CPTSD Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Repeated And Chronic Traumatic Events That Disrupt Life
- Megan Maysie
- Jun 19, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 28, 2024
It never rains, and then it pours. One thing after the other crashes into your life like an ongoing thunderstorm. So you get up and dust yourself off, continuing like a soldier as though it doesn’t bother you. Until one day it does, and you find you can no longer cope.
That aha! moment, where things have overwhelmed you to the point that taking just one step requires a huge effort, is pivotal in turning your life into the beautiful, magical place it was intended to be. And intention is the key. Ruminating over misery is not very productive, but learning about ways to heal, and finding the help you need, can only happen when you make a firm decision that you intend to heal.
PTSD can be devastating, Complex PTD adds an extra layer of complication, but both can be managed and the journey towards healing is usually a meaningful one. The first step is learning more.
What are the 7 trauma responses?
Fright or flight are two well-known survival responses to a traumatic event, even fainting, freezing, flagging, or fawning are commonly observed. But after the traumatic event, and after the danger has disappeared, other symptoms may start occurring that point towards PTSD:
Over-explaining
Trauma dumping
People pleasing
Hyper-independence
Over-sharing
Hypersexualization
A traumatic event, or traumatic events, are central to a PTSD diagnosis which extends to severe and prolonged symptoms that interfere with social and/or work functioning. The trauma needs to be reprocessed in a safe environment to get closure, and their lives back on track.
What is it called when you experience multiple traumatic events over time?
Complex trauma manifests in response to exposure to diverse and multiple traumatic events or experiences and can lead to experiencing the symptoms of C-PTSD.
What is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)?
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD, C-PTSD, or cPTSD) is a severe mental disorder that emanates from traumatic life events, the response to the events that have taken place, whether they be repeated traumatic events or chronic trauma (such as child abuse over a lengthy period).
As chronic and pervasive disturbances in emotion regulation, identity, and relationships arise, C-PTSD is characterized by three clusters of symptoms:
Re-experiencing:
Frequent thoughts, recurrent nightmares, flashbacks.
Strong feelings of distress or physical reactions like heart palpitations and sweating when faced with reminders of the event.
Avoidance and numbing (the trauma):
Trying to avoid trauma-related thoughts, feelings, or conversations.
Feeling detached or isolated from others.
Avoiding activities, places, or people that are reminders of the trauma.
Negative sense of the future, not expecting to have a marriage, children, a career, or a normal life span.
Noticeably reduced interest or participation in important activities.
Inability to recall important details of the trauma.
Diminished emotional expression (or affect, such as unable to have loving feelings).
Hyperarousal (increased arousal not present before the trauma):
Problems falling or staying asleep.
Easily irritated or outbursts of anger.
Difficulty concentrating.
Hypervigilance.
Easily irritated or outbursts of anger.
Physiological arousal: High levels of arousal bring on the so-called “fight or flight” response in a state of heightened activity within the autonomic nervous system.
An exaggerated startle response.
Before making a formal diagnosis, professionals will establish whether symptoms are present, and how many of them have been experienced from a clinical perspective (often more reliable than search engines and internet “doctors”). Self-diagnosis has some value, particularly as it can start you on your road to healing, but help from the experts is often beneficial in identifying clinical flags, guiding, and treating.
High-functioning PTSD
Describing those who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms but can still maintain the ability to function effectively in their daily lives, these individuals seem to display remarkable levels of resilience. Their reality is using certain tools (whether they recognize that they use them or not) to appear what they think is normal. 8 coping mechanisms of High-functioning PTSD sufferers include:
Masking: Hiding symptoms from others by suppressing their feelings, avoiding discussions about their experiences, or putting on a confident stable face. It makes it difficult for the people around them- who care about them, to understand the depth of their struggle.
Maintaining success: With successful careers, personal lives, and relationships, people with high-functioning PTSD may often have fulfilling social lives, shine at work, and attend to daily responsibilities efficiently. Their struggles become invisible.
Internal Struggles: With significant emotional turmoil under the surface, some wrestle with emotional numbness, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, hypervigilance, and nightmares. Trust, intimacy, and emotional regulation are also issues that often strain their relationships. Feeling disconnected and isolated are also part of their daily lives.
Delayed Recognition and Diagnosis: Being masters at masking, people with high-functioning PTSD may go undiagnosed for years, contributing to the confusion and frustration, and left struggling to understand the underlying cause of their emotional challenges.
Compartmentalization: Mentally separating traumatic experiences and emotions from daily life may help maintain control and stability, but is a barrier to understanding and healing from trauma.
Research in the paper, The relationship between multiple traumatic events and the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, indicates that multiple traumatic experiences cumulatively increase the risk of severe symptoms of PTSD developing and there is a cognitive link between the two.
Affecting function, or rather, dysfunction, C-PTSD, can result if a person experiences prolonged or repeated trauma over months or years, even if the traumatic events are not necessarily connected. The researchers place emphasis on modifying dysfunctional cognitions and expectations through focused cognitive treatment as the signs and symptoms present themselves.
Chronic Traumatic Events And C-PTSD
Prolonged child abuse, domestic violence, or other chronic trauma can result in life issues. Often, unhealed childhood trauma in adults looks like the symptoms of C-PTSD, with confusion around self-identity, dissociation, and relationship issues emerging in adulthood. Those with unhealed traumas often carry their pain by suffering in silence but become victims of substance use, depression, or suicidal ideation.
Closely related to PTSD and borderline personality disorder, CPTSD is manageable. Medication, psychotherapy (talk therapy), and other healing methods are available but reaching out must be the decision of the person. Pushing, nagging, begging, or pleading doesn't work unless the sufferer gets to a place- often brought on by pain and anguish that becomes intolerable, that they want to heal. They want a better life for themselves, and to experience it as a whole person.
C-PTSD Retraumatization
As time goes by, few connect the stress they feel to trauma that took place earlier in their lives. Distressing memories are reawakened in the subconscious mind and retraumatization, or the traumatic stress reactions to a new event, can- for some, feel as intense as the reactions experienced when the traumatizing event was taking place.
Triggering events immediately trigger emotions such as the fear experienced during a previous traumatic event induces stress reactions. It could be an anniversary of the event, or seeing a similar event in real life or the media. Some steps can be taken to manage or relieve symptoms that help you to re-engage fully with life
How Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) Differs From PTSD
Experiencing something deeply traumatic can result in PTSD and C-PTSD, with flashbacks, insomnia, and nightmares, but there are differences:
C-PTSD | PTSD |
Ascribed to long-term, repeated trauma | Ascribed to a single event |
Often arises from traumatic childhood experiences or multiple traumatic events | Can result from trauma experienced at any age |
Feel intensely afraid and unsafe- even long after the danger has passed | Feel intensely afraid and unsafe- even long after the danger has passed |
More severe than PTSD | Milder than C-PTSD |
The effects of complex trauma, especially when experienced in childhood, are often more severe than a single traumatic experience. C-PTSD is often seen as a better fit for its wide-ranging, long-lasting consequences by professionals.
Disruptive, devastating, and debilitating, the effects of trauma sour the art of living, take away the joy you were meant to be embracing and leave you feeling like a steamroller had flattened your being. But the rewards lie in the healing process. As finding hope, meaning, and happiness through reaching out for help, learning, and growing become part of daily living, light and love emerge. And that's where the beauty of life emerges.
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