What is Complex PTSD?

What comes to mind when you hear the word “trauma”? For many people, either they think of a deeply disturbing event such as a combat injury or a sexual assault. For others, they might think of the medical definition of a physical injury which causes trauma to the body. Well, there’s a third definition which is less known but much more common, which is developmental or complex trauma. While PTSD often results from a single-incident traumatic experience, developmental trauma results instead from a chronic or repeated trauma of not getting your emotional needs met. While classic or “simple” PTSD is what we often think of when we think of trauma, developmental or complex ptsd is much more common, and in some ways much more insidious. In this article I’ll outline some of the common characteristics and causes of complex PTSD. 

Emotional misattunement

Complex PTSD often arises as the result of parents or caregivers who react poorly to the normal and natural attachment needs of their little ones. All children have emotional needs for connection, emotional security, and a healthy attachment to their caregivers. In some cases, often due to internal emotional issues the caregivers might be going through, parents or caregivers can react negatively to a child’s normal and natural developmental needs. Parents can dismiss a child’s needs for emotional connection, make them feel wrong or bad for having these needs, or otherwise emotionally, verbally, or physically abuse a child which can leave them feeling unworthy and unwelcome in their own family. Some form of emotional misattunement is going to happen on some level in most parent/child pairs, however if it happens with enough severity and frequency, it can leave a child with a chronic emotional injury which we call complex or developmental ptsd.

Emotional insecurity as an adult

If you’ve experienced this type of chronic developmental trauma, you might notice some unusual and uncomfortable symptoms as an adult. Because developmental trauma happens in your relationship with your caregiver, often the symptoms of C-PTSD (complex ptsd) show up most urgently in your relationships as an adult. Someone who has suffered from severe developmental trauma might constantly feel like they are unworthy, they might feel a distinct and severe sense of anxiety in close relationships, they might chronically fawn or people-please in order to appease the perceived needs of others, or there might be other complex expressions of insecurity or anxiety in relationships. The specific ways CPTSD shows up in relationships might vary, but what they all have in common is that the person suffering from it will feel some sense of insecurity, anxiety, or low self worth in their relationships.

Recognition and mindfulness

As with any emotional or psychological ailment, the first step to overcoming complex PTSD is to become aware of the internal forces that are at play in your life. Often, the uncomfortable symptoms of developmental trauma are so ever present in someone’s life that it is hard to identify what is actually going on. For someone who always has felt unworthy of love or attention, it's hard to realize that there could be an emotional injury at play and that this is not just the way the world is. If you always experience your life and relationships in one way, it can be hard to realize that something is wrong in the first place. Recognizing and identifying the complex and uncomfortable emotions that come up as a result of CPTSD will allow you to have increased awareness and mindfulness of your internal landscape. More mindfulness of these symptoms is the first step to finding ways to change.

Healing complex PTSD

Ultimately, what is needed to heal complex or developmental trauma is a reparative relational experience with an emotionally safe person. By experiencing interactions in relationship that give you the validation, care, and attention you needed as a child, these reparative experiences can help you create new templates for what relationships can and should look like. This is not an easy or fast process. Along the way you also will need to learn how to regulate overwhelming nervous system reactions which are a part of post traumatic stress. However, with time and attention, the emotional wounds of complex ptsd can be overcome or at least you can learn new ways to navigate your internal emotional landscape.

Therapy can help

If you have suffered from developmental trauma, talking to a compassionate and trained professional can be a great first step towards healing. Reach out today if you’d like to connect - I offer trauma therapy in person at my office in Soquel, CA, and online anywhere in California. I offer free 15-minute consultations to answer any questions you may have and to figure out if I’m the right fit to help you.