Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

by Pete Walker

I sometimes recommend that readers view the table of contents and start with whatever headings most strike a chord. Although the book is laid out in a somewhat linear fashion, everyone’s journey of recovering is different, and journeys can be initiated in a variety of ways.

First, the good news about Cptsd. It is a learned set of responses, and a failure to complete numerous important developmental tasks. This means that it is environmentally, not genetically, caused. In other words, unlike most of the diagnoses it is confused with, it is neither inborn nor characterological. As such, it is learned. It is not inscribed in your DNA. It is a disorder caused by nurture [or rather the lack of it] not nature.

Emotional flashbacks are perhaps the most noticeable and characteristic feature of Cptsd. Survivors of traumatizing abandonment are extremely susceptibility to painful emotional flashbacks, which unlike ptsd do not typically have a visual component.

Emotional flashbacks are also accompanied by intense arousals of the fight/flight instinct, along with hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system, the half of the nervous system that controls arousal and activation. 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.

The abandonment mélange is the fear and toxic shame that surrounds and interacts with the abandonment depression. The abandonment depression itself is the deadened feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that afflicts traumatized children.

I have witnessed many clients with Cptsd misdiagnosed with various anxiety and depressive disorders. Moreover, many are also unfairly and inaccurately labeled with bipolar, narcissistic, codependent, autistic spectrum and borderline disorders. [This is not to say that Cptsd does not sometimes co-occur with these disorders.]

Reducing Cptsd to “panic disorder” is like calling food allergies chronically itchy eyes. Over-focusing treatment on the symptoms of panic in the former case and eye health in the latter does little to get at root causes. Feelings of panic or itchiness in the eyes can be masked with medication, but all the associated problems that cause these symptoms will remain untreated.

most of the diagnoses mentioned above are typically treated as innate characterological defects rather than as learned maladaptations to stress – adaptations that survivors were forced to learn as traumatized children. And, most importantly, because these adaptations were learned, they can often be extinguished or significantly diminished, and replaced with more functional adaptations to stress.

my own flight response got channeled into acquiring academic skills for which the outside world rewarded me. But the benefit of these rewards never penetrated my toxic shame enough to allow me to feel that I was a worthwhile person.

Cognitive recovery work aims to make your brain user friendly. It focuses on recognizing and eliminating the destructive thoughts and thinking processes you were indoctrinated with in childhood.

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.

The survivor becomes imprisoned by a jailer who will accept nothing but perfection. He is chauffeured by a hysterical driver who sees nothing but danger in every turn of the road. Chapters 9 and 10 focus extensively on practical tools for shrinking your critic.

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.

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?

Mindfulness is a perspective that weds your capacity for self-observation with your instinct of self-compassion.

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.”

I believe the quality of our emotional intelligence is reflected in the degree to which we accept all of our feelings without automatically dissociating from them or expressing them in a way that hurts ourselves or others.

Another way of saying this is that I have self-esteem to the degree that I keep my heart open to myself in all my emotional states. And, I have intimacy when my friend and I offer this type of emotional acceptance to each other. Once again, this does not condone destructive expressions of anger which are, of course, counterproductive to trust and intimacy.

“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.”

All my relationships had been developed under the guise of my people-pleasing, funny guy persona, and in my current state there was not a joke anywhere to be found.

More and more research suggests that our ability to metabolize painful emotional states is enhanced by communicating with a safe enough other person.

Many of the successful therapies I have guided come to an end when the client gains an earned secure relationship outside of our therapy. This is typically a partner or best friend with whom the person can truly be themselves.

One caveat for recovering the ability to authentically be yourself is that it is unreasonable and unfair to expect anyone to accept you if you are being abusively angry or contemptuous. Some trauma survivors flashback into this type of behavior by acting out from their Outer Critic. If this is an issue for you, chapter 10 provides guidance for deconstructing this intimacy-destroying habit.

We survivors often struggle with managing our understandable but unrealistic yearnings to receive permanent unconditional love from a friend or partner.

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.

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

It is okay for you to be angry and I won’t let you hurt yourself or others when you are.

While self-mothering focuses primarily on healing the wounds of neglect, self-fathering heals the wounds of being helpless to protect yourself from parental abuse, and by extension from other abusive authority figures.

The Tao of relational recovery involves balancing healthy independence with healthy dependence on others.

recovery from Cptsd is complex. Sometimes, it can feel so hopelessly complex that we totally give up and get stuck in inertia for considerable lengths of time. This is why it is so important to understand that recovery is gradual and frequently a backwards and forwards process.

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.

I am proud and right to see how they tried to murder my soul. I give them their shame back as disgust

beautiful

Research shows that just as too much stress creates a biochemical condition that damages neurons in the brain, too little stress leads to the atrophy, death and lack of replacement of old neurons. This is why lifelong learning is widely recognized as one of the key practices necessary to avoid Alzheimer’s disease.

the survivor learns to “follows his own bliss”. He is freer to pursue activities and interests that naturally appeal to him. He evolves into his own sense of style. He may even feel emboldened to coif and dress himself without adherence to the standards of fashion. He may extend this freedom into his home décor. In this vein, I have seen many survivors discover their own aesthetic, as well as an increased appreciation of beauty in general.