Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

by Pete Walker

This is especially good news because what is learned can be unlearned and vice versa. What was not provided by your parents can now be provided by yourself and others.

Passive suicidality is far more common with the Cptsd survivors who I have known, and it ranges from wishing you were dead to fantasizing about ways to end your life. When lost in suicidal ideation, the survivor may even pray to be delivered from this life, or fantasize about being taken by some calamitous act of fate. He may even think or obsess - without being serious - of stepping in front of a car or jumping off a building. Fantasy typically ends, however, without a serious intent to kill yourself.

In other words, the role of traumatized childhoods in most adult psychological disorders is enormous.

Further confusion also arises in the case of ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder], as well as obsessive/compulsive disorder, both of which are sometimes more accurately described as fixated flight responses to trauma

I believe that many substance and process addictions also begin as misguided, maladaptations to parental abuse and abandonment. They are early adaptations that are attempts to soothe and distract from the mental, emotional and physical pain of Cptsd.

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. This fourfold response potential will heretofore be referred to as the 4Fs.

persistence – even more than intelligence or innate talent - is the key psychological characteristic necessary for finding fulfillment in life.

Self-criticism, then, runs non-stop in a desperate attempt to avoid rejection-inducing mistakes. Drasticizing becomes obsessive to help the child foresee and avoid punishment and worsening abandonment. At the same time, it continuously fills her psyche with stories and images of catastrophe.

All too often, your decisions are based on the fear of getting in trouble or getting abandoned, rather than on the principles of having meaningful and equitable interactions with the world. You can learn to gradually replace the critic’s toxic perspective with a viewpoint that supports you in your life, and that stops you from unnecessarily scaring yourself. You are free now as an adult to develop peace of mind and a supportive relationship with yourself. A self-championing stance can transform your existence from struggling survival to a fulfilling sense of thriving. You can begin right now by inviting your instincts of self-compassion and self-protection to awaken and bloom in your life.

Psychologically speaking, mindfulness is taking undistracted time to become fully aware of your thoughts and feelings so that you can have more choice in how you respond to them. Do I really agree with this thought, or have I been pressured into believing it? How do I want to respond to this feeling – distract myself from it, repress it, express it or just feel it until it changes into something else?

If instead, she learns to surrender willingly to the normal human experience that good feelings always ebb and flow, she will eventually be graced with a growing ability to renew herself in the vital waters of emotional flexibility.

Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest.