Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

by Pete Walker

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.

Cptsd is a more severe form of Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is delineated from this better known trauma syndrome by five of its most common and troublesome features: emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment, a vicious inner critic and social anxiety.

Emotional neglect also typically underlies most traumatizations that are more glaringly evident.

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.

Codependency is a fear-based inability to express rights, needs and boundaries in relationship. It is a disorder of assertiveness, characterized by a dormant

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself”. - Jane Eyre

“You totally ruined my childhood, and I’m not going to let you get away with ruining my life now.”

When we become lost in this process, we miss out on our crucial emotional need to experience a sense of belonging. We live in permanent estrangement oscillating between the extremes of too good for others or too unlikeable to be included.

These losses have to be grieved until the person really gets how much her caretakers were not caretakers, and how much her parents were not her allies. She needs to grieve until she stops blaming herself for their abuse and/or neglect.

“Feeling is the antithesis of pain…the more pain one feels, the less pain one suffers”

I believe that emotional tiredness comes from not resting enough in a safe relationship with yourself or with another.