EMDR for Complex PTSD
PTSD, CPTSD, & trauma treatment in person in Wichita & online across Kansas
The path to healing might wind a bit, but progress is still happening
What is Complex PTSD?
More and more people have heard of Complex PTSD in recent years, thanks to pivotal works like Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving and chatter on social media. If you’re searching for information on whether this matches your life experiences and what to do about it, let’s chat about that.
First, a couple factoids:
CPTSD is not an official diagnosis in the USA (though it is, elsewhere in the world) right now, and there are many years of research ahead. We don’t yet have established guidelines on how to distinguish it from other diagnoses like regular PTSD, autism, or borderline personality disorder. But the edges of what we don’t know yet, doesn’t mean you can’t make progress on the symptoms in therapy anyway!
It’s not exactly “PTSD but worse” - it has some unique symptoms and both of these two diagnoses can appear more mild or more severe in a given individual.
PTSD is usually considered the nervous system’s response to one catastrophic event like an assault or ambush. In contrast, CPTSD tends to be a response to chronic problems, whether they are “severe” like years of domestic violence or “mild” like a childhood of verbal abuse.
CPTSD is often has a heavily relational origin: ongoing harm from someone you should have been close to and safe with.
PTSD is known for having symptoms distributed across four categories: intrusions (like flashbacks and triggers), avoidance of reminders, negative beliefs and emotions, and nervous system struggles (ranging from panic attacks to being easily startled).
But maybe that doesn’t even begin to describe what you’re dealing with. In CPTSD, there tend to be additional issues in the realms of relationships, emotions that are difficult to keep balanced, and a view of self that can feel very normal to you while also feeling like you’re different than everyone else.
Healing can feel slow, but slower is faster for CPTSD: like switchbacks steadily winding down a mountain so you don’t crash to the bottom all at once.
EMDR for Complex Trauma
A metaphorical way I sometimes talk about EMDR to clients, is that it’s like spelunking in a new cave system. When we go in, we don’t know exactly what the cave system is going to look like - or all the edges and connections of the traumas. There may be smells that make you anxious and you don’t know why, there may be statements that leave you feeling worthless without you even noticing the connection, there may be beliefs tied to specific memories that you’ve buried, and more. We don’t exactly know what we’re going to find, but as we do find the little tunnels and corners that are holding the beliefs, emotions and sensations that trip you up, we bring light to them so they can heal. Here’s some things that might be helpful to know:
You don’t have to tell the details of your memories. You just have to say enough to guide the processing.
You don’t have to have a lot of memories: CPTSD for some people feels like a vague sense of everything being wrong without a “good reason” why. We will work with what the brain has connected together, whether it all makes sense or not.
You may find hazy memories coming back that you had forgotten. EMDR’s goal is not to evaluate the memories for accuracy and determine out exactly what happened a long time ago, but to untangle how it’s part of causing struggles. Again: you don’t have to have a lot of extremely clear and proven memories to start reducing the symptoms you’re experiencing.
You won’t face it alone. The therapist is there to monitor your wellbeing, keep you grounded, and make sure you don't get overwhelmed. It’s normal to adjust the pacing in response to your needs, and if it’s not a good day for processing, EMDR is put to the side until a time that is better.
But after EMDR, clients tend to find that the traumatic experiences are softer and can be recalled without body tension or emotional distress. You won’t forget what happened, but your relationship to it has changed and you can walk into the future without feeling like it is hamstringing you.
(You can read more about EMDR here.)
Healing is like finding good things over the horizon, sometimes things you weren’t even looking for!
Finding an EMDR Therapist in Wichita, KS
If you’re considering Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for CPTSD, I encourage you to look for a therapist who has training or experience treating CPTSD. You deserve to feel prepared and ready for trauma processing, not immediately thrown in the deep end of your worst experiences - a therapist familiar with CPTSD can help make sure you’re not pushed past capacity.
One of the things you’ll work on before beginning EMDR, is strengthening what is good in your life so you can lean on those strengths as you enter EMDR. You may also begin working on EMDR in ways less directly related to the trauma or begin with somatic work, if needed first. So the preparation stage may be a process of weeks or months, depending entirely on your needs. Good EMDR happens when you’re ready, whenever that is.
Read more about searching for an EMDR therapist near you here. If you live in Kansas, you can also read more about me here and schedule a free consultation here. I offer free consultations to all new clients because it’s so important to find the therapist who feels safe and understanding to you as an individual, as the foundation for any kind of healing work but especially for healing CPTSD. I want you to enter therapy already confident that you’re in the place you can do healing work you want to do.
Elizabeth Peters, LMSW is a licensed therapist seeing clients in person in Wichita and online across Kansas. She provides EMDR and somatic therapy for adults who are overwhelmed by anxiety, trauma, painful relationships or spiritual harm.