What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

by Stephanie Foo

The difference between regular PTSD and complex PTSD is that traditional PTSD is often associated with a moment of trauma. Sufferers of complex PTSD have undergone continual abuse—trauma that has occurred over a long period of time, over the course of years. Child abuse is a common cause of complex PTSD,”

She cried all the time in the privacy of our home—ugly, bent-in-half sobs—but she never fell apart in public, and the sight alarmed me.

How would I know how I felt? It was so many years ago. I was so young. But if I had to guess, I’d say it probably felt fucking bad.

Finally, the tears came. It didn’t matter if my parents were proud of me. I was proud of me, and that was the most important thing. Because I had done this. I’d gotten myself here with my own hard work.

In order to do that, Lacey said, she’d needed time and space. Long walks in the middle of the day to practice holding awkward, painful new revelations. The ability to step away from her writing when she felt overwhelmed and sad. “The important thing was learning how to take good care of myself. To treat myself kindly,” she told me. And

What entitlement. What privilege, to just let life fall to the wayside, to stop working and pretending and just fall apart.

“The adults who had been abused as children often had trouble concentrating, complained of always being on edge, and were filled with self-loathing. They had enormous trouble negotiating intimate relationships,” van der Kolk writes. “They also had large gaps in their memories, often engaged in self-destructive behaviors, and had a host of medical problems.

When I was sixteen, I was the main subject of gossip in our family. My father called his entire family disconsolately multiple times a week, seeking comfort and complaining about me.

So many boyfriends, dragged unwillingly to these awkward meals, asked me why I bothered going in the first place. So many therapists asked me why I retained a relationship with my father when it was clear he put in the bare minimum of effort.

“He never hit me, but in his mind, he was like, ‘I didn’t hit you. And physical abuse isn’t even a really big deal. What’s the problem with my verbal abuse?’ ”

Estrangement is not freeing. It has not felt joyful. It has not been happy. It has only felt necessary, and even that is something I question all the time: Does this make me selfish? Does it make me cruel?

It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn’t get.

Again, women who experienced childhood trauma are 80 percent more likely to experience painful endometriosis.[4] They’re much more likely to develop premenstrual dysphoric disorder. More likely to develop fibroids.[5] It may affect fertility.[6] They’re at greater risk for postpartum depression[7] and depression in menopause.[8]

“They always have to come to the abuser with an apology. But it’s never about them having their own needs. It’s not a mutuality thing. It’s a one-way street.”

had invited a cousin and an aunt, but I did not invite my parents. The decision was painful, but at the end of the day, I wanted to be surrounded by people who loved me.