Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

by Pete Walker

When fear is the dominant emotion in a flashback the person feels extremely anxious, panicky or even suicidal. When despair predominates, a sense of profound numbness, paralysis and desperation to hide may occur. A sense of feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also commonly experienced in an emotional flashback, and all symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame.

Overwhelming self-disdain is typically a flashback to the way he felt when suffering the contempt and visual skewering of his traumatizing parent. Toxic shame can also be created by constant parental neglect and rejection.

Toxic shame can obliterate your self-esteem in the blink of an eye. In an emotional flashback you can regress instantly into feeling and thinking that you are as worthless and contemptible as your family perceived you. When you are stranded in a flashback, toxic shame devolves into the intensely painful alienation of the abandonment mélange - a roiling morass of shame, fear and depression.

List Of Common Cptsd Symptoms Survivors may not experience all of these. Varying combinations are common. Factors affecting this are your 4F type and your childhood abuse/neglect pattern. Emotional Flashbacks Tyrannical Inner &/or Outer Critic Toxic Shame Self-Abandonment Social anxiety Abject feelings of loneliness and abandonment Fragile Self-esteem Attachment disorder Developmental Arrests Relationship difficulties Radical mood vacillations [e.g., pseudo-cyclothymia: see chapter 12] Dissociation via distracting activities or mental processes Hair-triggered fight/flight response Oversensitivity to stressful situations Suicidal Ideation

Contempt is a toxic cocktail of verbal and emotional abuse, a deadly amalgam of denigration, rage and disgust. Rage creates fear, and disgust creates shame in the child in a way that soon teaches her to refrain from crying out, from ever asking for attention. Before long, the child gives up on seeking any kind of help or connection at all. The child’s bid for bonding and acceptance is thwarted, and she is left to suffer in the frightened despair of abandonment.

Emotional neglect also typically underlies most traumatizations that are more glaringly evident. Parents who routinely ignore or turn their backs on a child’s calls for attention, connection or help, abandon their child to unmanageable amounts of fear, and the child eventually gives up and succumbs to depressed, death-like feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. These types of rejection simultaneously magnify the child’s fear, and eventually add a coating of shame to it. Over time this fear and shame begets a toxic inner critic that holds the child, and later the adult, totally responsible for his parents’ abandonment, until he becomes his own worst enemy and descends into the bowels of Cptsd.

Trauma occurs when attack or abandonment triggers a fight/flight response so intensely that the person cannot turn it off once the threat is over. He becomes stuck in an adrenalized state. His sympathetic nervous system is locked “on” and he cannot toggle into the relaxation function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

When the trauma however is repetitive and ongoing and no help is available, the child may become so frozen in trauma that the symptoms of “simple” ptsd begin to set in. This can also occur during the prolonged trauma of combat or entrapment in a cult or domestic violence situation.

A fight response is triggered when a person suddenly responds aggressively to something threatening. A flight response is triggered when a person responds to a perceived threat by fleeing, or symbolically, by launching into hyperactivity. A freeze response is triggered when a person, realizing resistance is futile, gives up, numbs out into dissociation and/or collapses as if accepting the inevitability of being hurt. A fawn response is triggered when a person responds to threat by trying to be pleasing or helpful in order to appease and forestall an attacker.

Carol remained symbolically enthralled to the family by getting ensnared with narcissistic people who were just as abusive and neglectful as her parents. This well known psychological phenomenon is called repetition compulsion or reenactment, and trauma survivors are extremely susceptible to it.

David Mitchell’s quip that “…fire is the sun unwinding itself out of the wood”. Similarly, effective recovery is unwinding the natural potential you were born with out of your unconscious. This is your innate potential which may be, as yet, unrealized because of your childhood trauma. An especially tragic developmental arrest that afflicts many survivors is the loss of their will power and self-motivation.

The ability to invoke willpower seems to be allied to your ability to healthily express your anger. With sufficient recovering, you can learn to manufacture your volition. In the beginning you can fake it until you make it. This is what Stephen Johnson calls “the hard work miracle.”

Ninety-nine percent on a test was never a cause for pride. Rather, it was the impetus for a great deal of self-criticism about the missing one percent.

Perseverating on finding a formula to win over her parents, the child eventually embraces perfectionism as a strategy to make her parents less dangerous and more engaging. Her one hope is that if she becomes smart, helpful, pretty, and flawless enough, her parents will finally care for her. Sadly, continued failure at winning their regard forces her to conclude that she is fatally flawed. She is loveless not because of her mistakes, but because she is a mistake. She can only see what is wrong with or missing in her.

They do this by shaming or intimidating you whenever you have a natural impulse to have sympathy for yourself, or stand up for yourself. The instinct to care for yourself and to protect yourself against unfairness is then forced to become dormant.

Mindfulness is a perspective that weds your capacity for self-observation with your instinct of self-compassion. It is therefore your ability to observe yourself from an objective and self-accepting viewpoint. It is a key function of a healthily developed ego and is sometimes described as the observing ego or the witnessing self.

Mindfulness is a perspective of benign curiosity about all of your inner experience. Recovery is enhanced immeasurably by developing this helpful process of introspection. As it becomes more developed, mindfulness can be used to recognize and dis-identify from beliefs and viewpoints that you acquired from your traumatizing family.

For just as without night there is no day, without work there is no play, without hunger there is no satiation, without fear there is no courage, without tears there is no joy, and without anger, there is no real love. Most people, who choose or are coerced into only identifying with “positive” feelings, usually wind up in an emotionally lifeless middle ground – bland, deadened, and dissociated in an unemotional “no-man’s-land.”

One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments.

The human feeling experience, much like the weather, is often unpredictably changeable. No “positive” feeling can be induced to persist as a permanent experience, no matter what Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy tells us. As disappointing as this may be, as much as we might like to deny it, as much as it causes each of us ongoing life frustration, and as much as we were raised and continue to be reinforced for trying to control and pick our feelings, they are still by definition of the human condition, largely outside the province of our wills.

John Bradshaw describes the devastation of the child’s emotional nature as “soul murder”. He explains this as involving a process where the child’s emotional expression [his first language of self-expression] is so assaulted with disgust that any emotional experience immediately devolves into toxic shame.

our emotions tell us what is really important to us. When our emotional intelligence is restricted, we often do not know what we really want, and can consequently struggle mightily with even the smallest decisions.

The inner critic is sometimes so hostile to grieving that shrinking the critic may need to be your first recovery priority. Until the critic is sufficiently tamed, grieving can actually make flashbacks worse, rather than perform the restorative processes it alone can initiate.

A key aspect of the abandonment depression in Cptsd is the lack of a sense of belonging to humanity, life, anyone or anything. I have met many survivors whose first glimmer of “belonging” came to them on a quest that began as a spiritual pursuit. Finding nothing but betrayal in the realm of humans, they turned to the spiritual for help.

Spiritual pursuits are sometimes fueled by an unconscious hope of finding a sense of belonging. The worst thing that can happen to a child is to be unwelcomed in his family of origin - to never feel included.

A numinous experience is a powerful moving feeling of well being accompanied by a sense that there is a positive, benign force behind the universe, as well as within yourself. This in turn sometimes brings enough grace with it, that you have a profound feeling that you are essentially worthwhile, that you belong in this life, and that life is a gift.

“It was a moment of breathtaking beauty and the tears slid down my face at how deep it is possible to feel. I have been numb for so long. I wrapped my arms around myself and felt the presence of the little one so strongly it was almost painful but in a healing way if that makes sense. I realized that all the life experiences I have had to date brought me to that exact moment and gave me the depth to appreciate it at that level. A sense of peace washed through me like a gentle wave and for a few moments I felt a connection to a feeling of everything being part of life. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I felt like I was experiencing this moment with all of my senses and I never knew it was possible to be so much in my body.

“The gratitude feeling is deep and profound when it occurs. It feels like a moment of connection to life itself on the deepest level and all life circumstances and what I deem as problems pale to insignificance in those moments and there is only love in its purest form. It truly feels like a blessing albeit fleeting but gives enough sustenance and hope to continue the journey.”

Here are some of the most common examples of body-harming reactions to Cptsd stress: Hypervigilance Shallow and Incomplete Breathing Constant Adrenalization Armoring, i.e., Chronic muscle tightness Wear and tear from rushing and armoring Inability to be fully present, relaxed and grounded in our bodies Sleep problems from being over-activated Digestive disorders from a tightened digestive tract Physiological damage from excessive self-medication with alcohol, food or drugs

I could not sleep, and as sleep deprivation deteriorated into a fear that I was truly going crazy, out of nowhere came this amazing grace. Grace disguised in a form I usually abhorred. It was the grace of a deep surrender into weeping - a long sobbing release more soothing than anything I had ever experienced before.

When a child’s mothering needs are adequately met, self-compassion is installed at the core of her being. When the same is true of her fathering needs, self-protection also becomes deeply imbedded. Self-compassion is the domicile of recovery, and self-protection is its foundation. When self-compassion is sufficiently established as a “home base” to return to in difficult times, an urge to be self-protective naturally arises from it. Living in the world without access to these primal instincts of survival is truly terrifying.

Self-mothering is based on the precept that unconditional love is every child’s birthright. Recovering from the loss of unconditional love is problematic. Not getting enough of it as children was the greatest loss we had. Sadly, this loss can never be completely remediated, because unconditional love is only appropriate and developmentally helpful during the first two years or so of life.

Self-mothering is a resolute refusal to indulge in self-hatred and self-abandonment. It proceeds from the realization that self-punishment is counterproductive. It is enhanced by the understanding that patience and self-encouragement are more effective than self-judgment and self-rejection in achieving recovery.

You can enhance your self-mothering skills by imaginatively creating a safe place in your heart where your inner child and your present time self are always welcome. Consistent tenderness towards yourself welcomes the child into the adult body you now inhabit, and shows him that it is now a nurturing place protected by a warm and powerful adult.

“Thoughts - just mere thoughts - are as powerful as electric batteries - as good for you as sunlight is, or as bad for you as poison.”

Reparenting Affirmations I am so glad you were born. You are a good person. I love who you are and am doing my best to always be on your side. You can come to me whenever you’re feeling hurt or bad. You do not have to be perfect to get my love and protection. All of your feelings are okay with me. I am always glad to see you. It is okay for you to be angry and I won’t let you hurt yourself or others when you are. You can make mistakes - they are your teachers. You can know what you need and ask for help. You can have your own preferences and tastes. You are a delight to my eyes. You can choose your own values. You can pick your own friends, and you don’t have to like everyone. You can sometimes feel confused and ambivalent, and not know all the answers. I am very proud of you.

Alice was such a survivor. Her family traumatized her during childhood so thoroughly that she quickly learned that being vulnerable around others was dangerous, foolish and totally out of the question. Yet the urge to get the support and the help she was so unfairly deprived of worked its way back into her awareness via a strong attraction to self-help books. By reading a great deal of psychology, she eventually found enough help that she began to think that there might be a kind, safe and helpful person out there in the flesh and entered into some very helpful therapy.

A further sign of recovering is a gradual increase in your ability to relax. With this comes an increasing ability to resist overreacting from a triggered position. This further allows you to use your fight, flight, freeze and fawn instincts in healthy and non-self-destructive ways. This means you only fight back when under real attack, only flee when odds are insurmountable, only freeze when you need to go into acute observation mode, and only fawn when it is appropriate to be self-sacrificing.

Advanced recovery also correlates with letting go of the salvation fantasy that you will never have another flashback. Giving up the salvation fantasy is another one of those two steps forward, one step backward processes. We typically have to wrestle with denial a great deal to increasingly accept the unfair reality that we will never be totally flashback-free. Unless we do however, we impair our ability to easily recognize and quickly respond to flashbacks from a position of self-compassion, self-soothing and self-protection.

The phase of intensely grieving our childhood losses can last for a couple of years. When sufficient progress is made in grieving, the survivor naturally drops down into the next level of recovery work. This involves working through fear by grieving our loss of safety in the world. At this level, we also learn to work through our toxic shame by grieving the loss of our self-esteem. As we become more adept in this type of deep level grieving, we are then ready to address the core issue of our trauma – the abandonment depression itself.

Effective recovery is often limited to only progressing in one or two areas at a time. Biting off more than we can chew and trying to accomplish too much too soon is often counterproductive. As a flight type, I spent years in mid-range recovery workaholically spinning my wheels trying to fix and change everything at once.

Once the critic is reduced enough that you can notice increasing periods of your brain being user-friendly, impulses to help and care for yourself naturally begin to arise. As this happens it becomes easier to tell whether you are guiding yourself with love or a whip. When you realize it’s the whip, please try to disarm your critic and treat yourself with the kindness you would extend to any young child who is struggling and having a hard time.

But when we practice critic-shrinking in a gradually increasing way over time, we can more consistently disidentify from its negative focus and switch to a more self-supportive perspective. Eventually a new positive habit of rescuing ourselves from shame and self-hate takes on its own life. I still have my unfair share of flashbacks, but rarely do I ever side with my toxic critic.

Any self-help practices that we are trying to make second nature often work in this way. When we practice enough, self-help starts to become a matter of common sense. It reverberates as right action and gradually takes on its own life as we attune to the true nature of our spirits and souls which are inherently self-supportive.

We also aid our recovery greatly by challenging the all-or-none thinking of the critic whenever it judges us for not being perfect in our efforts. “Progress not perfection” is a powerful mantra for guiding our self-help recovery efforts.

Moreover as recovering progresses, and especially as the critic shrinks, the desire to help yourself- to care for yourself - becomes more spontaneous. This is especially true when we mindfully do things for ourselves in a spirit of loving-kindness. As such, we can do it for the child we were – the child who was deprived through no fault of her own. And, we can do it because we believe every child, without exception, deserves loving care.

Perhaps the ultimate dimension of this is what I call the Surviving ←→ Thriving continuum. Before we enter into recovery, it may feel like life is nothing but a struggle to survive. However, when recovery progresses enough, we begin to have some experiences of feeling like we are thriving. These may start out as feelings of optimism, hopefulness and certainty that we are indeed recovering. And then, the bottom inevitably drops out because recovery is never all forward progress. Oh so unfairly, we are back to feeling that we can barely survive. To make matters worse, we are amnesiac that we even had a respite from surviving. Another flashback has hit and we polarize back onto the surviving end of the continuum. We are stuck in the anxious and deadened feelings of the abandonment mélange.

Once again, it is important to repeat that this feeling-state is a flashback to the worst times in childhood when our will to live was so compromised. As mindfulness improves we can recognize suicidal ideation as evidence of a flashback and begin to rescue ourselves with the chapter 8 flashback management steps. As recovery progresses, polarizations back into survival mode do not take us to the utter despair end of the continuum so often. Nonetheless survival mode can still feel pretty awful, especially when it is characterized by high anxiety or immobilizing depression.

believe regressions are sometimes a call from our psyche to address important developmental arrests. In this case, it is the need to learn unrelenting self-acceptance during a period of extended difficulty. It is also the need to develop a staunch and unyielding sense of self-protection. This fundamental instinct of fiery willingness to defend ourselves from unfairness needs to strengthen progressively so that we can withstand inner critic attacks.

Yet as recovery and mindfulness increase we begin to notice that this type of self-medicating indicates that we are in a survival-flashback. We are no longer authentically on the thriving end of the continuum. We have compounded our regression, by regressing further - by self-medicating to unnaturally prolong a preferred experience. At such times, we benefit most by reinvoking our intention to practice self-acceptance – by recommitting to being there for ourselves no matter where we are on the continuum.