Complex PTSD Quotes

“Like the soldier overlong in combat, ptsd sets in because you feel as if you are constantly under attack. Unfortunately, internal attack is now added to external attack, and you become locked into hypervigilance and sympathetic nervous system arousal.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“HELPING KIDS MANAGE EMOTIONAL FLASHBACKS This list is for social workers, teachers, relatives, neighbors and friends to help children from traumatizing families. It is adapted from the steps at the beginning of this chapter. Depending on the age of the child, some steps will be more appropriate than others. Even if you are not in a position to help other kids, please read this list at least once for the benefit of your own inner child. Help the child develop an awareness of flashbacks [inside “owies”]: “When have you felt like this before? Is this how it feels when someone is being mean to you?” Demonstrate that “Feeling in danger does not always mean you are in danger.” Teach that some places are safer than others. Use a soft, easy tone of voice: “Maybe you can relax a little with me.” “You’re safe here with me.” “No one can hurt you here.” Model that there are adults interested in his care and protection. Aim to become the child’s first safe relationship. Connect the child with other safe nurturing adults, groups, or clubs. Speak soothingly and reassuringly to the child. Balance “Love & Limits:” 5 positives for each negative. Set limits kindly. Guide the child’s mind back into her body to reduce hyper-vigilance and hyperarousal. a. Teach systemic relaxation of all major muscle groups b. Teach deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing c. Encourage slowing down to reduce fear-increasing rushing d. Teach calming centering practices like drawing, Aikido, Tai Chi, yoga, stretching e. Identify and encourage retreat to safe places Teach “use-your-words.” In some families it’s dangerous to talk. Verbal ventilation releases pain and fear, and restores coping skills. Facilitate grieving the death of feeling safe. Abuse and neglect beget sadness and anger. Crying releases fear. Venting anger in a way that doesn’t hurt the person or others creates a sense of safety. Shrink the Inner Critic. Make the brain more user-friendly. Heighten awareness of negative self-talk and fear-based fantasizing. Teach thought-stopping and thought substitution: Help the child build a memorized list of his qualities, assets, successes, resources. Help the child identify her 4F type & its positive side. Use metaphors, songs, cartoons or movie characters. Fight: Power Rangers; Flight: Roadrunner, Bob the Builder; Freeze: Avatar; Fawn: Grover. Educate about the right/need to have boundaries, to say no, to protest unfairness, to seek the protection of responsible adults. Identify and avoid dangerous people, places and activities. [Superman avoids Kryptonite. Shaq and Derek Jeter don’t do drugs.] Deconstruct eternity thinking. Create vivid pictures of attainable futures that are safer, friendlier, and more prosperous. Cite examples of comparable success stories.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Quadruplets Laughing”].”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“We live in an emotionally impoverished culture, and those who stick with a long term recovery process are often rewarded with emotional intelligence far beyond the norm. This is somewhat paradoxical, as survivors of childhood trauma are initially injured more grievously in their emotional natures than those in the general population.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“The critic’s black-and-white assessment is: “Either I’m cured or I’m still hopelessly defective.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Unstructured social situations however, like attending parties or just hanging out can be considerably more triggering. Spontaneous self-expression feels like the same setup for disaster that it was in childhood.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“as a child the survivor grew up without a safe adult to healthily bond with. As bears repeating, Cptsd almost always has emotional neglect at its core. A key outcome of this is that the child has no one in his formative years who models the relational skills that are necessary to create intimacy. When the developmental need to practice healthy relating with a caretaker is unmet, survivors typically struggle to find and maintain healthy supportive relationships in their adult lives.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“children who are traumatically abandoned naturally turn to food for comfort.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“helpful somatic techniques include Rosen Work, Rolfing, Rebirthing and Reichian work. These techniques can also be very helpful in aiding the recovery of the ability to therapeutically emote both tears and anger.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“freeze types and freeze subtypes also typically benefit from various types of movement therapy and aerobic exercise regimes. Moreover, assertiveness training and anger release work are especially helpful for survivors who have difficulty accessing their assertiveness or instincts of self-protection.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Particularly potent help also comes from the grieving work of reclaiming the ability to cry self-compassionately and to express anger self-protectively. Both processes can release armoring, promote embodiment, improve sleep, decrease hyperarousal and encourage deeper and more rhythmic breathing.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“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”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“This results from the fact that 4F activation tightens and contracts your body in anticipation of the need to fight back, flee, get small to escape notice, or rev up to launch into people-pleasing activity.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Emotional abuse/neglect scares us out of our own emotions while simultaneously making us terrified of other people’s feelings.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“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.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“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.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Ego”, contrary to popular usage, is not a dirty word. In psychology, the term ego represents what we typically mean when we use terms like my “self” or my identity. The healthy ego is the user friendly manager of the psyche. Unfortunately, Cptsd-inducing parents thwart the growth of the ego by undermining the development of the crucial egoic processes of self-compassion and self-protection. 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.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Stephen Johnson calls “the hard work miracle.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“John Bradshaw in Healing The Shame That Binds,”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“The Tao of Fully Feeling is a companion to this book and elaborates many of the foundational principles of this book.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Yet when we do not loosen our grip on the salvation fantasy, we remain extremely susceptible to blaming ourselves every time we have a flashback.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“My critic, like my parents, always found something flawed in me to contradict the feedback that I was getting. 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. Like many other survivors that I have worked with, I developed the imposter’s syndrome. This syndrome contradicted the outside positive feedback that I was receiving. It insisted that if people really knew me, they would see what a loser I was. Eventually, however, I became confident in my intelligence even though my self-esteem was still abysmal.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Toxic shame, explored enlighteningly by John Bradshaw in Healing The Shame That Binds, obliterates a Cptsd survivor’s self-esteem with an overwhelming sense that he is loathsome, ugly, stupid, or fatally flawed. 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.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Good moods are as fragile as eggs and bad as fragile as bricks.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“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.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“With enough healthy inner self-defense, the survivor gradually learns to reject her unconscious acceptance of self-abuse and self-abandonment. Her sense of healthy self-protection begins to emerge and over time grows into a fierce willingness to stop unfair criticism - internal or external.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. Striving to be perfect offers her a semblance of a sense of control.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“perfectionism also seems to be an instinctual defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential impossibility of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until lack of success forces her to retreat into a dissociative freeze response or an anti-social fight response.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“I am a human being not a human doing. I will not choose to be perpetually productive. I am more productive in the long run, when I balance work with play and relaxation. I will not try to perform at 100% all the time. I subscribe to the normalcy of vacillating along a continuum of efficiency.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“My perfectionism arose as an attempt to gain safety and support in my dangerous family. Perfection is a self-persecutory myth. I do not have to be perfect to be safe or loved in the present. I am letting go of relationships that require perfection. I have a right to make mistakes. Mistakes do not make me a mistake. Every mistake or mishap is an opportunity to practice loving myself in the places I have never been loved.”
― Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving