Trauma that gives you PTSD symptoms VS trauma that breaks you

[Ecdysis]

Growing up, I experienced the kind of trauma that gives you PTSD. It was awful but it made sense. The symptoms made sense, the treatment made sense.

As an adult, I've experienced the kind of trauma that breaks you. I have no idea how to deal with it or what to do. Nothing seens to help. I don't even have the words for it. I don't even know what it is. I feel like I died inside.

Prior to this, I didn't even realise there was a category of trauma worse than what gives you PTSD.

It makes sense tho, if I look at it historically. I know people going through catastrophic trauma can have reactions other than PTSD symptoms. You hear of people whose hair goes white over night, or who go mute for the rest of their lives or who have a psychotic break from the experience of the trauma.

I've always assumed that kind of massive trauma response only happens in situations like experiencing a genocide or having your entire village wiped out by a tsunami and you're the sole survivor and everything you've previously known is gone.

But it seems it can happen due to other causes too.

Have you experienced both kinds of trauma and trauma response? In yourself or others?

What is this other type of trauma? When I research trauma, all I really find is the "normal" PTSD causing kind.

I feel like I lack an entire vocabulary to talk anout this other kind of trauma.

Is it more common in military/ war related trauma?

 

[michelle2025]

Are you looking for a type of trauma that the brain can't accept, and just totally blocks it? I learned to analyze things, such as knowing what boys do to boys in bed. But knowing that doesn't really happen. Wondering where the thought comes from. The other boy was a christian boy that would never do such a thing. No way am I ever going to sleep in his bed again. By the way I was about 9 years old, he was about 13. I don't remember getting raped, but the clues say I did. I still question if it really happened. How do I talk to a therapist about a trauma that I don't remember?

Something simpler, blame it on my sister. Suddenly, my sister says "don't talk like that," when I wasn't even saying anything. My grandma happens to be at the window, and I get called into the house, and my mouth is washed out with soap. Being Christian, she can't speak the words that are forbidden to be spoken. Not knowing what words are forbidden, I just go mute. Easy since I'm autistic and mostly mute anyway. There also seemed to be an attitude from my parents that children should be seen and not heard.

In grade school, using the urinal in the boys room, suddenly I'm spun around by the boy behind me. What happened after that is completely blank. Maybe he wanted to see if I was really was a boy, since I was very feminine. Anyway, I think that when he spun me around, I peed on his leg. I can only guess at what happened after that. This is one that affects me the rest of my life. feminine guys get beat up in the men's room. I am unable to use the men's restroom if another person is present.
I mentioned not being able to pee to my therapist and it got called shy bladder. The last time I entered a men's restroom the cashier yelled that I was entering the wrong one. For my safety, I painted my nails, and put on my earrings. I already had long hair and nails. I have had no complaints from anyone in the ladies restroom. I'm also transgender.
Michelle

 

[Freida]

What is this other type of trauma?

That's why they call it C(complex)PSTD. It's complex. It's layers and layers of trauma that can range from simple one-and-done to things that destroy your view of, well, everything.

Have you experienced both kinds of trauma and trauma response? In yourself or others?

yepper.
You see it a lot around this site - people who live thru trauma after trauma and are now trying to get a handle on where to go next because their brain is no longer wired "right" to start with.

It was awful but it made sense. The symptoms made sense, the treatment made sense.

Here's how my ts have explained it to me. With a "normal" trauma there is an ABC to it. Bad thing happens, but bad thing makes sense. Think car crash or domestic violence or assaults or child abuse or that type of thing.

Will they mess you up and cause ptsd? Yep. Don't think for one minute that I'm negating them or making them somehow less important or impactful. Because they are awful and horrible and can take a long time to recover from.

I think the difference you are asking about is that those traumas have a beginning, a middle and an end. So when therapy starts its going to be just as hard, but there is a starting point and a linear experience to work with.

The break-your-brain trauma doesn't have that. This kind of trauma strips away reality as you know it because there is no pattern to it. It affects every level of what makes you, you. It takes away everything that you know as real and replaces it with confusion. You walk away unable to understand what happened on an emotional or moral or spiritual or intellectual level. It makes you question your own identity - which is usually what it's designed to do. You see it in prisoners or child soldiers or torture victims or sex trafficking victims or long term child abuse. People who survive things that are not supposed to be survivable.

Treatment for that means finding what's left of your soul and trying to bring it back. And because it broke your brain it isn't going to make any sense for a long, long time. There are therapists out there who can treat it, emdr can help, talking with others who've been there is huge, but it's going to be harder to treat simply because there is no 1.2.3. It's more like 1.G.yellow.Apple

or at least, so they tell me

 

[arfie]

hmmmmm..... i never thunkered on it, but now that i have i find myself wondering if that breaking point is the diff between normal post-traumatic stress and the disorder. the normal pts, you are hurt but not broken. the breaking point is what ushers in the disorder of ptsd.

just thinking while i admit i haven't cared enough to do the research.

 

[whiteraven]

What @Frieda said!

 

[Susan Jane]

Growing up, I experienced the kind of trauma that gives you PTSD. It was awful but it made sense. The symptoms made sense, the treatment made sense.

As an adult, I've experienced the kind of trauma that breaks you. I have no idea how to deal with it or what to do. Nothing seens to help. I don't even have the words for it. I don't even know what it is. I feel like I died inside.

Prior to this, I didn't even realise there was a category of trauma worse than what gives you PTSD.

It makes sense tho, if I look at it historically. I know people going through catastrophic trauma can have reactions other than PTSD symptoms. You hear of people whose hair goes white over night, or who go mute for the rest of their lives or who have a psychotic break from the experience of the trauma.

I've always assumed that kind of massive trauma response only happens in situations like experiencing a genocide or having your entire village wiped out by a tsunami and you're the sole survivor and everything you've previously known is gone.

But it seems it can happen due to other causes too.

Have you experienced both kinds of trauma and trauma response? In yourself or others?

What is this other type of trauma? When I research trauma, all I really find is the "normal" PTSD causing kind.

I feel like I lack an entire vocabulary to talk anout this other kind of trauma.

Is it more common in military/ war related trauma?

Look under CPTSD… @Freida the two types of trauma are similar from what I have researched. A CPTSD diagnosis is not always recognized as the diagnosis PTSD. I understand your interest as I could understand myself. I think both things can break people… The source is different but the symptoms… not aware of the difference. My experience is that it broke me at 54, when my son was older… the symptoms were identical just more pronounced. I stopped speaking and stayed in bed and couldn’t turn over without help. This time I could speak but didn’t want to and laid in bed for a spell but not as deep. It burns me out yes… but this time I didn’t go to the hospital because mental hospitals make me worse. I didn’t ask for ECT, instead I ask friends to help me. In the end I used IV Ketamine which help pull me back up.

 

[Ecdysis]

Hmm, no, I don't mean CPTSD.

I literally mean "trauma that breaks you" as opposed to PTSD or CPTSD.

I think people who've experienced the kind of trauma that breaks you, know what that means.

And probably, people who haven't experienced it (like I didn't, until I did) don't *really* understand what is meant by it. Until you experience it yourself, you probably only have a kind of academic understanding of what it might be like?

 

[WinnieThePoohChris]

I get you. I lack the words myself. You aren't actually broken but something else is, I would say no one here is truly broken. The broken ones are those who do bad things and dont care or are happy.

With the right help and people around you, deal with it one step at a time. Ask questions, search and check things for yourself. Trust but verify.

Don't harm yourself or others, dont let people create a different reality for you. Trust in yourself, if you are asking questions and looking to heal, that's a good sign.

Build yourself back up and put yourself back together, learn who you were, are and who you want to be. Try to stay safe, survive, until then.

Takes a long time, if you're lucky nice, kind people can make it a little easier.

 

[Flgirl]

I was sexually abused starting at about age 4 by my father but I never remembered anything other than being held down. I was also sexually abused by a neighbor at age 9. I never told anyone until I started talking to a therapist. When I was 17 my sister accused my father of the abuse, during an argument with my mother. I denied it because I didn’t remember anything and it was never mention again until I spoke to my therapist. My mother never knew. I carried it around with me until I was 56. My therapist was great and she did an EMDR session with bilateral tapping to move the memory from the front part of my brain to the back so it wouldn’t arise when I got dementia, if I did. She diagnosed me with C-PTSD and encouraged me to find a support group for Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors.
I did not have a usual life and have battled anxiety and depression since I was probably 9 but didn’t get diagnosed until I was 24, when I had a breakdown.
I have started reading a book called The Body Keeps Score and have found it very interesting.

 

[Freida]

I literally mean "trauma that breaks you" as opposed to PTSD or CPTSD.

ahh this.
Well, here's how t explained it to me.
Currently in the dsm there is no category for people who have survived the brain breaking. Not because it doesn't occur, but because it is so rare to survive that the powers that be haven't really classified it. And, since those people rarely make it into therapy, or get misdiagnosed if they do, it's hard to quantify.
So they stick the label of cptsd on it, to indicate multiple significant or catastrophic traumas

if that makes sense?

And probably, people who haven't experienced it (like I didn't, until I did) don't *really* understand what is meant by it. Until you experience it yourself, you probably only have a kind of academic understanding of what it might be like?

Yep - what you read in a book vs what happens in the reality. Don't get me wrong, the book can be helpful. But lived experience will always be a different thing.

When I found out other people here knew what I meant by the cracking noise I heard when it happened, and that they had heard it too? It totally rocked my world because it was a validation I could't get from someone who had read about it or studied it. Not implying learning doesnt help - you have to have knowledge of that kind of trauma to treat it. But it made me feel so much less crazy to have someone say "I heard that too!".

 

[Friday]

I had a reeeeeeeally long, really personal, answer… that I worked on for days. That I had to back away from. And I may or may not rewrite.

Bottom line? They’re different. Damn straight.

 

[Ecdysis]

Thanks @Friday