CPTSD

Complex PTSD or ‘CPTSD’ describes the results of ongoing, inescapable, relational trauma. Unlike Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD always involves being hurt by another person. These hurts are ongoing, repeated, and often involving a betrayal and loss of safety.

It is estimated that 70% of adults or 223.4 million people in the United States have experienced at least one form of trauma in their lifetime, as reported by the National Council for Behavioral Health (NCBH) in 2013. In addition, 90% of childhood sexual abuse victims, 33% of children exposed to community violence, and 77% of children exposed to school shootings develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (NCBH).

Humans require safe people, safe places, and safe things during childhood and adolescence in order for healthy brain development to take place. Many adult survivors of complex trauma, having experienced this loss of safety, had no agency over themselves or their environment during critical times in brain development for extended periods of time.

This loss of agency during their early years stunted their growth, depriving them of the opportunity to create the lives they deserved, and has ultimately left many stripped of their sense of worth and sense of self. Without the ability to understand what has happened, young survivors grow up to be adults who live in the same constant state of hypervigilance and suffering, even after escaping physical danger.

Adult survivors of complex trauma often experience amnesia, alienation, chronic mistrust, chronic physical pain, re-victimization, debilitating flashbacks, nightmares, body memories, anxiety, dissociation, trouble with regulating volatile emotions, severe depression, toxic shame, auto-immune disease, along with other deeply distressing and potentially life-altering symptoms.