Readers,
I am part of The Mighty which is a community for all sorts of physical and emotional issues. Anyway, I joined the CPTSD part for more understanding and the more I read on it, the more I am beginning to wonder if I have something similar, sometimes. I don’t have all of the symptoms but shrugs could just be how I learned to cope.
Complex trauma is still a relatively new field of psychology. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) results from enduring complex trauma.
Complex trauma is ongoing or repeated interpersonal trauma, where the victim is traumatized in captivity, and where there is no perceived way to escape. Ongoing child abuse is captivity abuse because the child cannot escape. Domestic violence is another example. Forced prostitution/sex trafficking is another.
Complex PTSD is a proposed disorder which is different to post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of the issues and symptoms endured by complex trauma survivors are outside of the list of symptoms within the (uncomplicated) PTSD diagnostic criterion. Complex PTSD does acknowledge and validate these added symptoms.
The impact of complex trauma is very different to a one time or short-lived trauma. The effect of repeated/ongoing trauma – caused by people – changes the brain, and also changes the survivor at a core level. It changes the way survivors view the world, other people and themselves in profound ways.
One of those ways it manifests and I didn’t even know it was a thing until I read this article.
4. Emotional Flashbacks
Flashbacks are something all PTSD survivors can deal with, and there are three types:
Visual Flashbacks – where your mind is triggered and transported back to the trauma, and you feel as though you are reliving it.
Somatic Flashbacks – where the survivor feels sensations, pain and discomfort in areas of the body, affected by the trauma. This pain/sensations cannot be explained by any other health issues, and are triggered by something that creates the body to “feel” the trauma again.
Emotional Flashbacks – the least known and understood, and yet the type complex trauma survivors can experience the most. These are where emotions from the past are triggered. Often the survivor does not understand these intense emotions are flashbacks, and it appears the survivor is being irrationally emotional. When I learned about emotional flashbacks, it was a huge lightbulb moment of finally understanding why I have intense emotions, when they do not reflect the issue occurring now, but are in fact emotions felt during the trauma, being triggered. But, there is no visual of the trauma – as with visual flashbacks. So, it takes a lot of work to start to understand when experiencing an emotional flashback.
This happens to me when I reminded of childhood trauma. Didn’t even realize it but it makes so much sense!
I hope this article helps.
Always,
Laili
The Controlled Kaleidoscope 