD. It is not about a singular traumatic event, but about the environment itself being traumatic. Every part of you has now been altered and adapted to the traumatic environment. 

Complex trauma is about going through life ill-equipped –you were not given the tools to develop in a way that would support you and your relationships.

So here comes shame.

When you haven’t been given the chance to grow in ways that support your ability to thrive in life, and you carry a pile of diagnoses with you, it is easy to feel like you are inherently defective. It is easy to think that this is just “who you are”

And can we please just honor for a second that here you are. Your mind, body, and heart have been adapting and adapting and adapting over and over to the difficulties and barriers the best way they have known how. 

Unlike PTSD, the complex trauma framework recognizes that your symptoms need to be understood in the context of your INCREDIBLE efforts to adapt and survive.

So this is why complex trauma is called “complex”

It is called “complex” because the trauma exposure and trauma adaptations are inextricably intertwined.

It is a dual problem of both exposure to harmful experiences and adaptation to these life experiences that have created short and long term issues in your life.

The complex trauma framework acknowledges that behaviors like relationship issues, reactivity, self-hatred, eating disorders, self-harm, and addictions (to name a few) are adaptive strategies to survive overwhelming experiences.

It shifts our focus from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?”

See, the thing is you have been adapting your whole life and will continue to do so–you are adapting, growing, learning…you are resilient.

Your whole lens, approach to relationships, biology, behaviors, have been altered to the traumatic environment. It is easy to assume that your adaptations are “who you are” when really they are “how you survived”. 

This is the time to finally unlearn those survival skills and find the YOU beneath it all.

The key now is to adapt –once again–but this time to a safe environment. To finally adjust to safety so that you can show up in your life and relationships in a way that leaves you equipped to navigate life.

The path forward will involve unlearning the old patterns and finally filling your toolbox.

_________

Source:

https://www.complextrauma.org/complex-trauma/complex-trauma-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-affect-people/