COMPLEX POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (CPTSD)
**This space is for Survivors of CPTSD. This is a safe space for Survivors to share with one another and seek support in a supportive and respectful environment.**
Many traumatic events (e.g., car accidents, natural disasters, etc.) are of time-limited duration. However, in some cases Survivors experience multiple traumas, that continue or is repeated over many months or years at a time. The current PTSD diagnosis does not fully capture the severe psychological harm that occurs with prolonged, repeated trauma. People who experience chronic trauma often report additional symptoms alongside formal PTSD symptoms, such as changes in their self-concept and the way they adapt to stressful events.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) differs from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in that a traumatic event occurs multiple times over an extended period of time. Examples of CPTSD include:
*Concentration camps
*Prisoner of War camps
*Prostitution brothels
*Long-term domestic violence
*Long-term child physical abuse
*Long-term child sexual abuse
*Organized child exploitation rings
* Abduction/Kidnapping (including parental)
* Any form of neglect/abuse while in a situation where escape is not possible
An individual who experienced a prolonged period (months to years) of chronic victimization and complete control by another/others may also experience the following difficulties:
Emotional Regulation. May include persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger.
Consciousness. Includes forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body (dissociation).
Self-Perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.
Distorted Perceptions of the Perpetrator. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge.
Relations with Others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.
One's System of Meanings. May include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.
CPTSD Survivors are often diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), DDNOS, and other dissociative disorders. Because people who experience chronic trauma often have additional symptoms not included in the PTSD diagnosis, clinicians may misdiagnose PTSD or only diagnose a personality disorder consistent with some symptoms, such as Borderline or Dependent Personality Disorder.
Chronic trauma survivors may experience any of the following difficulties:
Survivors may avoid thinking and talking about trauma-related topics because the feelings associated with the trauma are often overwhelming.
Survivors may use alcohol or other substances as a way to avoid and numb feelings and thoughts related to the trauma.
Survivors may engage in self-mutilation and other forms of self-harm.
Survivors who have been abused repeatedly are vulnerable to further exploitation and abuse, and can be unfairly blamed for the symptoms they experience as a result of victimization.
At 7cups, we are empathetic to your past experiences and your feelings as a CPTSD Survivor. Please use this space to share your CPTSD stories, feelings and support for others. (Please avoid being graphic or triggering.)
WE ARE HERE FOR YOU! 
edited by dancingRainbow45 06/04/2017 Additional information added
@AutumnLeigh
i can fall in the category as victimized.... for nearly 11 years I was in a relationship that was nothing but a lie... for year I put up with abuse physically emotionally and verbally... how someone can control another is incredible and how I could of fall in love with someone who never really loved me all the cheating I put up and when I try to leave he would stop me and of course I would fall for it being called the ugliest names to being told I
@Ang0825 Hey Ang, thanks for having the courage to share so openly here the experiences you have been through and Im sorry that no one has been able to respond to your post before now. You have been through so much which you should never have had to have experienced in life and suffering physical, emotional and verbal abuse will have had a profound effect on you as you described in your post. It is incredible the ways in which others can control and manipulate others and the methods they employ to get another human being under their control and to feel as bad as possible about themselves which of course erodes their self worth and self esteem and self confidence and if this abuse is then mixed with odd times of being nice and treating their partner it can then become very confusing, sometimes a partner believing the only person who will or is capable of loving them is their abuser. It was not your fault what you went through and its not surprizing the effect the abuse has had on you where you believed everyone was going to be the same, where you constantly lived in fear of men. And you are correct about how verbal abuse too, can often be the worse form of abuse. A broken bone can heal, but emotional and verbal abuse really gets inside someone psychologically.
You say you are very insecure and dont know how to open up any more, but you did that right here, when you made the post you did. I know you may be referring to other things, but dont negate the fact you found the courage to open up here about your experiences for this is a huge thing in itself. 
What kind of help have you had for the anxiety and depression you mention in the post and the insecurities which have arisen from the abuse you have gone through? Is this something you have had or would consider having to work on the issues you feel could help you move beyond what is keeping you perhaps trapped by your past? It is possible to heal from abuse such as this but it does take time and there is hope after going through things such as this. Relationships may be difficult now and it may be something that will take a long time for you to manage but it is possible to be in a relationship where you can learn to trust again and believe that you are actually worth something and that not everyone is out to hurt you but that some people actually want to protect you from harm. It just takes time to get there.
@Rain45 thank u for your post and yes this is my biggest problem I live in fear just so scared of being hurt that I shit everyone out of my life and this is something I have realize I need help with I want to be happy and not fear of let down and negativity anymore I want to move on and be happy and love again but like I said the fear of let down tortments me co stanh ugh
Is this place in support of active military suffering PTSD from combat deployments as well? The stories can get kind of heavy and disturbing, so they aren't always welcome.
@MRaven Yes we do also support those who have suffered trauma from military/combat experiences and you can find some of our information here. Our listeners support those with combat experiences one to one but you are welcome to post in the forum section for those with military experience if you wish too. We would love to see our military personnel post here more if you would like to do so.
https://www.7cups.com/forum/TraumaticExperiencesCommunity_60/OtherTraumaticExperiences_794/
@Rain45 Unfortunately, because of the fact that most of my stories are graphic/triggering, I cannot share them in this group, as much as I would like to.
@MRaven Thats sad to hear that you do not feel able to share in a group. I know a lot of people here have stories that they fear sharing for the fear of triggering others. We do have a rule in the trauma community to add a trigger warning if your post is likely to trigger others and to use *** in words that may cause offense or be particularly triggering. If this helps you begin to share your story or consider sharing, please do consider it. I can appreciate that it can be difficult, but perhaps start by sharing a little about you, how you chose to get involved in the military and your experiences of beginning to serve if you wish to. I dont know if this would help? Or perhaps what life is like for you now?
@Rain45 Alright, that sounds like a good start.
Barely over 5 years ago I signed up for the German Military (Bundeswehr), specifically the army. I could say I considered myself mentally strong, and somewhat physically fit if you take away the fact that I was bouncing from 10-20 (I think that is what it transfers as) lbs underweight. That wasn't a big deal for me, because I knew I could simply gain muscle mass. I did.
But back to mental fitness. My entire life I had lived without family. Sure, I lived with someone for most of my years, but we weren't related. He beat me and molested me a lot too, but that was, and honestly still is in some ways, normal for me. I could take a hard punch and get back up. I could stand someone screaming in my face, puting me down, and I could do so without showing emotion. That is just how I was raised to be by this man. He hadn't taken much care of me, I guess he just felt obligated to take me in. My social skills were terrible because of all of this though. Quite honestly I still struggle to start a converstation most of the time. But this man had given me mental strength, and taught me to work through pain or lack of sleep.
Honestly I wanted to be a surgeon, at first. For all that I went through, I was still intelligent. Almost top of my class each year, for the most part. But I graduated homeless. I couldn't see myself as a surgeon, being so dirty and awkward. Me and several other friends joined the army. That was that.
@MRaven Hey Raven thanks for your post. :) From what I know and from what your post said, I think anyone considering signing up for the army or any other of the forces, has to be quite mentally resisilient and fit and even if they are not totally physically in shape at the start, with the training given to them, they are pretty much gotten into shape in preparation for their military duty. How did you feel about signing up for the army at the time you did?
Im sorry to hear that the person who you lived with for most of your years was someone who had physically and sexually abused you. Im sory that happened for you and you should never have been subjected to that. Its always sad when people see this as their normality because it was what they were used to, or all they knew. Quite often, as you post went onto say, many can somehow cope with the physical abuse, even take the verbal abuse at the time, but it does take its toll in other areas eg social skills. However, I can also appreciate though how you would feel that due to the experiences you had, that somehow this has given you the mental abilities to cope with things, that perhaps others would find harder to? eg lack of sleep I guess my only question with this, is that was it the right way for you to have acquired these skills. But I appreciate that from many of our experiences, we can gain strength in some form from them that have directly come from having lived with and having survived what we went through.
What led to you becoming homeless Raven? The dream to become a surgeon sounds as if this was wiped out by your homelessness experiences when younger and how you felt about yourself.
@Rain45
I am still proud to serve. Even before I enlisted, I knew that, as a female, I would be sexually harrassed, I knew that it wouls take a toll on my physical and mental health, and I knew I would be financially unstable. Those are things people should realize before they join.
As for homeless, the man has thrown me out in my later child years, but I did have friends I could stay with every once im a while. I don't care to be a surgeon anymore. I would not be able to function well enough to do so now, anyway.
Before all of this, the army itself, the combat, whatever, I was stable. I still am pretty resilient, considering I have not taken my own life. I still smile, still have fun and experience happiness and enjoyment. I just have trauma. I function different because said ways of functioning were drilled into my mind, seemingly permanently. Sometimes I do things that only make sense to me.
Like car rides, if it is only I and the driver, I sit in the back and shift myself to stay furthest away from the curb. If there is another passenger, and they are in the back with me, I try to force them to shift, and I sit in the middle. It doesn't make sense to them. But in my head are the ideas of IEDs, the fear of driving over one or near one and having it blow up. So I try to protect myself, but put the other passengers life before mine, hence why I sit in the middle and they shift.
It's the little things like that that tear me apart, though. Make me nervous and such.
@MRaven Hey Raven. Its good that you still feel proud to serve, even with all those problems that you listed, which you were aware could be problematic even before you enlisted. I think in many jobs the harassment that females encounter is rife but particularly in a male dominated job such as the services. How did you cope with the harassment?
Being homeless can also take its toll on many people and I wonder how you coped with going from friend to friend? Im glad you had friends that you could call upon to help you but its sad that you found yourself in that situation and that you did not have the stability that you deserved.
Trauma survivors, can be very resilient, with all of the experiences they go through and like you said, they can smile, they can cope, they can function, many are highly functioning, can hold down jobs, can have fun and make others laugh but inside, they hold a lot of pain and eventually that comes out in many ways.
The way you described the car rides, it sounds as if you still have a need to protect yourself, perhaps that child within you feeling the need to feel safe?
@Rain45
How do I cope with the harrassment? Honestly, I use my rank to my advantage when I can. If it's my higher ups harrassing me though, there isn't much I can do except for deal with it and roger on. So I guess to cope with it, I stay professional.
How did I survive skipping friend to friend? Easily, honestly. Concrete grew increasingly comfortable, and my stomach was small. I didn't need a lot of food, didn't need a bed, and could go for a while off of little water. I stayed with friends sometimes only to, you may say, "refill my tank" so I could keep pushing on.
And the car issue, definitely not what you think it is. I lost a few of my friends to an IED, in an auto I was originally meant to be in. I wasn't too far behind them so I saw quite a bit, pulled up, and saw a bit more.
The child in me though, does retreat to my boyfriend for safety when possible. Admittedly.
Does this apply to emotional abuse too? I was wondering about this, since I have no flashbacks or anything like that. Maybe I remember some things, but I feel no distress about them, more like just my brain reminding itself that I am a disappointment kind of. And it affects me in all my relationships with people, constantly looking for somebody or something to keep me safe, and ending up doing things to go numb. Feeling like I deserve to be hurt or be used, and at the same time looking for a rescuer. I think it might be the root of my OCD and my addiction problems. Sometimes I hear him breathe in the other room at night, and I just stop. Completely. Don't breathe, don't move, just frozen. I tell myself I'm not afraid of him, but when I talk to him, sometimes it feels like I just wanna cry. We are on good terms, and I laugh at his jokes and try to keep everything all right. Kind of what I always did. Avoid making him mad, so he doesn't yell at me or call me worthless. Just a lot of days spent crying on the bathroom floor and running away from him and trying to mold myself towards his wishes so I avoid triggering him. He never hurt me physically, he never hurt me sexually. He only hit me once as a kid, and that's something that keeps repeating in my head over and over again. But it doesn't cause me fear or anxiety, it just causes me to feel like that was me being forever labeled as a failure. Because words weren't enough, the yelling and shouting wasn't enough to get his point across, so hitting me was the only way to tell me I'm worthless. I know it has nothing to do with me, and it's his issues with anger, but while I know that, I don't believe it. He once told me that he wants to kill me and my mother and my sister, and I think that was the first time I dissociated, and since then, for the last 3 or 4 years, I've been struggling to wake up from the dissociation. It's either be numb or have a panic attack. No middle. I spent most of my childhood hoping someone would come and save me, or that at least he would beat me or something so that I could have proof that his behaviour is making me hurt and damaging me. When I would tell my mom, she would protect me, but only short term, because it still kept happening. She would tell me that I have to love him anyway and that other people have it worse. That part about other people having it worse. I know that. I'm aware of that. But it hurts so much to not be taken seriously and my pain basically being minimised. I don't know. It made me rely on food and now starting with self medicating to deal with it. The depression, the anxiety, the suicidal thoughts, everything. I feel like it's not PTSD, but is it CPTSD? Can anyone help me figure this out? Maybe I'm just too sensitive and overreacting?
I didnt know about cptsd until just recently but as soon as I read up on it I realized that it pretty much explains everything about me. It explains my chronic depression, my poor memory and inability to concentrate, my horrible temper, my low self esteem, difficulty perceiving and expressing emotions, and the pervasive sense that Im forever on the outside looking in. I experienced pretty severe child abuse and neglect for the first 4 years of my life and it has colored my experience of everything since. The emotional abuse through jr and high school just cemented it into my brain. Emotionally Im about 10-15 years behind my peers because each period of abuse arrested my development. At 36 Im hitting emotional milestones everyone else hit in their early 20s. I dont know where to go from here... do I need to find a specialist? I dont want more meds, I want treatment so that I can find real healing. Where do I go from here???
Hello guys! Im a C-PTSD survivor, and I would love to C-PTSD to get more relevance here! Im glad I discovered this community. Happy to join you.
@AnnieAnne
Welcome to 7cups!
@AnnieAnne Feel free to reach out to me or Kate if you want to be more involved with the community. We're happy you're here <3
0.0 I had never heard of this! I've always been like "what happened to me wasn't such a great deal, since it happened for so much time and I don't even have PTSD", and at the same time I was like "why am I always so anxious, and depressed, and stuck, and I always have problems, and nightmares, but I don't fall in any personality disorder category, what's the problem with me???" maybe this could be my thing...
6 months ago I discovered the church I have grown up in and given my whole life to, was a cult. My parents both grew up in it, they met and married in it, and raised me and my siblings in it. the thing about it is, everything that happened was always so subtle, and it always felt a little off but never nothing big. but when i starting realizing stuff was off when i was like 11, like how i volunteered a lot of my time to editing out the controversial stuff our holy leader said so we could publish it, i was unsettled. then BAM! the whole church reveals many many incidences of sexual misconduct and the church ceases to exist. everyone leaves, people start to talk to each other and realize how much theyve been hurt, emotionallly. my mom her friends, my sister, everyone so conditioned and there were always favorites. im not going to go into extreme detail about what the methods were, but i look back and realize all my problems stem from this, why did i always feel like i wasnt good enough to be an elite as a kid, why was my family treated differently, why this... etc. but then i think more, and im falling apart. i dont understand myself, i doubt everything i think, why am i so worthless, so unloved, but why do i feel this way? im constantly told that everyone was hurt more than me, i have it easy, i was only in the church for 14 years. but then why am i so hurt by this? i went through some really tough mental times but i cant tell anyone
because i feel like everyones has been hurt way more than me. i dont have any reason to be hurt so much, but i am, why am i hurt so much when i dont remember anyone ever telling me i was worthless? is it just my teenage hormones, am i making it all up?
i really dont know why, and i cant stop these thoughts and triggers i have, but im trying not to minimize my own hurt.
thanks for listening
I've struggled since I was 12 with CPTSD it was caused by a 22 year old man I met through social media. Mostly emotional and I am tired or it taking over my life and causing me to worry about my current boyfriend becoming abusive. It has made evrything in my life worse and held me down so after 5 years I'm ready to go all in and help myself get better. I know I can never change what happened or what I did to myself after but as long as I keep moving forward I will be better.
@JAYBIRD666
thats amazing positive talk, well done on your choice... its so hard to change that mindset from a victim to a survivor... and youve started.... there is so much life out there to grab hold of... the struggle is so long and hard but the view is worth it.... I visualise a mountain trek... every now and then you climb hard up a big hill or mountain, they are all different sizes and various degrees of difficulty and every now and then you reach a top point where you can look back over where you have come from and see that you have indeed moved higher up into the mountains, especially as the problems below get more distant. But then to keep going forward you have to go down into the next valley to address the difficulties of life again and revisit all the negative self beliefs youve developed and the coping mechanisms that havent actually helped you but hindered you (but they served you well while you needed them). And then you see the path leading up and you make those steps up again... climbing what feels like forever... sometimes we need to take a break, pitch a tent (therapy), get some food (reading), stop and appreciate the beauty around us before we continue again and each time we move we move closer to our goal.... a life where only positive affirmations exist, and decisions are easy and the air becomes easier to breathe.
Just a thought.... Im on my journey too... I hope we keep crossing paths.
@Idkme2 well said, thank you so much
I've had several traumas in my life, but I have only been diagnosed with PTSD, but I still have reaccuring symptoms like nightmares, panic attacks, I can't drive because I freak out, I will freak out with certain drivers (I was in two car accidents and hit by a car), I am fearful of men, especcially dominate agressive men (I witness lots of violence as a kid and was raped)
I have noticed that my depression has turned into insolation and bouts of anger. I feel bad for my family because they get the bud of it and do not deserve it. I have been having an extreme hard time finding and keeping a therapist.
Do I just have PTSD or CPTSD?
@Rebekahwriter13 I don't have the necessary information to answer your question but I am here to offer support. You are very very very (veryx1000000) brave and I empathise deeply with you and with what happened to you. Maybe it will be a good idea for you to try some online therapy sessions? Especially with the coronavirus situation. From the comfort of your home, I think there will be less trouble and frustration with the actual going to a therapist and also, by being in your own familiar environment, I think that you can open up more easily. Do you have a reliable person to lean on? (Family member/friend) Opening up to them might be of great use. Probably signing up to a group with people that suffer from the same things as you do might be helpful(you know, like group therapy?). I do not have experience but in order to somehow alleviate nightmares, try watching and surrounding yourself with positive images:such as cats and dogs images(or other animals you like), watching Flower documentaries or anything that does not contain violence in any way. I can only imagine your struggle but I believe you have the power to overcome every obstacle that stands in the way of your happiness. All the best from me! 🌷🐥
@Rebekahwriter13 Sorry to hear you had to go through that. Whether you have ptsd or cptsd can only be determined by a professional. Having repeated traumatic experiences over a long period of time could cause cptsd. And another sign is emotional flashbacks where you feel the emotions that go with the trauma but you don't necessarily get the images. Bouts of anger might be emotional flashbacks. Again, I'd consult a professional because the treatment for cptsd is different from regular ptsd.
