Submitted by Pfeffer_Prinz t3_10lw1rz in todayilearned
Here's a longer list of what can cause C-PTSD:
> chronic sexual, psychological, and physical abuse or neglect, or chronic intimate partner violence, bullying, victims of kidnapping and hostage situations, indentured servants, victims of slavery and human trafficking, sweatshop workers, prisoners of war, concentration camp survivors, and prisoners kept in solitary confinement for a long period of time, or defectors from authoritarian religions [including cults]
And here are many of the symptoms that distinguish C-PTSD from PTSD. These were written about child victims (but the issues can last through adulthood):
If you think you might have C-PTSD, I hope you can find a licensed mental health professional who can help you diagnose & recover. Treatments are definitely possible (I've done a few, and they help so so much — I've never felt so much relief!). You can also check out r/CPTSD for your community of survivors.
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These things don't sound minor
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The community is still debating whether C-PTSD is a separate thing, or if it should be classified as, example “childhood trauma + PTSD.”
A therapist explained C-PTSD to me this way: “Soldiers back from Iraq are here (hand held at knee height); C-PTSD, here ( hand held even with eyes).”
It is in ICD 11 however
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> I've wondered if I have ptsd, but also feel like my experiences that may have caused it are so minor in comparison to most, that I feel silly thinking I have some form of ptsd.
This is really really REALLY common for people with PTSD, especially C-PTSD. That is precisely the "diminished sense of self" that's at the core of the disorder.
What you described is horrific and sad. I'm so sorry you went through all that pain. It would make complete sense if you remained traumatized from any of that.
But also remember: a diagnosis is never based on what happened to you, but rather how you came out of it. Different people are affected by things in different ways. A poor kid with nothing may walk away from a 10-car pileup with no emotional scars, while a rich kid with all the comforts in the world can get PTSD from a fender bender.
Diagnosticians don't ask care what happened, but rather how you've been affected.
I hope you can find some clarity & healing soon!
>This is really really REALLY common for people with PTSD, especially C-PTSD. That is precisely the "diminished sense of self" that's at the core of the disorder.
Can confirm.
Can double confirm. It's mega worse if you are like me and are autistic. Even worse I got dumped after 7yrs by my narcissistic s/o.
Indeed.
Sorry to hear about your struggles. Hope you're doing alright now.
I appreciate the concern. Its been a few months but it hasn't gotten any easier but I'm taking it one day at a time. I'm only worried about the here and now.
In the moment is the ideal place to be, so looking like your brain is leading you in the right direction. I know all to well what a struggle it can be.
Narcissists are one of the world’s evils. I wish you better days. [I use “her” in the following generically. I have no idea if your SO was male or female.] And, therapy! Because it’s important to, 1st, identify all the way a narcissist mind-f*ked you; “manipulated” is rarely a strong enough word to describe the experience. Then, 2nd, you need to absorb and accept that the narcissist abused you based on HER needs. Not on your actions, or your personality, or your “shortcomings,” but on her ego’s needs. You were just another object to help her meet her needs; her criticism was never about you—gaslighting or abusing you was done to make her feel good/safe/superior/etc. In other words, narcissists lie. Therapy helps you to accept and KNOW that the narcissist’s statements about you were lies, the sole purpose of which was to feed the vast, empty, neediness of the narcissist. I think I belabored that enough to pound home the point. Memorize it, repeat it when your confidence wavers. It will help!
Minor compared to what? Silly why? My man, those are pretty traumatic events, all in a short period of time. Have some compassion for yourself. If what happened to you happened to a friend of yours, would you really think their ordeal was minor? Sounds pretty fucking major to me. Only your whole life, and that of your family's, got turned upside down. This is not silly, nor minor.
Don’t compare your experiences to others. There will always be someone worse.
What you just wrote is insanely traumatic.
Get in therapy and start doing work. That work you do will translate to your kids, dude. It really will. I’m a work in progress but I’m working.
My kid is 6 and recently paused her tablet to talk about a silly argument we got in minutes prior. She literally paused it and said “dad I don’t like acting like this” and we had a good chat about what lead up to it and how we could’ve handled it differently. Most kids in her class cry, scream, kick, yell, etc (and mine does too) but she just not only had a full on grown up conversation about emotions but initiated it!
That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been working on myself for over a year, making sure that I handle things as well as I can. It made me so proud of her and myself that I’ve been riding that high for days.
The point I’m making is don’t compare your experiences to other people. Just focus on you and your family and start putting in some work. Get your kids in therapy too. Kids LOVE therapy. They just get to go play completely judgment free. It’s the best. I promise the work will pay off
That's wonderful! I'm sure your daughter is very proud of you!
Doesn't matter if it was major or minor in some kind of empirical sense (which I don't even actually think is measurable). If you have it you have it.
I have cptsd I think, from my childhood. And I have spent years feeling stupid about it because so many other people had childhoods so much worse than mine. Like really. I wasn't even beaten. But I have it.
Maybe some brains are more prone to it? Who knows. But if you have it you have it, and you can get treatment and try to get better.
I'm also exmormon. I think that alone causes CPTSD in some people.
Your body isn't the only thing that can be beaten. The heart is our fragile source of strength. Knowing your wounds will help it heal, I believe in you!
Thanks
Many folks in the cptsd sun have gone through a similar process of feeling like their struggles aren’t “enough” to warrant the deep, lifelong impacts they’re experiencing, like the “should have just been able to get over it.”
That’s a LOT of trauma in a short time. Trauma is often described as too much, too fast, too soon, or too long. You had wayyyy too much, way too fast. You didn’t have time to process and heal before you got hit with another trauma.
Please visit us over at the cPTSD sub and see if you relate to any posts or if any of the resources are helpful for you. There’s a lot of overlap between ptsd and cPTSD, so there might be a resource that is helpful even if you don’t fully identify with cPTSD.
I hope these are the first steps for healing your old wounds 💖
Whether if you think it’s minor or not doesn’t diminish the effects it had on you. Trauma for some, might not be trauma for you. Whether if you have it or not, the purpose to understand the effects and behaviors you’ve adopted. There’s benefits to recognizing them, and there’s also disadvantages. For many, the reason why people work on it is because it’s been debilitating. Act accordingly to what you want and what you want to learn. Just remember, if you brush off your experiences, it means you can brush off others too.
The symptoms you and your family are experiencing are not minor at all. It seems a lot happened at once to all of you.
Not even one of those things is minor. All of them in a short period of time is definitely not minor. I really recommend you try and get some counseling for your kids. Find someone who specializes in trauma if at all possible. If you can't do therapy, I'd find some ways to slowly build your kids trust in the world back up. Emphasise that even though some terrible things happened, you are all still together and you'll get stronger together. Daily rituals can help. Little things that reinforce their security every day can bring a lot of comfort.
One of my children was very anxious when he was younger. We did a "Magic circle" at bedtime every night. We made a popping sound (finger in cheek pop), and said "Here's a magic circle to protect you, keep you safe, and wake up with a smile and a laugh."
Make believe is a very powerful tool with children.
I wish you and your family the best.
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I told myself for years that my stuff was minor too. I didn't start getting better until I could put to words why it was difficult for me.
Now, I describe how I've improved as having put all the memories that used to hurt to touch into little boxes made of words, and when I touch the memory, I only touch the words, not the feelings I used to feel.
When something triggers my PTSD, I think of the words - this happened in my past, and this is why it scares me now - and I have a sense of understanding about what is happening to me and that I am ok now. It's still hard to be in situations that remind me of the dangerous times, but I can deal with it.
Best wishes to you in getting to that point.
As others have, let me assure you, you sure sound like you have ptsd. I’m not a professional, I wouldn’t attempt to diagnose—but I have my share of t-shirts, mugs, etc., so…
It is common among people with ptsd to think “compared to others, I didn’t have it so bad.” Think of damage in terms of bands—white, yellow, orange, red, purple. Once you’re inside that ptsd band, there’s no sliding scale. Everyone in the band is Orange. Period.
Religion: The “God’s holy love” schtick is a smoke-screen for some of the most horrible things done to humans. Mormonism can be mild—or it can attempt to control your every thought and action, which of course is grotesque abuse.
Group therapy, emdr therapy—you can see demos, explanations on youtube, check them out—can be quite helpful. I wish you and your family better days.
I feel you man. Hang in there. In 2015 I had three family members die, 2 from cancer, one from suicide. My mom needed emergency heart surgery and nearly died and it woke me up that I was in a cult and sent me into a terrible suicidal depression that lasted years as I escaped Jehovah's Witnesses, moved and had to learn how to live as a normal adult after 32 years in a cult. Trauma leaves a mark, you went through some serious stuff. Get the help you need. Death and cult escape leave serious marks on the people who experience them.
Trauma is very personal. What you've described could absolutely cause PTSD. Anything could be traumatic, and what's traumatic for some isn't traumatic for others. Post Traumatic Stress is a very normal response. When it's not dealt with, it can result in PTSD.
My girlfriend grew up in a very poor environment, with a neglecting mother and multiple narcissistic, control freaks as father figures over her childhood. The mother enabled the father figures' behaviors greatly, so they could get away with inflicting my girlfriend with emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse. Her current stepfather alone is the most controlling person I've personally met and is accredited to saying "I wish your mother's breasts were as big as yours" to her when she was a minor and essentially forcing her to cuddle him. This is all from the man that she and her brother said have been the best so far. She and I have been dating for close to two years, and she's been out of that house for around a year and a half. Neither of us have been too sure exactly what she has, but after reading this, she has most of, if not everything on this list. That, combined with the numerous times that she's had to ask if something that happened to her was "actually bad", has me wondering if she has C-PTSD. She's currently doing therapy through Betterhelp (she would have rather done in-person, but we live in a very small town with a crippling lack of therapists) and I'll ask her to talk to her therapist about it. Thank you for posting such a comprehensive list of symptoms and thank you for posting about this topic in the first place. You might be the reason I can help my girlfriend identify what she's been suffering through for so long.
oh my god, this brings tears to my eyes. If my post helps even one person on the path to recovery & relief... then it's probably the best thing I'll do all year.
I am so sorry your girlfriend went through that awful awful stuff and that she's still suffering from it. I hope she finds relief soon. <3
Omg your girlfriend VERY LIKELY has cPTSD. Just a heads up that it’s currently not in the DSM, so she may not be able to be diagnosed with it, but it’s in the ICD10, so it’s internationally recognized and will likely be in the DSM soon
Took till I was 40 to get a diagnosis and the right kind of help and I've been in some sort of therapy most of my life, from early teens. Once you can understand it you can start to rebuild your life. I highly recommend a book by Pete Walker ~ Complex PTSD, From Surviving to Thriving.
It’s amazing how PTSD and in utero developmental disorders can have such overlapping symptom manifestation. Like I was diagnosed as having ASD and PTSD among a few other things (not CPTSD) though some potential recovered memory fragments since would possibly suggest chronic would be a fit
But I often wonder if the ASD could be a misdiagnosis of how CPTSD interplays with my other issues as I have what seems like some very obvious tells that I am on the spectrum but even understanding what is meant by spectrum there is a little cause for pause.
I dunno, random thought I felt like sharing
My therapist had me watch some Gabor Mate as part of my cPTSD healing, and his video on attachment and brain development discusses in utero impacts and childhood trauma. I think it also delves into implicit vs explicit memory. You’re spot on.
Thank you for sharing the link. And thank you otherwise. I must have been paying attention during the several years of intense therapy 😂
I’m pretty sure my autism caused the horrific bullying in school that gave me my cptsd.
Childhood bullying is such a long-standing pervasive thing. I still deal with emotional outbursts time to time over stuff from sixth through twelfth grade.
I’m sorry you had to go through what you did though. It had to be pretty bad I’m guessing
The symptoms of Asperger's syndrome are very close/identical with the supposed symptoms of childhood trauma, and in fact the original suspected cause of Asperger's and autism was childhood neglect (Google the term 'refrigerator mothers')
Eventually it became politically insensitive to suggest that autism could be caused by childhood abuse and neglect, and suddenly we have so called diseases like C-PTSD cropping up describing a similar set of symptoms
I've heard the same, but with cause and effect reversed - they're not inherently the same, but that autism is so linked to a traumatic childhood (whether it be bullying for being "different", abuse, harmful ABA therapy, etc) that nearly all autistic people also present with signs of trauma, and researchers can't reliably tell what's the autism and what's the trauma.
There is always overlap though. Look at a Venn diagram of ASD and ADHD.
And I didn’t downvote you just fyi. I don’t exactly agree with what you said completely as I think you are insinuating ASD to be an artificial construct to a degree but I don’t see it as something worth a downer.
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> It ended up bringing me back to places I thought I was over. Ended up in a lot of crying fits.
That's really common, and pretty necessary in the process of healing. The only way past it is through it.
It's very very very hard.... but often better than alternative.
I hope you get some rest in between the tough parts! That's necessary too. Much love and much luck on your journey. <3
I had a university professor inform me—after self-disclosing a diagnosis I had been given of C-PTSD to the class—that it was just a more politically correct way to identify Borderline Personality Disorder in women. I had a bit of a crisis about how uninformed and unintelligent I was, then had a fit of worrying about how terrible it is to diminish those with BPD in my mind, and ended up settling on not needing to waste the doctor’s time with trying to sort out something so small (that I thought about for a few months).
For me, I have such intense waves of dissociation when things become too intense or stressful. I’ve also never been able to quite articulate the disconnection I feel from my body: when I look into a mirror, I can only see components or sections of myself. I can only see my eyes, my teeth, my left arm, my right elbow, but I can’t look at my whole self as a person. Seeing pictures of myself is a different experience than looking at a reflection. I have never had a mental health or other medical professional provide any insights when I’ve tried to describe it in the past. I am typically told I likely have C-PTSD based on my experiences combined with living with PTSD for nearly 20 years.
Thanks for posting this. The first time I read the list of symptoms, I was definitely surprised.
ugh, I'm so sorry your professor said that. Even if that's a professional opinion, there's no need to minimize someone publicly like that. So gross and harmful.
But also, they're wrong. There's a whole section on the CPTSD wikipedia page about how it's often confused for BPD, but is distinct enough in such fundamental ways that it's def its own thing.
I'm sorry your mental health professionals haven't been helpful. There's definitely a lot of shit doctors out there that do more damage than good. I hope you're able to find the good ones though, because no professional has been more impactful on my life than my therapist.
However you get there, I really hope your future includes relief, comfort, and rest. You deserve it all. Much love, friend. <3
This sounds like my bio
Great post! Where is this from?
oh, it's on the wikipedia page that the entire post is linked to
Fuck, I knew I was messed up from being raised and spending most of my life in a religious cult, but thought I just had depression and ADHD. But this makes me wonder if I am even more messed up then I realized.
There was a long time when I wondered if I had ptsd. What gave it away for me was when I read the symptom "exaggerated startle response". If you sneak up on me and scare me I get like unreasonably upset. I immediately go into fight or flight. The same thing happens with loud sudden noises. Loud motorcycles on the road make me irate because of the noise.
Interestingly enough, I had the exact opposite experience. I have almost no startle response — it used to be a game with my friends to try and jump out and scare me. This convinced me I didn't have PTSD!
Interestingly, startle response is high in PTSDers, but not C-PTSDers. I think it's not even on the list of qualifying symptoms —but it's not exclusive! people with C-PTSD can still definitely have the startle response. We're just talking statistical significance.
It has something to do with C-PTSD causing numbness due to prolonged overwhelming situations. Instead of always being on guard (that the bad event is suddenly going to happen again — i.e. PTSD), you're just completely shut down, because the "bad events" are constant & inevitable. It's called learned helplessness and even reading the studies are very very sad. (CW: dogs were harmed)
I'm glad you finally figured out what's been plaguing you! I hope your path to recovery is easy & full of rest & love <3
Thank you for this information, so bizarre, I literally just sent an email to my doctor 30 minutes ago saying I think I've been suffering with PTSD and was feeling silly about it.
Basically it kills you on rhe inside and you live hollow a shell.
Relatable ( to an extent. )
Putting slavery, human trafficking, concentration camps and bullying on the same list makes no sense to me at all.
I really hope they come up with some sort of clinical severity cutoff because otherwise this reads like "adverse events are bad" when I'm sure it is meant to relate to a severe form of PTSD that results from serious adversity.
Even "regular" PTSD definitions likely would reject simple bullying as a cause because there is rarely a severe safety threat.
Bullying for a child can be terrifying. Especially when there's no out and it's continuous. It's not 'simple' bullying always.
How would you put a scale between sex trafficking / plain sexual abuse and bullying?
Note, It's not about the safety threat we perceive as adults, taking into consideration facts we know, but how the receiver percieves it. A child may not realise the difference between being trafficked or facing very strong and consistent bullying. They don't have that much knowledge. They can only experience what they feel, and that could be terror.
You know, I'll have to disagree. I may be totally wrong on this, but it's very difficult for me to believe that a child would have trouble differentiating bullying from being trafficked.
Bullying may involve an element of fear and intimidation, certainly. It involves elements of rejection and isolation, for sure. It can even involve an element of threat. But you would have to be very young to not understand the difference between a situation when your peers are bullying you and when you get kidnapped, moved to another country, involuntarily confined, sold, moved again, and eventually raped repeatedly or sold into slavery.
To make the argument that both can be scary is one thing. But to make the argument that a child can't differentiate those experiences is to argue a degree of naivete that few children would have by the time they're old enough to experience actual bullying (at least school age).
If we are going to do that, I'll take it a step further and say that an invalidating environment at home can also be seen as similar to bullying, and we can just expend the definition to "adversity". While we are at it, we can look at the criteria for cptsd, compare them to borderline personality pathology, decide that they're effectively the same down to diffusion in sense of self, and pat ourselves on the back for renaming borderline personality disorder cptsd.
But that still leaves the Holocaust survivors and victims of repeated rape and slavery in a position where they share a diagnostic label with a child who was on the receiving end of bullying at school. As someone who was on the receiving end of severe bullying in their youth, I'll put my two pennies in by saying "that's excessive". We need to draw the line somewhere.
To answer your other question: >How would you put a scale between sex trafficking / plain sexual abuse and bullying?
I would probably start with the sexual abuse component. Bullying doesn't involve penetration or other forms of sexual abuse. If it does, I say we focus on the sexual abuse - which would then obviate the need to focus on the bullying. To me, "simple" bullying doesn't involve sexual abuse. If it does, it's bullying and also sexual abuse, in which case we can use our normal definitions of PTSD and move on without diluting diagnostic categories.
It's like saying: what if I'm being bullied and someone sticks a gun in my mouth. Well, then what you've experienced is severe intimidation with a weapon. Not bullying.
Again you are using adult metrics. And extrapolating based on false premise. Let me give you some reality.
I was both sexually abused and bullied. For me the bullying was tougher because it was day in and day out. Harsh and unrelenting. The abuse was temporary, short lived and I was even made 'comfortable'. Too naive even yes, to realize extent of what was happening.
Don't want to go into the details but penetration is not the worst thing about sexual abuse, there's too much psychological loss of power and violation of body integrity that precludes that. The lasting trauma is not the physical component but the mental fuckery.
Regarding trafficking:
You're thinking of sex trafficking as something they show in movies to scare you. It always isn't like that. Its often some schmuck enticing you with a reward, making you feel cared and finally given attention, promising you great things and then finally delivering you to a place where you are used. Even then they may promise to get you back. Or convince you it's a better life than what you'd have had back 'home' in poverty.
They're all fucked up situations. How scary you think of them from impressions from outside through news reports and imagination isn't what is going to decide how f'd up they are in the mind. Let the psychs figure out that from actual observation and study of victims. Your disagreement doesn't change the science. If you actually want to understand why they seem to be put together, perhaps taking some time to read the actual research papers, might give a better understanding of the things involved.
Bests.
Look, I see your point and I understand that not all these experiences are as depicted in movies. I am sorry to hear that you have first hand knowledge of these things.
Patients are as heterogeneous as anything else, and everyone experiences and perceives different things. But this is precisely why our definitions of things matter and why we need to, in your words, let the psychs figure it out.
The psychs (I'm sure at least some of them prefer to be called psychiatrists) have chosen not to include cptsd in the DSM for the time being. I think there might be good reasons for that, some of which we are discussing right now. The line between subjective experience and standardized diagnoses is hard to draw, but important nevertheless. It affects things like research protocols, and translates to how we understand and treat disorders. For example, how we define depression can translate into guidelines about pharmacology and therapy techniques. Before you say it, yes I know the DSM isn't the end all and be all of psychiatry.
For the time being, psychiatry as a field seems to recognize that there is a syndrome that results from prolonged repeated abuse, but some classify it under attachment disorders, some under trauma, and some prefer to stick to personality disorders due to the similarity in symptoms.
I don't know that it's helpful for us to argue about labels online because we aren't about to start flashing credentials and throwing papers at eachother. I take your point for what it's worth, and I hope you consider mine - I feel that we need careful definitions or else we risk blurring diagnostic boundaries to such an extent that everyone feels included when its time to self diagnose, but at the same time few people are helped by therapies because they are researched and delivered under highly heterogeneous research conditions.
When I ask myself if psychiatry has a bigger problem with diagnostic labels or with validated therapies it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but I lean towards poor therapies as a result of broad diagnostic categories for heterogeneous conditions.
Yes I agree with you that psychiatry has a broader labelling, and finding relevant treatment for the individual problem.
And people self diagnosing is a problem too, but I don't think the solution is to disregard some possible experiences from the understanding/context of these labels.
Yes the definition need be cleaner, and I think the actual fully defined criteria for C-PTSD must be so.
Note that the above quoted text was not a definition for C-PTSD, but context of possible experiences that might result in it. The actual evaluation would (should?) ofcourse be done by a professional who'd evaluate exhibited symptoms and not just go on history.
People self-diagnosing simply from the context are hurting themselves, true. And should probably seek a professional for more trained evaluation.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I like that we can have a discussion, disagree on some things, agree on others. This has been very fun and I learned some things too. Cheers!
To add to my other comment. I am sorry to hear you were at the receiving end of bullying.
I don't want to draw a line between simple bullying and _(?) bullying. But that feelings of body violation and lack of control etc can also happen with some cases of physical bullying that need not be sexual.
Again, glad that you don't seem to have had as bad of a reaction and felt not as distressed chronically from it. But it's not the same for everyone.
(Note that There are people that are driven to suicide by bullying. If that's not proof that it is perceived very intensely by some then i don't know what else I can say).
Hmm maybe... But thanks to the low self-esteem it's literally nothing I would ever seek treatment for..yay?
That's definitely the hardest hurdle to get over, by far.
I can say with 100% certainty that you deserve care, comfort, and calm in this world. I know I'm a literally anonymous stranger on the internet, but I know it's true because it's true for everyone on the planet (yes, even people who do bad things)... but especially for those that are in pain.
I hope one day you get the help you need. In the meantime, communities like r/CPTSD are great. A genuinely wonderful community of people going through what you're going through. Even just reading some random posts has helped relieve the pain for me sometimes.
Much love to you, friend.
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