This is where I document my recovery from complex trauma. How did I do it? Therapy with a licensed trauma therapist for 5 years. (IFS and EMDR).
In Recovery
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I was traumatized when I was very young. I spent my entire life dissociated, disconnected, anxious and depressed. I wanted to feel better but nobody was able to help. Eventually I connected the dots and realized the suffering I experienced had a name and it was "complex trauma".
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Early childhood trauma puts a black hole into a child's soul. As an adult, they spend a lifetime trying to fill that hole with addictions, self hatred and disastrous relationships. None of that works. The only thing that fills the hole permanently is self compassion.
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My mother would say cruel and demeaning things to me but I was never able to do the same to her. In recovery, I realized it was because I don't have that cruelty in me. I think its a mystery that a kid who was hurt and abused and abandoned grew up not able to hurt others.
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In recovery, I'm realizing that complex trauma stole an entire lifetime from me. It ruined relationships. It harmed my health. It undermined my life prospects. It caused me to believe that I was a broken and bad person. It caused me to believe I was unlovable.
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I dated a man for years. We lived a long distance apart. One time I was driving home after a visit and I realized I felt far more alone when I was with him than when I was actually alone! Complex trauma made me choose emotionally unavailable men. I was re-creating my childhood.
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1. Unhealthy people create chaos and misunderstanding in relationships. As a person recovering from complex trauma I don't claim to be perfect, but I am definitely learning to trust my instincts now. For years I used to blame myself whenever there was a relationship rupture.
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I am washing my dishes every day now. I know that sounds extremely boring, but for me it is revolutionary. I never go to bed now without making sure my dishes are all clean. When I am washing my dishes it feels like an amazing achievement. lol I know this sounds weird.
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I was traumatized in early childhood and it affected every part of my life for decades. It froze my nervous system and it broke my social engagement system. Eventually, I decided I was an introvert but now I know I was actually a traumatized person coping with social anxiety.
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Complex trauma is an invisible illness because nobody sees the inner suffering, the tidal waves of emotion that demolish you, the energetic cost of just getting through the day. Ironically, the stronger you are, the less help you get. I was very strong. I coped until I fell apart
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I've been thinking about "laziness" lately. I'm in recovery from complex trauma. I still get trauma symptoms, but they are milder now and manageable. I find myself wanting to set some life goals and get things done... but every day it seems like I waste a lot of time.
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I hate what cPTSD stole from me. It stole my ability to be present for others, even people I loved. It taught me to abandon and neglect myself in every possible way. It installed an inner critic that frequently reminds me to hate myself. Today I am angry at cPTSD and that is OK.
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If you've had an unusually hard life due to trauma or abuse its totally ok to grieve the loss of the life you could have had, if circumstances had been better. It's ok to feed mad about that. It's ok to feel self pity. We can't change the past but we can grieve our losses.
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If your childhood trauma was severe, not many people, even kind people who love you, will be able to hold that space for you. It might feel unsafe for you to speak about your experiences. This means you might have carried that pain and suffering alone and unheard your entire life
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It is sad that people have to turn to anonymous strangers on the internet for understanding and human comfort because their own family members are unsafe. #cPTSD
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You can't set healthy boundaries with unhealthy people. If someone has been treating you badly for a while and you try to set a healthy boundary, that will probably feel like an attack to them and they will react accordingly.
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Before I got into trauma therapy, this was my life: 😟
Complex trauma is like being utterly lost, with no map or compass, and no road signs or anyone you can ask for help. It's hard to learn because of the brain fog, anxiety and depression. Your life feels like non-stop chaos.
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A few years ago when my trauma symptoms were at their worst, I had bad brain fog. I couldn't concentrate or make decisions. I even had trouble reading... anything. I would stare at the same paragraph, my mind dissociated and far away. I am grateful my brain fog is healing now!
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I was so badly neglected as a tiny child that later in life when I met people who treated me with warmth, care and concern it felt awful to me. I couldn't cope with people being nice to me. I pushed away so many good people!
That's what my mother's caustic hatred did to me.
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I read somewhere that children will sacrifice their own sense of themselves in order to maintain connection with their caregivers. In recovery, I'm finally processing what happened to me and trying to make sense of it and what it means for my life.
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My trauma happened when I was very young. It led to me "fawning" - I learned to be very nice to hostile people who treated me badly. Deep down, my early life experiences taught me I was worthless and therefore it seemed totally normal to me for people to be cruel and mean to me.
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Self sabotage is real and it is connected to shame. Both shame and self sabotage are symptoms of unhealed trauma, and are often accompanied by feeling unworthy and unlovable. When these trauma symptoms are present, no amount of evidence to the contrary can convince you otherwise.
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Your brain has plasticity which means it can heal. Even older brains, even after decades of trauma, can heal. I know this from experience! Five years ago I was shuffling around like a zombie in a brain fog. I was overcome with depression and anxiety. Now I'm healing.
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My complex trauma showed up for years as anxiety and depression. I had anxiety my entire adult life but I was not aware that's what it was until I was in my forties. I just assumed I was an extremely messed up, broken person. Anxiety, negativity and worry was my normal.
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If you live with unhealed complex trauma from childhood abuse or neglect, you might have to release a lot of sorrow, pain and sadness as part of your healing. We held all of that inside as kids because there were no loving, caring people around to comfort us when we were hurting.
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I was so neglected and abused in early childhood, I learned to survive on small, stale crumbs of affection. I am ashamed to admit I hated myself so much I was unable to accept sincere warmth and kindness from people for most of my adult life. Trauma therapy is healing that!
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I made a delicious, healthy broccoli and ham omelet for breakfast today. People who have never experienced the self-sabotaging quality of complex trauma often cannot understand why basic, normal things like self care are so hard to do. I spent decades not taking care of me...
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"Nothing in the world is more painful than rejection."
True! Especially when that rejection is literal abandonment by both birth parents.
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I had depression for most of my adult life, or that's what I called it. It was like living my life with intense mental and physical lethargy. Like carrying a 50 pound weight on my back 24-7. Nowadays I think my "depression" was dorsal shutdown of my nervous system. It was trauma
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Some days I feel angry because I was dissociated for most of my adult life and unable to feel. I was basically not present in my own life, like a ghost drifting along. Trauma therapy changed that for me but if healing cPTSD is possible, why was I left to suffer for decades?
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Recovery from cPTSD is possible, but it is a slow process. It is mostly "two steps forward and 1 step back" . The small setbacks are part of the healing. Sometimes external triggers result in anxiety, dissociation, depression spirals or similar challenges. Don't lose hope!
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No baby is born hating itself. Whenever a person hates or loathes themselves, that is a trauma response resulting from abuse, neglect or abandonment. I am a senior citizen and it has taken me decades to learn to have compassion for myself. Better late than never!!
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You can absolutely find healing from cPTSD. My early childhood trauma was severe and I didn't start trauma therapy until after I retired, and I am healing now. You don't have to live with unhealed trauma. There is hope for you. You can have peace. Haven't you suffered enough?
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I am at a point in my therapy where I am finally facing my mother's inability to love. The weird thing is I have known her nature for many years but I tolerated it. I put up with it. Now that I am learning to love myself, I find I can no longer tolerate abusive behavior.
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I've now been in trauma therapy for five years.
- My anxiety and depression are greatly reduced.
- Panic attacks and emotional flashbacks are gone.
- Negative thoughts and shame spirals are rare.
- My physical health and my sleep are greatly improved.
I am in recovery. #cPTSD
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Complex trauma shows up differently in people but there are similar aspects, one of which is lack of safety. Never feeling safe, worry and anxiety, always expecting the worst, and catastrophic thinking is common. Trauma makes it hard to feel safe in your body and your life.
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Due to complex trauma I spent years being extremely co-dependent and helping others while at the same time hating myself and neglecting all aspects of self care. Even during my most "functional" years (when I was working a demanding professional job) my home life was utter chaos.
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My mentally ill mother birthed me, and after she and my mentally ill father raised me for a few years, I was put into the back seat of a taxi, alone, with a handwritten note attached to my coat. The note said "Please take care of me". The taxi driver was instructed to deliver me to my grandmother's house. There was no internet or cell phones back then and the "delivery" was a shock to my grandmother and her family, who were dealing with their own challenges, as well as living in an extremely small basement apartment. This was not a temporary visit. My mother sent me away, permanently. Nevertheless, my grandmother and her family took me in and raised me. I was three years old and for the next sixty years that was my earliest human memory. A trauma memory.
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The "barrel" metaphor is useful when describing complex trauma. If you were repeatedly traumatized as a child, your capacity (your barrel) for good feelings and good experiences is very small! When good stuff happens, your barrel overflows and you get triggered.
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People raised with secure attachment and healthy nervous systems live in a totally different world than people who in childhood had to adapt to hostile caregivers to survive.🥰😍💗
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“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
~ Peter A. Levine
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If a family is unable to provide a safe container for a child's emotions, the child shuts off that part of themselves. Living a full life without emotions is impossible. I know this from experience. Unfelt emotions freeze in the body and the result is mental and physical illness
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Many people are sensitive and informed about childhood abuse and neglect but some don't understand how awful it can be to grow up without a warm, caring. loving person who provides a safe haven. Childhood trauma is not just what happened, it is also what didn't happen.💗
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If your #cPTSD started in early childhood you are likely spending most of your adult years being self critical or self-hating, as well as neglecting self care. Once you get into recovery, it can take a few years before self compassion and self care becomes "automatic" behavior.
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Regarding healing, recent neuroscience tells us that brains can heal at any age, even when the trauma was severe and prolonged. This is called "brain plasticity" and it means you don't have to suffer forever. All it requires is to seek healing and do things differently.
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I know people might wonder why I allowed someone to treat me so badly it destroyed my health.
The answer lies in the severe trauma I experienced as a child. I believed I was worthless. That was my normal. As the abuse got worse, I kept excusing it. That's what trauma did to me.
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If your trauma symptoms are severe and brain fog is making it hard to concentrate or make decisions, know your brain can heal. After a year of trauma therapy, my extreme brain fog began to heal and it is continuing to improve even now, 3 years later. You can heal. #cPTSD
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Sometimes people think trauma healing is similar to having an illness and you get better and return to normal. But if your trauma started in infancy, there is no "normal" to return to! Your brain, body and nervous system were hardwired for survival from your earliest days.
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I spent most of my life feeling wrong, broken, bad, and defective. I hated myself and I blamed myself for everything that went wrong. I even took responsibility when other people were cruel to me!! This is the damage that early childhood neglect and abandonment did to me. #cPTSD
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Depression is not a feeling. Depression is what happens when feelings are suppressed, denied, and numbed out due to trauma. #ComplexTrauma
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My complex trauma is healing slowly. This is year four of trauma therapy. In the early days I would get a few normal days occasionally. Now normal days are normal for me! My body and mind used to be full of anxiety but now anxiety is rare for me. You can heal!
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When you are dissociated you are not fully present in your own life. You are not fully present or able to engage socially with the people around you, even people you care about. If dissociation is your normal you may not even be aware you are doing it! This was true for me.
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The more I heal my complex trauma, the more I realize how much loss I experienced in my life and how I was too dissociated and disconnected to feel those losses. Now in recovery, I am starting to let myself feel the sadness and suffering of all that unfelt grief. #cPTSD
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The problem with complex trauma (childhood relational trauma), is until you find healing, it is never "in the past". During trauma flashbacks, the unhealed child parts who are still suffering flood your system with intense emotion. Logic doesn't fix it but therapy can heal it.
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When your trauma begins to heal, you will start re-evaluating your relationships. You will realize that the hurtful behavior you used to tolerate is no longer OK. As you set healthy boundaries and expect more, the people who are not OK with that will leave, and that is totally OK
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Fawning is a trauma response where you are extremely nice and kind to someone who is openly hostile and cruel to you. I experienced trauma in the first few years of my life and I did a lot of fawning as an adult before I finally healed. I refuse to be a punching bag anymore.
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I dissociated for most of my life. I call it "going away". I don't really feel anything when its happening. I'm spaced out, lost in thought, a million miles away. Not present in the room. Not even present in my body. It was a trauma response.
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I just had a phone conversation with my elderly mother and I feel sad. I am sad this relationship will never be healed. I am sad I cannot have a normal, loving conversation with her. I am sad I have never had a normal "mother-daughter" conversation with her and I never will. 1/2
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Some people have too much empathy. If you are a sensitive, warm person who can't bear human suffering (yours or anyone's), sometimes it might feel like the ugliness of the world is crushing you. Please find the healing you need because the world needs your big heart right now.
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I am familiar with theories of resilience and grit - that quality that enables you to get up and keep fighting every time life knocks you down. I have a lot of resilience, so much so I eventually became like a zombie. I just "kept going" even though I was dead inside.
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Regarding stress, people who experienced significant unhealed trauma in childhood go through life with an impaired social engagement system and nervous system, never feeling safe. They often experience additional life traumas that further deteriorate their ability to function.
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"Not inhabiting my body" sounds strange, so I would like to explain it. As an infant I learned to "go away" (into my head) as a response to trauma. I've been distracted and spaced out my entire life but now I'm learning to be fully present and mindfully notice my body sensations.
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It's really important to deal with boundary violations as fast as possible. If you don't, resentment festers and that will harm your mental and emotional health. This can be very hard for complex trauma survivors because we were taught abuse and boundary violations were "normal".
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My brain fog was so severe from living with trauma for years I was not able to handle money responsibly. Part of me still feels ashamed about that but I am learning to be kinder to myself nowadays. In my second year of therapy the brain fog cleared and I made a monthly budget.
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Narcissism is a mental illness, and like all mental illnesses, it exists on a spectrum of severity. Narcissism is interesting because narcissists can often function well in society and pass as normal. This is because they reserve their abusive behavior for family and loved ones.
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One of the things that still bothers me in my trauma recovery is procrastination, especially with urgent things that need to be done. I feel a huge internal block to even getting started and at the same time I feel growing anxiety due to looming deadlines.
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How can you get better when you can't even put a name to what you are experiencing? For most of my life I just assumed I was broken because counsellors were unable to help me. A few years ago I connected the dots and I found a trauma therapist. And now I'm healing!
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I don't post the terrible stuff I have endured because I'm looking for pity. I post my experiences so people who are suffering will know there is hope. I want people to know you can heal from complex trauma and you can heal from excruciating abuse and emotional wounding.
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It's OK to feel anger when someone is treating you badly. If you are in a situation where expressing your anger or strong emotion is dangerous for you, that anger gets stuck inside you and your own anger energy turns against you. This happens to me when I was a child.
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Most of my life I didn't feel much. When emotions showed up I analyzed them intellectually instead of feeling them. I also numbed my emotions with overeating, workaholism, dissociation and other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Not being able to feel is a trauma response.
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The 3 rules of dysfunctional families:
- don't talk (no honest talk)
- don't feel (you can't grieve the losses)
- don't trust (it's not safe to connect)
This describes the family that raised me after my mother abandoned me and my siblings. I held that grief inside for decades.
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If anyone tells you complex trauma cannot be healed, please do not believe them. Neuroscience says the brain can change, learn and heal well into old age due to neuroplasticity. Recent, recognized trauma therapies can heal your brain and change your life. #cPTSD
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I just realized something. My core sense of self was shattered by trauma when I was very young. That is why I could not set boundaries for most of my adult life. I didn't know where I ended and other people began. I am so glad trauma therapy taught me how set healthy boundaries.
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I lived with chronic depression for forty years. After a few years of trauma therapy, my depression is lifting. In recovery I am exploring some of the reasons my depression lasted so long. One was the huge amount of loss I experienced as a tiny child, which was never grieved.
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My entire life was chaos for so long that was my "normal". After trauma therapy, I started having calm, basic days, with no emotional roller coasters and no panic attacks, just doing normal things in a normal way. I was shocked. I had no idea life could be that peaceful. #cPTSD
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The adults who raised me were so uncomfortable with feelings they created an environment where feeling anything was unwelcome and unsafe. They did not do that because they were evil. They did that because they too were traumatized and it was the only way they knew how to live.
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For the first time in my life I am taking my own side. I have self compassion and self love. I have a right to be here, a right to speak, a right to take up space. I feel lovable, just because I exist. Writing these words brings tears to my eyes because I believe it now.
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Complex trauma undermined my life. I was full of negativity, anxiety and depression. Because I never felt safe, I was risk averse and I took very few chances, always making safe choices. I feel sad about that now. Trauma made me into less of a person than I might have been.
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If complex trauma damaged your mental and emotional health, or your opportunities in life, it is easy to feel anger, resentment and maybe even self pity. You were just a kid trying to survive in an abusive family environment and you had nowhere to turn for help.
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I attended a Christmas party recently. In the past I would have been dissociating and freezing with social anxiety. Instead of that, I was mindfully present and in my window of tolerance. It may not sound like a big deal to most people but it feels like a miracle to me.
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When you have a complete mental or emotional breakdown, it is like hitting a wall at full speed. You collapse, and you are not getting up. Damage is done. There is no return to "business as usual". My breakdown was so severe I had to take early retirement from my career. #cPTSD
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Shame is hitting hard today. The feeling of being unworthy, of not only being unloved but unlovable. Of all my trauma symptoms, this one is the most excruciating. Author and therapist Pat DeYoung calls shame "disintegrating".
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I was dissociated into my head for most of my life. I never fully inhabited my body. I am currently taking an exercise class twice a week that forces me to be fully in my body, at least for two hours a week. It is amazing at my age to be learning how to feel my own body. #cPTSD
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Self sabotage is common for trauma survivors. When things seem to be looking up, or we're feeling a bit better or we have a good day, we find a way to rain on our own parade.
Why do we do that?
It has a lot to do with the survival pathways that trauma carved into our brains.
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If you have significant self criticism, self loathing, self hatred or self disgust you likely experienced trauma as well as a devastating lack of emotional bonding with your primary caregivers (especially the mother) when you were little. #shame
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I've been in trauma therapy for a few years and I am healing now. I survived decades of emotional suffering that is now being healed by a skilled trauma therapist. What I find astonishing is I lived most of my life unaware I had complex trauma. I just assumed I was broken.
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I spent most of my life analyzing my emotions so I would never have to actually feel anything. Dissociating into intellectual analysis feels "safe" when your nervous system feels threatened by emotion. Unfortunately though, intellectualizing doesn't heal wounded emotions.
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This morning I realized the unhealthy coping mechanisms I used all my life, especially dissociating into my head, actually helped me survive in very dangerous and painful situations. Today I was able to feel genuine compassion and love for myself. I'm breathing that in right now.
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A bad person did terrible things to you. They were cruel, heartless and hateful and that caused you to shut down and feel unsafe in your body and unsafe in the world. You don't need that person's permission to heal. You can proceed on your healing path without them!
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I spent my entire life dismissing and burying my feelings. I dissociated into my head, into thinking, to avoid having to feel anything. Wounded feelings are valid. Frozen feelings can mess up your life. Most of the time, the reason why people cannot feel is due to unhealed trauma
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When you have complex trauma and you are given advice to "get over it", be aware this is code for "stop feeling". Any person, book, article or podcast that gives such advice is not trauma informed.
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I feel sad for the traumatized me who used to chose hurtful and unsafe men to be with. I hated myself back then so it is no surprise I chose to date abusers. I have huge compassion for that wounded part of me who was seeking love and settling for damaged, unloving men.
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I am at a point where I feel strong enough to consider cutting ties with unhealthy people and ending difficult relationships. I had severe abandonment and neglect wounds from early childhood and this led to me tolerating awful behavior from "friends" in my adult life.
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Being misunderstood is a big pet peeve for me. It triggers me. I don't know if this is a complex trauma symptom or an autism symptom or maybe both. I do know this is an imperfect world and it's probably gonna happen on a regular basis, so there's that.😊
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Shame is a painful and difficult emotion to heal. Unhealed, unacknowledged shame is at the root of much of the suffering of complex trauma. Due to the severe nature of my trauma and how young I was, my shame shows up as self hatred. Other forms might show up as self criticism.
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I realized today I often felt like the black sheep of the family. Growing up, I always assumed they were normal and I was messed up and wrong. Now in recovery from complex trauma, I know with 100% certainty that I was the healthiest person in that family .
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I told my therapist I want to work on shame this year. I'm reading a book about shame right now and it's pretty intense. Shame is a deep and devastating relational core wound. Shame disintegrates the self but trauma therapy can put those pieces back together. #dissociation
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For those who know narcissists, have you experienced anything like this? Years ago I stopped sharing details about my life with my mother because she would take any small, innocent story I told her, and then twist it into something extremely ugly and attack me with it.
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The brain can heal from #ComplexTrauma. This is a scientific fact. Even if your trauma began in infancy and you don't start trauma therapy until after you retire, your brain and nervous system can heal. Never let anyone tell you differently. You can heal. There is hope for you!
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Many people who live with complex trauma learned to dissociate when they were little children (space out, leave their bodies, go into their heads to numb overwhelming feelings, etc). When this happens repeatedly, the person's inner world becomes shattered into parts. #cPTSD
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