Most of us have heard of PTSD, trauma seems to be the big buzz word. We tend to use the word everywhere now. But not all trauma is the same. Some traumas don’t actually look like trauma with a big T, but are a series of little T traumas accumulated over time. Welcome to C-PTSD.

The worst thing about C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) is that it can seem like a never ending healing process. Unlike an acute trauma we can work with the event itself and allow the body to process the thwarted responses (fight, flight, freeze) and remediate the missing cycles like the ventral vagal complex connected to social interaction, rest, relief, etc. and deal with releasing the energy and emotion stored in a compact amount of time.

But Complex PTSD is a whole other beast. To understand this better, basically the body ends up living in a continuous state of hyper vigilance over a prolonged period of time. There may be some relief at times and then the traumatic events pop up every so often or one can live with an abusive or narcissistic parent or close relationship where we are required to constantly negate our own natural inclinations out of fear, helplessness, or triggering the loss of love of one of the parents, etc.

Do you ever feel like this 👇🏽

Prolonged trauma often pushes us into forming misconstrued beliefs about ourselves or about the world.

During childhood, my father was an extreme evangelical christian. He was physically abusive to me and my brother through the wooden paddle punishment and would physically abuse my mother. The church said she must be submissive to her husband even when she came to them with evidence of the abuse on our bodies. She couldn’t protect me, and I also regularly received her criticism of me and my father.

(After many years of healing, I now have a good relationship with both parents now.)

My M.O. was “be perfect.” Growing up as Christian, the belief that I was born a sinner was constantly pounded into my head. Meaning I grew up both wanting to be perfect and believing there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Sprinkle on the fact that I’m 23/25 on the HSP test (hyper sensitive person) which they now categorize as neuro divergent. I was hyper sensitive to energies, sounds, bright lights, intensity, emotional, overly empathic, and chronically shy.

My mother was told by my father she wasn’t allowed to pick me up when I was crying and that I’d get over it.

I formed the belief system, I’m all alone in the world.

But all I crave in my romantic relationships is to just be held.

If someone holds me, it’s like everything in the world melts and I can let down all my defenses and bask in the warmth of safety.

As survivors of trauma, I say survivors because it takes a beast to get through some of the sh*t my clients have been through. I thought I had it bad… if I recounted some of the stories I hear daily, we can wonder how people even make it through the day.

Little T or big T, we find ways to survive. Our natural human will to survive is so strong that our system will find a way to do it.

Often the pain we experience as a child; believing that we are wrong for existing, that we are unloved, that it’s all our fault, that we don’t have value, that we are bad, etc. is so intense.

If we had allowed ourselves to fully experience the pain of those beliefs at a young age when we did not have agency to change our situations, it would have taken away the drive to live.

So, we bury that pain underneath a persona or a saving mechanism that in IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy) we call a protector/ manager, these characters are often created when we are young in order to survive.

Some of us develop a persona that gets everything done, makes sure they cross their T’s, dot their I’s and make sure no-one can rebuke us for doing anything wrong. Underneath that protector is the “exile” as we call “the wounded part of ourselves” who believes there is something fundamentally wrong about themselves.

Rather than feel that, we create a perfect machine that society loves to applaud and give us kudos for our incredible efficiency and never tiring persona.

Or… we may have developed a protector character who lacks motivation, they may quit before starting or never fully engage themselves, whether it be a relationship, a job, a diet plan, etc.

Underneath the core belief might be “I’m a failure, so better not get to the point of being able to fail”.

How hard is it to live with the belief, I’m a failure?

Or the beast… the character that does it all on their own, doesn’t need anyone else, is independent, can be avoidant, shuts down when going through emotions or can become reactive or angry. Underneath we desperately want to be loved and cared for but fundamentally believe that no-one can love us, it’s dangerous to let anyone in, and it’s safer to be alone.

Anger may be the first reaction, as sadness is too vulnerable.

We all come up with a variety of inner managers and protectors to keep us from experiencing the pain of our deepest darkest beliefs about ourselves that often get installed through ongoing traumatic environments.

C-PTSD is generally relational, where our idea of caregivers, loved ones, etc. got distorted as children. Our current operating system is often a part that got created as a child to protect us from pain. The hyper efficient personality, the go-getter, the perfectionist, the over achiever, the avoidant, the lone wolf, the procrastinator, the addict, the people pleaser, etc.

We can learn to get to know our protectors with compassion. As adults they are often the reason why we come to therapy, burnout, emotional withdrawal, anger issues, avoidant, anxious, burns bridges, addict, etc. Even though they were there to protect us, their roles now might be detrimental to our current relationships and our own health.

We can get to know them and see if they can step down enough to allow us to get to know and provide some healing and relief for the childhood exiles within us who have had their pain pushed down since childhood. We can heal these parts little by little through repeated healing experiences and recognition (and therapy!) but it takes patience and time.

Relational trauma is only healed through relationship. I often wonder if I’ll ever be capable of being in a conflict free relationship. Relationships are so hard if both parties deal with childhood trauma, we inevitably trigger each other’s wounding.

We are in a constant journey of addressing the triggers that don’t make sense on a logical stand point. We have to delve down to the deeper wound beneath. It requires energy, it requires self -awareness and sometimes a partner who is willing to recognize that we are wounded beings and that the best way we can support each other is by tending to each others inexplicable behaviors with curiosity and compassion.

We are so quick to judge each other, gossip with our friends about how our partner is this or that, quick to diss each other and call each other needy or avoidant.

The greatest thing we can do for ourselves is self awareness and learning how to communicate what is happening internally. We own our emotions, we own our thoughts, we own how things impact us, we did not live the same lives as each other, we can only communicate it in the best possible way. This allows others to understand our internal world and we can make requests on how they can facilitate an easier way to navigate the hard stuff.

The hardest part is supporting our inner protectors to take a step back and allow ourselves to feel the actual wound and pain behind the trigger.

As adults we can build the resources and resiliency to hold our wounding in a safe space, as children we did not have that capacity.

My protector is fierce. When my exile (wounded child) is in pain, my protector says to me, “kick everyone out of your life that cause you pain. F*ck them all. It gets rage-full, it wants to burn all the bridges and make others hurt so that they can experience the pain I’m in. It takes a tremendous amount of will power for me to not to let it run the show when I’ve been deeply wounded.

In the beginning I said C-PTSD is a life long process. It seems so unfair at times. Sometimes the rage of being born into the family and environment I was born in arises. Just when I think I worked through all my stuff, I get in relationship and something else arises that I thought I had resolved. The more open we become in relationship, the more we risk exposing the most vulnerable parts of ourselves.

At times it feels like a curse, no matter how much work I do, I am not sure that I’ll ever be completely free of those deep wounds ingrained in my system.

I am in a constant state of tending to and caring for those spaces in me that can arise unexpectedly. I realize that I might never be pain-free, happy go lucky, trauma free girl, yet I can truly appreciate the moments when everything seems well, when I feel joy, when things aren’t tumultuous.

I can enjoy the waves that are not as intense, and the ability to deal with them as they come without being washed away by them.

And when my stuff arises, I just have to take it for what it is, handle it with gentleness and kindness and still hold my hand when the sense of hopelessness and unfairness of being born into such a harsh world arises.

Fundamentally I am here to live and to use my experiences to hopefully support alleviating some of the pain others go through. But I also recognize, I am not perfect. I am a flawed, wounded human being doing my best to live in a world that didn’t come offering flowers and hugs.

And each day, I find something to be grateful for, something that brings me joy and something that soothes my soul, and I tend to the crying baby inside who just needed to be held.

Here's a few self reflections:

What does my manager/protector look like out in the world?

When I notice the wounded part in me wanting attention, can I tend to it and soothe it instead of pushing it down, escaping or distracting?

Is that hard?

Wishing you well on our common journey of healing and growth towards becoming more and more of who we truly are... Carly