A Weekend's Complex PTSD
June 27 is PTSD Awareness Day, this weekend we revisited some memories
Post Traumatic Stress Awareness Day is June 27 and I like to take the month of June as an opportunity to bring awareness to the impact that this condition has had on myself and others who have experienced trauma. In addition to single incident trauma, I especially want to note the effects of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or CPTSD, which is the result of repeated, ongoing, trauma often beginning in early childhood often including neglect or abuse from a caregiver. The effects of Complex Post Traumatic stress disorder are more encompassing and greater than those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Although I’m using the term disorder, as that’s how it’s defined for medical and billing purposes, it is really a response, not a disorder. What was disordered was the trauma, not someone’s reaction to it which is based on survival responses that, most often, is what keeps people alive. That said, the effects of trauma can be debilitating and can lead to various forms of disabilities. For me this is the primary reason why I became a Therapist Interrupted. I needed to take 8 years off of employment to work full time on healing from a traumatic childhood.
This weekend, some childhood memories were shoved into my awareness when I stumbled on a popular documentary on Amazon Prime about an organization my family was involved with. I felt a strange draw to click on the show and then proceeded to watch/skim three of the episodes and staying up till almost 2am and then wasn’t able to sleep.
I felt little to nothing as I watched, a telling sign of dissociation and overwhelm, yet internally, it was loud. While I couldn’t really make out the voices of the others in my collective, I got the sense that there was a debate or argument. Some shouted that things were not as bad as the documentary portrayed, others felt validated and a reassurance of not being alone. Then came the migraines, and the strong sense of pain, guilt, and fear. We reached out to some friends and found a new support group. We watched episode two again a couple days later. Some may ask why we put ourselves through this when it was hard enough the first time. While I don’t really know the answer to that, what I do know is that while it was triggering there was a deep sense of being seen and not being alone. Since much of this trauma related to our earliest relationships, it goes into the category of relational trauma and what helps heal this is connection.
In my childhood I was isolated and very alone. Today, I have healed to the point of being able to cultivate a community of friends who are supportive. I feel a sense of beginning to heal as I see that others also experienced harm in similar ways and my perceptions of this situation as being harmful is also felt by others. While I do not wish this harm on anyone, realizing I’m not the only one brings a sense of connection and validation. I have been able to talk about the impact of revisiting this trauma with a couple friends and a therapist, who I have scheduled an extra session with this week to process the emotions and memories that are coming up.
A major difference from my life now and in the past is the ability to get in touch with grief and to actually cry tears. Healing from CPTSD has been a very slow process and now I am at a point in my life where I can feel the intensity of some of these experiences without the need to inflict pain or get to the point of overwhelm that I don’t want to live. This has taken years and a lot of support. I can have a weekend of shut-down, rapid-switching, and increased trauma symptoms without it becoming dangerous.
If you are someone who has been through trauma that resulted in complex post traumatic stress responses I hope that this article can be a reminder that you are not alone. Healing can be long and painful. At times, it may seem as if you will never feel better. You may want to give up hope because the pain is just too real, too present, too constant. Rather than tell you it will get better or that you will get through this, I want to hold space for how hard this really is. I do believe that there will be some better days and there will be really, really hard days, but I know that it can sometimes feel impossible to think that things can begin to feel better. Whatever you’re going through, there are reasons you’re feeling what your feeling. Healing from these types of hurts is sometimes a life-long process and it isn’t always linear. Regardless of what you’ve been through, or what you’re doing with your life now, you have value, and you matter.