Question: If You've Been Told You Have Complex Trauma Does That Mean Bpd?

[Queen Boudica]

I've been thinking about it and I think there are some good points about trauma as single events, with multifaceted problems attached or ongoing and ambiguously tied together.

I'm coming at this from my own childhood trauma, which started at a very early age. And then going onto years of DV with my ex.

The childhood trauma, particularly in the first 5 years, although pretty much up until 21 your brain is still developing. The first 5 years, 90% of neural growth, the brain has highest plasticity, which makes it extremely vulnerable to adverse events. Neurons are created and connect based on experiences. And they grow, healthily in safe supportive environments. Fundamental to neuron growth is that attachment to a safe caregiver and what they call serve and return interactions. Interactions between the child and caregiver, involving eye contact and talking and cuddling that are repeated over and over, so neurons grow strongly. If you don't have those serve and return interactions, in that safe environment, you just don't get the healthy brain growth to form the foundation on which further healthy growth can take place. And adverse experiences actually destroy neuron growth. Plus the fight or flight stress hormones are on constant alert and get stuck there. Cortisol, extremely toxic for brain growth. Also in that period are the sensitive periods when it is the best time for development of things like language. If you are constantly under stress it prevents you from focusing on learning and it is much more difficult to learn these skills later on.

Unless interventions are made early on, it is extremely difficult to recover from that early damage. This is when the foundations of brain development are being laid down. It is when your identity forms. And safe attachments, are crucial for social emotional development and development of resilience. So early childhood trauma affects every domain. Including mental health, and physical health (due to fight or flight system being on continuous alert, cortisol, inflames all areas of the body)

That is the effect of early childhood trauma. How long is a piece of string? Individuals vary in temperament although, early childhood trauma and I think particularly if the mother is exposed to stress when pregnant, it actually leads to children who are much more anxious.

No it is not complex trauma it is childhood trauma, which has been showed to damage brains and put the fight or flight system in constant alert state. It delays learning, affects social and emotional well being and physical and mental health. You can't pin it down to one single event. Not that type of trauma. Yes there are the childhood traumas where a child could be exposes to single traumatic events, and if they have safe caregivers, they are far less likely to suffer in brain development or have their stress system on constant alert, The safe caregiver allows the stress system to come back down again. In absence of safe caregiver then single event trauma's far more likely to lead to some sort of permanent damage.

I'm guessing most of us complex trauma or originally childhood trauma sufferers did not have those safe caregivers and most of the caregivers were the abusers.

What childhood trauma does is set you up for further abuse and trauma. You are fare more likely to hitch up with another abuser because that is all you knew and it is the norm for you. You are far more likely to resort to drugs, alcholhol, etc and more likely to have depression, anxiety and mental illness. And you are far more likely to get complex trauma.

In my case I went straight into next abusive relationship. My stress levels were at peak most of the time. In fact until recentlyI don't think I even knew what calm felt like. Maybe moments when I was gardening or by the sea. And it feels very strange.

I have childhood trauma and PTSD, I'm not sure I get the complex part really. The childhood trauma and the trauma from DV years of it, that is what makes it complex. It isn't the same as treating for PTSD. Both my mother and my ex were trying to control and stop me from being who I am, they made everything I do feel wrong, ripped my confidence, self-esteem, put fear into me.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Another thing about this type of trauma, because there were multiple events across my life-time, I can jump from being triggered by events in my marriage to events in childhood, or my sister's suicide, multiple times in the day, even. It's not focused on one specific time, or event, there are so many things that can cause me to react.

 

[Chava]

I can jump from being triggered by events in my marriage to events in childhood, or my sister's suicide, multiple times in the day

My traumas, years apart, get glued together sometimes. I'm too tired to find a way to explain it, but one trigger sets up another, which is somehow related (like one body invasion trauma triggering another, or an invisibility trigger). The sense of being caught in all time at once is horrible. It's gotten better though, so something is working (as far as feeling more like I'm in the present most of the time)

 

[Queen Boudica]

but one trigger sets up another, which is somehow related (like one body invasion trauma triggering another, or an invisibility trigger). The sense of being caught in all time at once is horrible.

Yes that is exactly it. You've described it so well.

 

[Chava]

I think the murkiest part of all these globbed-together triggers and sensations are the very early memories which are not stored or recalled in normal narrative or picture form. It's taken some pretty slow and sensitive somatic psychotherapy for me to recognize when my immobilization was likely connected to a very early body memory. The way I would describe it would not relate to an actual memory: I felt like I was attached to weights and nearly submerged in water. Only the very top of my face was free...so if I'd more or even breathe too deeply, I would die. This is how I explained the sensation to my therapist. I could words to it, but it didn't match reality. And yet it totally matched the reality of what my body was sensing (likely related to not being able to breathe when born and again later on in early childhood)....you can't even breathe deep when you are suffocating because your body conserves EVERYTHING. Immobilization is a fact of being a helpless newborn, but for a young kid it is also a fact of survival when the body is not surviving on the inside.

Anyway, the body memories and early-early memories that get attached to later things (or even small present-day things, like bronchitis) are the most complicated for me. I understand freezing during sex and hopefully could work through that if I met a guy worth passing through my heavy boundaries. But the less obvious triggers and freezing or immobilizing have most likely been connected to the memories I don't really have in a normal or neatly organized way. That's also why the stuff keeps repeating, I suppose....

 

[Queen Boudica]

I do that a lot @Chava. I breathe very shallow, and not enough. She keeps telling me to breathe in pilates, I just hold on. It is like you can't breathe too deeply as, yes, that is your body moving. I used to sit very still in the nightmare house, listening, watching, like I wasn't there, invisible, if you were there she'd pull you into whatever were happening. If you sat very still, she was too into her World of madness and insanity to see you. Sat there watching her fight and say the most abusive things. She was fighting with a vicar once. His sons were climbing the trees that hung over our property, she didn't like it so was hosing them down. He came round, she launched into him. He ended up throwing a stone at her. She could provoke anyone. I was about 4, watched it all, then of course the vicar was evil for throwing a stone at her. Everyone was evil. She fought with everyone, friends, neighbours, family. And she would try and make you join in so you were on her side. She was fighting with another neighbour one time, hosing her down again. I was about 14 watching, she wanted me to join in, not sure what I was supposed to do. I told her no. Didn't half cop for that one afterwards. Utter lunatic.

 

[lux.]

Complex PTSD does not necessarily mean you qualify for a BPD diagnosis. CPTSD has never actually made it into the DSM for various reasons, but criteria for it have been proposed. (I guess I haven't posted enough on here to be allowed to include a link, but Google "complex ptsd criteria" and pick the first result to read the diagnostic criteria.) The diagnosis has been championed by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, possibly the foremost expert in trauma. Google him and you'll find a lot of great information and YouTube videos.

CPTSD includes symptoms from a few different diagnoses: PTSD, Dissociative Disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder, somatization complications (physical effects stemming from the mental symptoms), and some other stuff including a feeling of helplessness, a feeling of having been permanently damaged, or a sense of a foreshortened future. You don't have to have the full criteria for these included disorders, just some of them in each category.

CPTSD requires that you have a long-term trauma (such as years of childhood abuse) and/or more than one trauma. CPTSD usually stems from trauma in which one was unable or felt unable to escape (like when you're a helpless child or are forbidden to leave an abusive relationship). Many people who've experienced childhood trauma find themselves revictimized later in life because they are easy prey and sometimes come to expect and accept mistreatment.

I've always felt that my trauma in adulthood is my fault because I got myself into those situations and didn't try hard enough to get myself out. My therapists try to convince me that it's not my fault, but I still don't really believe it. I do believe that the childhood abuse was not my fault.

I just found out that I have a BPD diagnosis, which is new and no one told me about it. I don't really think I have it, but I certainly do have some of the symptoms--enough for a CPTSD diagnosis but probably not for BPD. The BPD diagnosis came from my psychiatrist and my therapist, who knows me much better, does not think I have it. I don't have the hot-and-cold relationships, frantic attempts to avoid abandonment, or suicidal threats.

Hope this helps!