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Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is the name that has been used to describe the mental, emotional, and behavioral adaptations that many people who have survived ongoing, repeated trauma (often in childhood with significant others like parents) have used to survive.

These adaptations are often thought of and treated like symptoms when, in reality, they are wise, efficient strategies that have helped the individual to organize and tolerate their experience and that allows them to function in the face of ongoing terror and threat.

These strategies, once lifesaving, persist long after the trauma is over and can now consume a person's energy and ability to function without a preoccupation (conscious or unconscious, real or perceived) with danger.

IN CHILDHOOD

• ongoing emotional and/or psychological abuse
• chronic neglect
• narcissistic parenting
• identity suppression

IN ADULTHOOD

• psychological abuse
• coercive controlling relationships
• long-term intimate partner abuse
• being in captivity (e.g., cults)

Nervous System Dysregulation

Your body does not feel safe, even when there is no danger present.

• Chronic anxiety
• Hypervigilance (being always "on guard," easily startled)
• "Freeze" responses (becoming immobilized, numb, or dissociated; chronic exhaustion; social withdrawal)

Emotional Flashbacks

You suddenly, without apparent cause, feel:

• Ashamed
• Trapped
• Worthless
• Helpless
• Overwhelmed
• Unsafe
• "Small"

Lack of "Self-Leadership"

You don't fully know who you are because you were shaped around survival.

• People-pleasing
• "Fawning"
• Perfectionism
• Fixing others
• Over-responsibility
• Self-blame
• Shame

Relational Trauma

You learned that LOVE = DANGER.

• "Trauma bonding"
• Fear of abandonment
• Fear of closeness
• Hyper-independence
• Tolerating mistreatment
• Attraction to unsafe people
• Confusion between intensity and intimacy

Nervous System Exhaustion

Results of the body being in chronic survival mode:

• Chronic fatigue
• Pain syndromes
• Autoimmune disorders
• GI issues
• "Brain fog"
• Sleep disorders
• Fibromyalgia
• Dysautonomia