What is complex trauma?

[silkleaves]

Ooh okay @Meadowsweet , I kind of see where you are coming from now. I think you are further along in your healing than I am so you're able to look at this more objectively, which is why I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around all of it.

The only thing I can process at the moment is that the things I experienced then, affect my life now and I'm trying to deal with coping / functioning. Over-simplified I know, and I know I have to at some point take a hard look at the complexities of my experiences, as you say...and its probably the only way I'll ever be able to really move forward towards healing, but I struggle with that.

I don't know what this forum is specifically for, and to be fair, I'm really new here and still finding my way. But it has been helpful to not feel so alone in what I'm experiencing now, learn about new coping techniques and gain some understanding into what I'm dealing with, even though I'm not quite ready to totally face the traumas that led me here.

 

[anthony]

I think @anthony means that it was prolonged as opposed to ongoing which to me means is still happening at the present time.

It was talking past tense, not present tense. Prolonged can also mean, a single event that went for a long time. Ongoing can mean the same. Both can mean differently. Word choice... the point is that the trauma was over a longevity period of time and that its impact changed your personality, your core being, your ability to trust and so forth.

Complex trauma typically encapsulates the issues surrounding the longevity, the changes in your core being, so forth... which may, or may not, have concluded a personality diagnosis or such as a result.

As @Meadowsweet hit the nail on the head, complex trauma is not about the trauma itself, not the specifics of the trauma, but the effects that trauma caused to complicate (complex) your ability to heal the trauma and impaired functioning abilities.

 

[anthony]

I think this is going to get very interesting actually... in what people define as their complex trauma aspects. A first here, and looking forward to what happens.

 

[billie]

I just go with what my psychiatrist, gp and psychologist calls it. They are my medical team in real life. Who am I to judge them when they are treating me. I don't question their wording, I know my T is always enrolling jn workshops to maintain her status, and I just focus on recovery. :)

 

[fly away home]

Ah ok so it's about the changes in one's core being due to the trauma.

This just came up in T today. I am in a constant state of fear the fear is specifically other people. We were working on building visualizations for grounding. There is no safe house or building, there's is no safe place unless I am 100% assured no one else might appear.

If I visualize myself in a place which could involve someone else entering the space then I either have my back to the wall watching all entry points or I'm on the edge and ready to run. Ready but not able. The most annoying part is I have no ability to move in these visualizations. I can manage to move objects in my mind but not myself. Can't even turn my head.

So my safe visualization place is in nature. Total isolation assured and only then am I able to relax enough to begin grounding. I must admit I'm pretty disappointed at how desperate I am to escape. I didn't realize I felt so unsafe even in my own mind. That's kind of depressing.

So I guess the constant fear I grew up in seems to be a permanent fixture. Yay!

 

[Candleflames]

I pull at one piece of string to unravel it, and it tugs on another piece and creates a new knot.

That's an excellent analogy for how intertwined everything is and how much care needs to be taken when trying to sort out the issues caused by complex trauma. We have to be extra careful when teasing apart our strings that we don't do more damage to ourselves. I was just thinking about this a few days ago when I was feeling as if even trying was futile be cause of all the new knots I come across in trying to sort out all of the separate pieces.

do I know what complex trauma is? I know that my own trauma being complex effected the therapeutic approach needed to heal. But somehow, all the discussion about cptsd has confused the matter by focussing the word complex onto a set of symptoms, rather than on the trauma itself.

It has been my understanding that complex traumas are violence and abuses that are repeated over an extended period time and that also encompasses an imbalance of power that lends the abused to be dependent on the abuser during that time period. I think it is that dependance on our abusers for basic care that creates the skewed fundamentals of our sense of self. So childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuses are complex because we are dependent on the world around us and because our identity isn't fully formed. Complex trauma can still happen in adulthood and change ones personality too though. Someone who is disabled and dependent on another for care and is mistreated, those abused and mistreated while held in long term captivity and those in domestic violence situations can suffer from complex trauma.

 

[shell]

My understanding was that my complex trauma led to me being unable to regulate my emotions, a belief that I was helpless, I was unable to relate to others and I still struggle to be intimate with my immediate family, which was largely due to never having learned how to trust anyone ever, due to extended interpersonal trauma from birth to 18 years of age.

My biggest obstacle to treatment has been my inability to stop dissociating long enough to process anything, because of reliance on it to numb and distance myself from feelings, I have struggled to change my perception of what happened to me, and I use dissociation and avoidance to avoid others, it's an automatic response.

I have grown up with an expectation that everyone will harm me, reject me, or hate me, and I live and relate to others based on fear, I am having to relearn everything I ever believed about myself because most of it was based on lies, and false beliefs fed to me by my abusers.

I have lived a life that is very socially isolated due to a perception that I was totally unacceptable, and at times I can be very self destructive when I perceive I am being rejected, because I project my beliefs onto others. It's been hard to relearn life long beliefs and to be more accepting of myself. What's really sad is how destructive complex trauma is, because until I started treatment I was unwilling to admit that it had affected me at all.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

When I was diagnosed I was given the diagnosis of Complex PTSD in that as a small child I suffered at the hands of several abusers in varying forms if abuse my entire childhood. Ergo the longevity criteria previously mentioned.

When I finally escaped the childhood abuses, physical beating's, neglect and sexual abuses I joined the British Military.

Whilst serving with the military I was involved in a very physical and intense Chemical and Biological training scenario in preparation for the first Gulf War in the early 90's. Whilst deployed on this training exercise I was Injured and woke up in a Military Hospital nearly 500 miles away from where I was stationed. I was unable to walk and was paralysed from the waste down * they subsequently informed me that they had in fact deliberately paralysed me so that the damage to my lower spine would heal better. I was therefore kept in hospital for a prolonged period of time.

I still to this day have no recollection of exactly what happened in the 'Incident' that I was injured in. This traumatic experience in the eyes of my Diagnosing Therapist compounded the PTSD in it's complexities. ** I have vivid flashbacks now as a result of therapy both CBT and EMDR but I shall not describe them as they are horrific in nature and as I write this edit I am shaking inside **

Couple this with a head on car crash in 2001 where I was hit head on at 70 mph and the bonnet of my car was torn from the chassis and thrown 300 yards behind the scene of the accident. The other car had hit mine so hard thee engine manifold was shattered and the rocker head was split in half.

I vaguely recollect the collision and remember simply stepping out of the car in bewilderment. I walked away from that crash with nothing more than a very sore backside! and a Minor crick in my neck.

Mt therapist put these three factors into his diagnosis substantiating a C-PTSD diagnosis or if preferred, PTSD with Complex Trauma issues.

Laurie

 

[Meadowsweet]

I just go with what my psychiatrist, gp and psychologist calls it. They are my medical team in real life. Who am I to judge them when they are treating me. I don't question their wording

I would say it's more about understanding what that wording means towards your recovery, as a way to understanding your own mind and how it works. It's great that you trust your therapist, but in the end, it is your mind and it's your own understanding that will go towards healing and acceptance of yourself.

So I guess the constant fear I grew up in seems to be a permanent fixture

Changes to your core being doesn't necessarily mean that you will always be in fear because you were as a child. I guess it's more about how you relate to yourself or the world around you.

There's probably lots of ways the core self could show idiosyncrasies, I only really know about my own. A big one for me, is having a very weak sense of who I am, and that brings all sorts of problems and confusion in everyday life and especially in relationships. Dissociated reactions are another problematic area also.

I think @shell gives a good example of lack of emotional regulation.

 

[shell]

@Meadowsweet I relate to a weak sense of self, for so long I took on others beliefs, and had no sense of what I wanted, or how to meet my own needs, I never acknowledged I had needs.

 

[rainy_daze]

I'm on the verge of tears. Happy there is this thread, but so sad to read at the same time. I understand so much of this.

Why does it hurt so much to find people who completely understand this? I guess that would be a complex trauma reaction. Does anyone ever feel like they can feel two things at once, and it's very confusing?

Thank you @Meadowsweet for starting this thread, and keeping it on topic: What is complex trauma? I will post when I feel able to. Probably in bullet points, so I don't go overboard and write too much. There's so much to say.

my inability to stop dissociating

I nodded reading this entire post shell.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Does anyone ever feel like they can feel two things at once, and it's very confusing?

Just two things? ;)