PTSD vs Complex-PTSD

Trauma therapy in person in Wichita and online across Kansas

Figuring out what’s going on can initially feel like the overwhelm of opening a new puzzle box: lots of pieces and nothing put together yet

What is Complex-PTSD?

You’ve probably heard of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): the word ‘trauma’ has entered common parlance and PTSD has come with it. But a lot of trauma survivors also find that it doesn’t really describe their situation very well…

PTSD is usually understood to refer to acute and severe situations: a life-threatening car accident, an assault, a surgery that went wrong, etc. And it’s no walk in the park: the consequences of trauma can include anxiety, insomnia, continual muscle tension, and so much more. If it’s helpful to see them categorized, the symptoms of PTSD are usually divided like so:

• intrusive memories (flashbacks, nightmares, fear, triggers)

• avoidance (staying away from reminders of people/places/situations)

• negative feelings and beliefs (feelings of betrayal, self-blame, lost confidence, struggling to trust)

• a nervous system in overdrive (panic attacks, insomnia, trouble concentrating, numbness)

If those sound familiar but you didn’t have just one big trauma, you may want to read further and consider Complex-PTSD. CPTSD is often used to describe the additional features that take up residence in your nervous system when trauma was repeated, chronic, and ongoing. Instead of one assault, ongoing molestation. Instead of one accident, in and out of the hospital for years. Instead of one attack from a stranger, it was a caregiver or romantic partner repeatedly violating your safety and wellbeing across time.

This chronic kind of trauma - even if it was “less severe,” like emotional neglect - can still produce the symptoms of PTSD, only with some extra goodies. The additional symptoms of CPTSD are sometimes categorized like so:

• struggling relationships (feeling more clingy or less trusting than other people seem to be)

• struggling emotions (persistent agitation and/or numbness, feeling all over the place, reactive to criticism)

• struggling self-identity (worthlessness, mirroring others like a chameleon, always feeling like you’re wrong, struggling with self-care and healthy boundaries)

In other words: CPTSD has all the struggles of PTSD plus more.

Just figuring out you might have CPTSD can feel like getting some of the puzzle pieces put together!

How to Tell if You Have PTSD or CPTSD

However, CPTSD is not necessarily more severe than PTSD: both can generate a range of impact on your ability to carry on with life. You can be more or less severely impacted by either one. So it’s not a case of: worse symptoms = CPTSD.

But generally, if a close relationship involved ongoing harm, that puts you at particular risk for CPTSD. If you depended on someone for the basics of survival (like an infant dependent on their caregiver) or love and connection were bound up in a harmful relationship (like intimate partner abuse), harm in that relationship tends to create faulty brain wiring around how good, safe relationships operate. When the relationships that should be a shelter instead require you to vigilantly monitor someone else’s moods and continually adapt yourself, you can lose track of who you are as an individual. When emotional wounds are repetitive without adequate space for recovery, emotions naturally become more difficult to manage.

Unfortunately, the symptoms of CPTSD have a lot of overlap with other diagnoses. Someone may have suggested you have anxiety, or bipolar, or autism, or borderline personality disorder - particularly since CPTSD is not an official diagnosis in the USA yet. Even at the best of times it can be quite challenging to tease out what is what amongst all these diagnoses with multiple overlapping characteristics! But if you’ve experienced ongoing, repetitive traumas, consider that CPTSD may be at least one component of your struggles.

You don’t have to sort the puzzle by yourself: reach out for help today!

Therapy for Complex-PTSD in Wichita, KS

This is truly the biggest question people usually have about CPTSD: can I get better?

Much of this depends on the individual’s wiring, the trauma they lived through, and the level of support they have now - your mileage may vary, in other words. And if you experienced a severely harmful childhood, traces of that formative experience will likely linger throughout life. But it certainly can get better than it is right now: you can be much less bothered by symptoms, much more alive in the world, and healed enough to bring your own kind of meaning and light to the world around you. Many of the world’s advocates, healers, and compassionate leaders have grappled with CPTSD and transformed their experiences into goodness in the world, too. CPTSD does not mean you are stuck in this difficult place forever.

However, recovery from CPTSD is still often a process of years: finding your ways to emotional regulation, processing trauma, building an internal sense of yourself, strengthening healthy relationships, and finding your own particular way to make meaning of what you endured. There’s not a magic wand to wave over CPTSD recovery that makes it all go away overnight: it takes time.

If you are looking for help in healing from PTSD or CPTSD, you can read more about finding a therapist for PTSD here. If you think you may have CPTSD, I encourage you to look for hints about a potential therapist’s familiarity with CPTSD. Words like “attachment,” “abuse recovery” or “developmental trauma” may indicate experience in treating CPTSD.

A book that many survivors have found to be a helpful starting place is Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving - if resources are a struggle, check it out for free at your local library and see if it can help you get started on healing. Simple information is a great place to start!

If you’re interested in therapy for PTSD or CPTSD in person in Wichita or virtually anywhere in Kansas, feel free to read more about me here then schedule a consultation. I offer free consultations to all new clients because I believe you deserve to enter therapy confident that you’re in the right place for the 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.