Trauma Therapy

Trauma Further Explained

What is trauma?

A trauma is any life experience that has resulted in the development of erroneous beliefs about yourself and the world, often leading to long-lasting effects like unhelpful thoughts, irrational emotions, blocked energy, physical symptoms, and ineffective behaviors in your daily life. Research has shown that the experiencing or witnessing of traumatic events, particularly during the years of early brain development, can impair your mental and emotional functioning and affect your physiology far more and for a much longer time than previously realized.

This is due to the way in which your brain stores traumatic events, essentially locking the memory of the trauma into your mind and body as if frozen in time. As a result you may be “triggered”, or have a seemingly irrational reaction to something that consciously or subconsciously reminds you of the original traumatic event as you experienced it. These reminders might take the form of an image, physical sensation, taste, smell, sound, or belief, and feel so real that it’s as if the past experience is happening right now. This can be extremely destabilizing to your daily life, as your nervous system struggles to discern between what is truly threatening versus non-threatening in present time. Even if you cognitively know and understand your triggers, you can’t reason your body out of reacting to stimuli that cause a traumatic reaction, and you will continue to respond to present day non-threatening triggers as if they were real present dangers.

This can lead to a never-ending cycle in which your self-confidence, sense of self-efficacy and safety, and general sense of reality is damaged, causing long-lasting suffering in your daily life and interpersonal relationships, preventing you from living life to its full potential.

What is PTSD?

PTSD stands for post traumatic stress disorder. PTSD symptoms occur when you have lived through or witnessed a traumatic event and are experiencing distressing memories, flashbacks, nightmares, or overwhelm of your nervous system (i.e. flight-or-fight response or disassociation) when you encounter reminders of the traumatic event. As a result you may avoid distressing thoughts, feelings, memories, or external reminders of the traumatic event, have difficulty remembering details of the traumatic event, experience self-blame due to false beliefs about the cause or effect of the traumatic event, and suffer from low mood, little interest or pleasure in doing things, alienation from others, emotional irritability, hypervigilance or increased startle reaction, difficulty focusing and sleeping, and self-destructive behaviors.

What is complex trauma?

Complex trauma occurs when you experience a traumatic attachment that forces you to prioritize your means of survival over your self integrity and sense of self; complex trauma involves a relational element unlike standard trauma, so that complex trauma symptoms are more pervasive, and not specifically related to a particular traumatic event.

Oftentimes these traumatic attachments include prolonged exposure to betrayals of trust or betrayals of safety by a caregiver or someone that you see and think of as trustworthy. Examples of traumatic attachments that cause complex trauma include attachments in childhood that are abandoning, neglectful, sexually violating, emotionally abusive, and physically abusive, as well as upbringings involving pervasiveparental mis-attunement, or having parents with drug or alcohol abuse problems, or mental illness.

Experiencing a traumatic attachment can lead to life-long problems in relationship, due to the negative effects of growing up in an environment in which those responsible for your protection and well-being are seen as unreliable, untrustworthy, or dangerous. Untreated, the damage to your sense of self and sense of safety can develop into insecure and disorganized adult attachment styles, carrying into your adult relationships as C-PTSD symptoms causing chaos and suffering.

What is C-PTSD?

C-PTSD stands for complex-post traumatic stress disorder. C-PTSD differs from PTSD in that it negatively affects your attachment system, and how you relate to yourself and to others. When you experience C-PTSD, in addition to PTSD symptoms, you also suffer from the ways in which complex trauma compromises relationships, causing relational problems like fear of abandonment, relationship anxiety, trust issues, hypervigilance, low self-worth, anxiety and stress, imposter syndrome, shame, guilt, resentment, and difficulty controlling your emotions.

Understanding the Symptoms of Trauma

Trauma takes an incredibly harsh toll on your mind, body, and spirit, often resulting in confusing and chaotic relationships and self-sabotaging behaviors that prevent you from achieving your full potential and fully stepping into your power.

1. It can undermine your self-worth, making you question your value and whether you’re worth being treated with love, respect, care, and protection.

2. It can impact your self-esteem, making you believe that you don’t deserve success and happiness. It can amplify your fear of failure, so that you’re terrified of taking risks or trying new things.

3. It can instill a scarcity mindset so that you’re riddled with envy, constantly comparing yourself to others and coming up as inferior or lacking.

4. It can contribute to self-criticism and a sense that you’re never enough. This can make you work hard to keep others at a distance for fear of them getting too close and seeing your (self-perceived) “imperfections”.

5. It can create toxic relationships stemming from fear of intimacy and mistrust of others; you may attract manipulative or toxic partners who also feel that insecure or unhealthy relationships feel comfortable or “familiar”. This can drain your energy and leave you no opportunity to have corrective experiences with secure and healthy partners that can provide a pathway to healing past pain and old wounds.

6. It can create a distortion of your reality, particularly if you were blamed or otherwise made to feel shamed or complicit in the moments of your traumatic experiences; this in turn can lead to overwhelming self-blame, guilt, and shame, resulting in a fear of being "found out."

7. It can create a diminished sense of self and distorted view of self, so that no matter how much progress you make or success you earn you always have a sense of imposter syndrome, feeling like you’re a fraud and don’t really deserve your achievements.

8. It can rob you of self-trust, blocking connection to your own inner wisdom and intuitive knowing. This can lead to doubting and second-guessing your instincts, depriving you of much needed internal clarity.