CompLex-PTSD
According to Psychological Trauma (American Psychiatric Press, 1987) psychological trauma is anything overwhelming an individual’s ability to process and integrate something that has occurred, it results from a person’s inability to cope with the level of stress, they are overwhelmed. They also mention that psychological trauma is subjective, and notes the stress-trauma continuum. The article also highlights dissociation as a core symptom, specifically “trauma is best defined as ‘the event(S) that cause dissociation’” (Howell, 2011, p. 75).
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Trauma is something that happened in the past, but it influences your present and your future, at least according to the 14 respondents to my “Word Survey”.
Trauma pervades your life when it develops beyond traumatic distress and it becomes PTSD.
Prolonged exposure to traumatic stress response rewires your brain. It lowers your capacity to manage stress; very small things seem life threatening most days.
“My uncle has PTSD”, Abby said from the backseat on their way home from Dairy Queen. “Oh like me”, Lex responded. “Well, he was in a war, it’s bad he can’t even talk about it.” Lex just sat there feeling misunderstood and trying to explain the difference between PTSD and Complex-PTSD without being perceived as minimizing a veterans PTSD experience.
When you say PTSD, people’s immediate connection is to Veterans and War; and while we wouldn’t have a solid understanding of PTSD without Shell-Shock providing the fundamentals to understand the lasting impact of traumatic events on one’s well-being, it is important that society understands PTSD affects more than just our Veterans and when the trauma isn’t acknowledged and processed properly it can be passed down from generation to generation. The invalidation of traumatic events outside of violence and war by society contributes to this notion.
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My C-PTSD pervades all aspects of my life, most present in my relationships.
Romantic, professional, plutonic
All interpersonal interaction evokes a mistrustful anxiety within me
“Do they think I’m dumb?”
“Do they think I’m crazy?”
“Do they think I’m pretty?”
These are the thoughts that pervade my relationships.
In the last 9 years I’ve pushed away unconditional ????
The last 9 months I’ve pushed away supportive mentorship.
The last 9 days I’ve pushed away authentic love.
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When you live with C-PTSD you constantly seek to analyze the connections.
How is this event connected to that event? What are the signs?
When you live with grief you constantly seek to find meaning in the darkness of pain and loss.
Memory Lane
Where all the sidewalks are covered in chalk
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Have u ever wanted to jump into a chalk drawing? Just escape reality and go into one created by an artist? In a way we all create our own realities. We’re just the amalgamation of a bunch of memories and social networks. My memory lane is pretty bittersweet, but isn't everyone’s?
Theres the boy I dated because he was my best friend and I didn't want to lose him and lost him anyway. Theres the boy who abused me. Theres the boy who called me fat. The boy who said i had bug eyes. The boy who asked for nudes. The boy who sexually assaulted me. The list goes on and on. Boys aren't the only thing that makes up my memories, but they're present in most of them.
I used to think it would’ve been easier if i had been born a boy. I would’ve been put up for adoption and raised in California, but thats not why i thought it’d be easier. I thought it’d be easier because by the time i was 6 years old I felt smaller, lesser, and inferior to boys and men. It always felt like they held this inexplicable power and authority over me. A few boys called me fat between 4th-6th grade and I still cant look at myself in the mirror and feel enough. My ex boyfriend sent me a song that implied i was a “psycho from a midwest suburb” and I didn't stop leaning into that as my sole personality trait until I realized I was allowing boys and men to tell me who i was.
Sure, maybe I was a little cRaZy, but that didn't make me unlovable. Sure, bad things happened to me but it wasn't just because I was a girl. I used to want to be a boy because I thought they had it easier, but if I had lived my life as a boy it would've been far worse. The toxic masculinity and mental health stigma would have broken me down, I probably would have become a suicide statistic. The reality of men's mental health stigma and minimization is deep and dark, and I wouldn't trade all the scrutiny in the world to experience that kind of invalidation.
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If someone told you that you only got to save one memory of someone you loved, which one would you choose?
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It all started in a lamp lit apartment, at least that’s what her mother said. Her entire perception of her father was made up of small memories bestowed upon her by her mother. The only memory Alexis had of her father was from a few months before he died, in the apartment with the lava lamp, strawberry ice cream, and The Simpsons. She remembered the morning he died, wrapped in the off-white Pottery Barn duvet with her head at the end of the bed where your feet should be, she awoke to her mother’s tear stained cheeks and puffy eyes: “Alexis, Papa’s in heaven with the angels now.” She didn’t remember if she cried, she was 3 and a half years old; do toddlers even know how to process grief?
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“You really do live in your memories, huh?”, Matthew said to me. He was right, I did. It was safer than living in the uncertainty of the future. It was deeper than that though, I lived in my memories but I also sought to create memories that I could live in. Happy moments. The moments I need when the darkness consumes me. When you create those memories, those moments, they’re what you can look to for an instant smile or in some cases an instant stream of tears. Not all the memories you burn into your brain, or seek to burn into your brain turn out as you plan.
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Internal Battles
She closes her eyes to go to sleep. Her head at the foot of her bed. Tossing and turning, unable to stop the thoughts in her head or stop the movie from rolling behind her eyelids. It’s dark and twisting. There she is. It’s dark, but light enough that she can see. She’s on a path in the woods. It’s cold. Anything could pop out at her. She begins walking down the path, it’s paved, but she avoids the cracks in the cement. She walks on and on. Eventually this has to open up. She thought to herself as she continued on. Eventually, after realizing she’s passed the same weeping willow 5 times, she knows she’s trapped and the only way out is through the woods; the beaten path cannot be trusted.
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I didn’t even know what emotional flashbacks were until I was in therapy. Essentially even though I’m living in the present, my body knows seasonally, monthly, annually the dates of my traumatic stress and around those dates the same thoughts and feelings can intrude my brain, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it except let it pass and hope that in years to come I make better memories around those dates.
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As she begins her journey out of the woods, the wind begins to whisper, not good enough, unlovable, fucked up, psychotic, unstable, people always leave, he says he loved you but he’s not IN love with you, he’ll realize soon enough, there’s going to be someone better. As the whispers get louder she drops to her knees on the cold hard earth, feeling it scrape her knees, places her hands over her ears, squeezes her eyes closed, and screams: MAKE IT STOP!
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She forces her eyes open, wide, feeling the cold air upon them. She breathes in. And all at once it’s quiet. The journey continues. She can sense a presence ahead, she starts to focus her eyes on the shadows in the distance. As she approaches them she realizes what they are: trolls. Not the cute singing kind, or the grumpy old one from under a bridge, but the spooky scary ghoul kind.
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You wakeup ready to go to battle, to burn down everything you've built. You throw fuel on the fire: flames, flames, they engulf every seed you brought to fruition. Then, suddenly you're running to the river and filling pails with water. "Put it out, hurry! This village is all I have!!" It's the only nation keeping the kingdom alive. Just like that the princess is at war with herself again.
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Living with C-PTSD is like a civil war happening in your brain constantly.
You live at war with your own thoughts. The thoughts invade your headspace and at first you trust them. The head colonel of cognitive distortions will convince you this is the safest route, the way to protect your person. He encourages you to build up walls around your heart and cut off all associations with ally nations; he's an isolationist. Sometimes you're able to regain control of your soldiers, make peace with the nations, and find peace in your heart. But not before causing some form of damage to the cities you've lived in, the people you love, and ultimately yourself...
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You don't realize you're activated until you're not, just like you don't realize you're spiraling until you stop.
Activated
You learn a lot from living through immense emotional pain. You also learn a lot about the cognitive distortions you bring into your professional life.
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She was back; or rather, as back as she could be. Back on track, back on schedule, centered. She had spent the last week activated. ‘Activated’ is a word with many meanings, Activated: “make (something) active or operative.” or “convert (a substance, molecule, etc.) into a reactive form”(Oxford Languages). I prefer the later definition to the former. When my PTSD becomes activated I become reactive; I sometimes even morph into Tyranasaurus Lex. Before going to therapy last night, I was activated; yet this time was different, I knew what was happening and why, but I couldn’t manage to deduce the activation even as I told my doctor “I just can’t relax, I know everything’s fine but I still feel like something’s wrong.” I had so much sorted out: I took the vulnerable leap to workshop this project, I had submitted my first (super rough-but finished) draft of my honors thesis, I had applied to the Masters of Social Work program and felt my values aligning with my lived experience. And yet, I was still so unwell.
I tried everything I knew to get back on track: go to bed early, workout, walk, write. Nothing was working. Nothing was enough. “Not enough” is the root of anxiety, according to my mom, it makes sense all things considered.
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This time around I noticed the difference between living with C-PTSD and living with Activated C-PTSD. When it’s activated you feel like you’re dying or going to die. Your guard is up in every social situation, overthinking is on overdrive and nothing is linear. Organize, organize, organize. That’s how I maintain my sense of control when I’m activated. Write evrything down multiple times, get ahead, color code, vacuum, align, routine. It’s the only sense of control I could find. I can’t control people, I’ve spent a great portion of my life trying to; It just doesn’t work.
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“It just makes you realize, it doesn’t matter how many things you have going for you, or how much control you think you have, your whole world can be ripped out from under you in a second.” Ally said to me on the phone trying to breathe through her sobs, she had just watched her aunt have a brain aneurysm in her sleep in their shared hotel room on a law school visit to Arizona. She was alone, she was scared, and her traumatic stress system was in full swing. I listened to her fight response desperately hoping for God to change the fate of her aunt as her flight response propelled her into packing up her aunt’s belongings. “I just need to get out of this room.” she professed to me. As I stopped myself from empathizing with Ally too deeply by imagingin what it would be like to lose my aunt who was like my second mom in the same way, I talked Ally through the scary feelings that come with traumatic and anticipatory loss, knowing the most important thing to do was breathe and take it one step at a time. An inability to breathe is the most descriptive statement I can provide for how it feels when your best friend calls and tells you she’s experienced a traumatic loss.
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As she sat in her Toyota Rav 4 in the parking lot outside The Big House, sipping her coffee and listening to Father Joe’s Super bowl Sunday Homily she wondered what her version of the ball was. The punt returner has to keep his eye on the ball in the face of monstrous gunners run at him to do his job; catch the ball. Her week had been a mess of her past bleeding into her present, and she realized she’d lost sight of reality and had been sucked down into the depths of her trauma. Down the rabbit hole she went, just like Alice naively following that damned white rabbit. She remembered a time when she was the Red Queen, and a time when she was Alice. She spent the week in a spiral of dark emotions and darker thoughts, but something pulled her out; rather, someone.
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Watching one of your best friend's in college experience post-traumatic stress symptoms allows an experience in understanding one's own C-PTSD that isn't available in a college course. After Michigan basketball lost she started having nightmares again, intrusive thoughts, she couldn't focus. "I get it dude." I'd respond, doing my best not to get loss in thinking about the parallels between my experience and hers. Loss has been everywhere this month. Not just in my best friend's loss, but in my own loss of what I thought graduating from the "BEST UNIVERSITY IN THE WORLD" would look like, loss of one of my mom's favorite people, the continued grief process of losing mine. Some days it feels like fighting a losing battle, but being able to empathize and support my fellow "loss-experiencers" through these losses brings me joy. In an interview to be a camp counselor at grief camp with kids they asked about my comfort level with having uncomfortable conversations and sitting with children as they process their grief, I didn't know how to answer professionally because I wanted to say "I love making people uncomfortable". It brought me back to my study abroad experience, where I poured my whole self onto the table for everyone to see and our group was able to bond through really deep, dark, traumatic experiences in order to support ourselves and each other in studying trauma and violence on a global level in Uganda and Rwanda. Living my truth encourages people to live theirs, and my ability to show up for others in a way where they trust me because I actually "get it" through my lived experience and not just my training or education is a great thing. Yet, many people judge, shame, and attempt to silence vulnerability; especially when it comes to mental health, taboo topics like death, and this leaves so much pain to go unacknowledged, minimized, and internalized.
Happy/Sad
Happy/Sad is a very confusing place to operate from.
Happy/Sad is your mom calling about Beanie Baby Bears at the Children's Grief Support Non-Profit
Happy/Sad is your brother having the opportunity to go to the same Grief camp you went to
Happy/Sad is your boyfriend getting into a PhD program in a city 500 miles away.
Happy/Sad is going out with your best friend on her birthday even though you haven't slept in a week because you don't feel safe in your bed.
Happy/Sad is your boyfriend holding you as you sob through your worry for your brother.
Happy/Sad is graduating from the first place that felt safe.
Happy/Sad is gratitude for the memories you do have.
Happy/Sad is the fact that resilience does not exist without adversity.
Happy/Sad is the bouncing ball.
Happy/Sad is being voted "most positive" at grief camp.
Happy/Sad is sitting on Zoom with your boyfriend as you both study.
Happy/Sad is finding the love of your life during what feels like your biggest loss.
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If it’s not funny, then it’s sad and you don’t want to make people sad.
Alcohol
“I had a rough day, I picked up a six-pack.” is a seemingly normal phrase in our society, it makes sense for most people. Not for me. When I received this text from my boyfriend, who’s been relatively sober throughout our entire relationship and who’s stress level has recently caused a blow to his mental health I felt as if my body was going to fold in on itself. I’d be a hypocrite to say it’s unhealthy to have a beer or maybe a few after a long day, week, month, year, life even; but I’d also be lying if I said that I didn’t know every time I drank there was some underlying issue I was trying to numb. What is he trying to numb? You can only know someone as well as they know themselves, and at this point I don’t even think he knew. I was in a similar headspace a year ago, so I can have empathy and grace but it exists in duality with anxiety and panic. Alcohol has taken a lot from me: my dad, my control. It was a complex relationship, as is with anything in my life. Beer had become part of my personality, yet as I watched my boyfriend throwback bottles of dark beer I couldn’t help but feel the fear building in my heart. Not fear that my boyfriend was going to become an alcoholic, fear of what he was numbing. Sometimes our partner’s traumas can linger, sometimes they can be caused by other partners, and sometimes that can make someone feel really insecure and unsafe. I had no validation that this was the case tonight, but it’s all I could think about as he sang the same lyric from an 80’s pop song over and over again with red cheeks and an unshaven face. And the truth is, I’m terrified. I’m terrified that the behaviors I exhibited a year ago, when I was numbing my unresolved breakup and trying to force a relationship with him, are the same as his behaviors now; therefore leading me to believe he’s not over the girl who cheated on him mercilessly throughout their entire relationship that ended over 4 years ago. It’s absurd, but I go to bed terrified of losing him to an imaginary ghost of someone because I struggle to understand anyone’s pain if it’s not rooted in traumatic events. Chemical imbalances? Not my forte. And to be honest, people drink to numb for a lot of reasons that aren’t always trauma related. He can love me and still want to decompress after a long day. It’s just so hard. The amount of guilt it evokes; knowing that this is probably how my mom felt throughout 2020 with my drinking habits. We have to change the generational trauma. We have to be better. Me and Matthew, together. We have to protect our kids (shh) from inheriting these narratives of evil and mistrust. I hope for their sake they don’t know the darkness that we have, and the hurt. And if/when they do, I hope that we are healed and well equipped enough to support them through that by any means necessary.
Vulnerable
An insecure girl makes an unsuspecting victim.
A girl beaten down by words used against her like knives
Fat, ugly, stalker, psycho, crazy all held resonance in her mind
These words being constructs of an evil class of humanity.
She looked to boys pretending to be men to erase the profanity.
Exploitive, manipulative, cunning, and sly
He knew just what to say to steal more than her ??
And he knew just what to do to make her the bad guy.
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--2013
The first time I hung out with a boy alone I was a freshman in high school; he was first boy to post me on Instagram as his #WomanCrushWednesday. J.
He invited me to his house to cuddle and watch Star Wars with his parents and he kissed me at a Halloween party with all my new “Catholic School Friends''. My mom yelled at me after that party for kissing a boy I wasn’t dating.
After we kissed, he invited me to his house to hangout, alone. My mom was frustrated because he lived on the other side of St. Louis; a solid 45-minute drive from my house; I remember thinking this was no big deal and her worry was ridiculous. I don’t remember walking up the stairs to his room, I remember being in his bed as Family Guy played on the Tv we started making out. I remember him grabbing my wrist, putting my hand on his penis, and moving it up and down left and right. I remember trying to focus on kissing, but his tongue was circulating in my mouth like a washing machine. He let go of my hand, I pulled it close to my body. He pulled down his pants. He looked at me, “So you gonna touch it?”.
-- 2019
There was a reason I had never gone upstairs with him alone before that night. If you go upstairs, you know what might happen; and if you say no when that happens, you might lose him.
-- 2021
“So hypothetically if a boy’s older brother picked you up from his high school, took you to his house 35 minutes from your house, had dinner with you and his parents, took you in his basement to ‘watch a movie’ and then told you to suck his dick so you did it because you didn’t know what would happen if you said no, is that coercion and sexual assault?” I asked my friends jokingly as we were discussing what constituted sexual assault in a very casual way. “Uh, yeah.” they responded.
Why?
Why did you have to go and leave me all alone?
Why couldn’t you stay and save me from all the boys I came to know?
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Why did choose me as the girl he’s exploit?
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Did my face just scream “desperate” from his focal point?
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Why did he tell me to text him those things?
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He got me kicked out of school, transferring to the school with gold rings
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Why did the next boy hold me in the football stands?
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And then force me to touch him with my hands?
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Why did he kiss me on Halloween?
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And ruin something I wanted since becoming a teen?
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Why did he take me down the stairs?
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Is this how he had all his adolescent affairs?
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Why did he make me put it in my mouth?
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Was this his plan so I would have no way out?
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Why did the next boy lie when I asked his past?
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Only to bring flowers, a teddy bear, and a card; imitating Chuck Bass
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Why did he trick me into going too far?
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Why did he put his hands down my pants in the back of his car?
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Why did his friend ask me to that game?
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Was it their plan all along to disgrace my name?
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Why did he pressure me and manipulate me from the start?
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Is this how it feels when someone ruins your heart?
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Why did I let him take the only thing that ever felt like mine?
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And why did I stay long after I knew it was time?
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Why did I continue to take the abuse?
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It was as if someone said “kill yourself” and handed me a noose
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Why did it take me 22 years to figure it out?
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To realize how fucked up my age came about
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Why couldn’t you just stop drinking and stay?
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Why did God take my Papa away?
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Why did they hurt me; why do I even try?
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Why did I trust the first normal, nice guy?
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Why did he end up breaking my heart in two?
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Why did you send me Matthew? Did you give him the glue?
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Why is it so hard for me to accept love?
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It feels too good to be true.
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I cry every night talking to the stars above.
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Why can’t I be happy when I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of?
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Why can’t I accept healthy, authentic, love?
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Why is it so hard to just be okay?
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“Trauma” is the simple answer, at least for today.
Eight is (not so) Great
“Eight is great!” I told my brother as he came downstairs exhausted from not sleeping multiple nights at his dad’s house. He was not having it. I was convinced this would be his best year yet, the year that he would have his needs met and his voice heard by the family court system; but in that moment I just wanted him to be excited it was his birthday. Jack’s your classic anxious kid, he hates attention being drawn to him. Hates scoring goals in soccer, hates his birthday at school. He opened his present with a disgruntled look on his face and I could see my mom's feelings becoming hurt as she started to resent his dad. Jack’s mental health is (to me) a classic case vignette for emotional neglect by a narcissistic parent. I’ve spent many hours researching why his dad acts the way he does, and what the impact is on Jack. I’ve been watching the impact worsen since he was 3 years old. Over the summer I often wondered how a 7 year old could be so angsty, but this was next level irritability and misery. The behavioral presentation of my brother brought me back to a dark place; my ability to empathize with his traumatized state of trying to internally process grief, neglect, and abandonment while forcing a smile was deeply personal. Not just because I had raised Jack as my own, but because I had felt the same deeply traumatic loss and abandonment he had just in a different way. As we pulled into the school I played “The Best” by Tina Turner, which will probably be a horrible trigger for the rest of his life. My mom and I said our classic “Goodbye, have a great day, love you”’s, I turned over my right shoulder to make sure he got out okay. His feet hit the pavement and he immediately turned around and closed the car door. I looked at him in the eyes about to ask what was wrong when I realized exactly what was happening: panic attack. “I can’t breathe” he said to me as he gasped for air and his body shook slightly from the immense tension, “Blow out like a birthday candle, look at me, blow it out.” The irony of telling a kid to blow out like a birthday candle on his birthday to try to calm a panic attack to a manageable level just feels all to classic for my family. Maybe one day we’ll all be able to laugh about it, but over a week later I still can’t breathe when I think about it. Watching him experience something I knew all too well (see PTSD with Panic Attacks diagnosis from 2015). Part of me had to grapple with feeling like it was my fault, that I had somehow given Jack my mental illness. Once I got past that, I had to address how my own PTSD was now activated. Then I had to fend off panic attacks and spirals of cognitive distortions that are pretty much just lies my brain tells me to hurt me. I know Jack’s brain has the same darkness, the same hurt, the same agony and I also know he has the potential to heal and recover from it. He can do hard things. We can do hard things. It’s okay to be a survivor.
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When I turned eight I didn't realize in 6 weeks I would feel eighteen. The death of my uncle Joe was my tipping point, my loss of innocence, the tragedy that sent me over the edge into the land of PTSD.
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Eight isn't so great when you experience trauma.
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Eight isn't so great when you aren't with your brother 50% of the time.
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Eight isn't so great when you've lost people you love.
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Eight isn't so great when your dad doesn't come to your soccer games.
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Eight isn't so great when you watch your mom grieve her best friend.
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Eight isn't so great for us, but thanks to our smiling faces, nobody would suspect a thing.
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Eight isn't so great because you recognize the sadness of others and fake your own happiness to protect them.
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Despite eight not being so great, I remembered eight being great up until Jack's eighth birthday wasn't great.
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Eight was the year I became a "big cousin", eight was the year I broke my first bone, and eight was the year I lost my uncle Joe.
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Eight was the year Jack his a low in his mental health journey, eight will be the year that Jack is resilient, eight will be the year when Jack's voice is heard, eight will be his best year yet, it has to be.
Bouncy Ball
When I was little, I used to collect bouncy balls. You know the ones you get out of the machine at the arcade for a quarter. It was one of those strange things I became obsessed with. It wasn’t until I was in high school that someone referred to me as a bouncing ball. One of my most formative mentors told me after I shrugged off a college rejection how I was like a bouncy ball of resilience, life throws me down and I pop right back up in their face full force. He wasn’t wrong, he’s still not wrong. Life has continued to throw me harshly into rock bottom; yet here I am bouncing back up in the face of adversity every day.
Tyrannosaurus Lex
While I was in class on Friday my mom called to tell me her grandma had died. Her favorite person in the world was dead, and my response was “I’m in class, I’ll have to call you back.” My week that was supposed to be spent visiting my boyfriend for 10 days and finishing my semester strong turned into a whirlwind of trauma and grief between my brother’s mental health journey and my own grief. I was overwhelmed to say the least. I pushed it down. We had a beautiful day planned. As we walked to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the wind had a plan of it’s own. I felt as though I was going to blow away and if I didn’t I was going to shave my head. As I sit writing these words outside with the sun on my cheeks, the wind is having a field day irritating my skin with my own hair, pollen, and debris. My grandma Kerlick is the wind. Just as my grandpa Ralph was the thunderstorm, she was the wind. The tornado of emotions to send me over the edge. The force that refused to be ignored. Grief refuses to be ignored. Whether you think you can compartmentalize and just keep going or not, it refuses to go unheard. Grief roars it’s angry head as I huff and puff through Phildelphia with Matthew, grief cries out in pain as I sob through John Mulaney’s The Comeback Kid, and grief blows in like a gust of wind strong enough to throw you on your ass. A brain tornado is the only way to describe what grief with C-PTSD feels like.
Do The Work.
Letting certain things die, certain parts of you, who you were; so you can bloom anew.
Not easy to do. Doing the work is messy and painful, but it’s worth it.
Sacrificing for the good of others, the greater good… It’s worth it.
How do I know?
I’m doing it. It’s an active process, some days you bare your cross, other days you live for the good of others, some days you die for the other side will reap great rewards