🩺📃12 signs you might be suffering from Complex PTSD; Part 2

Hello friends,

This is Part 2 of last weekend’s post in this three-part post.

Again, for context,

PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition officially recognized in 1980 to describe exposure to a relatively brief but devastating event: typically, a war, a rape, an accident or a terrorist incident. Complex PTSD, recognized in 1994, describes exposure to something equally devastating but over a very long time, normally the first 15 years of life: emotional neglect, humiliation, bullying, disrupted attachment, violence and anger.

A lot of us, as many as 20%, are wandering the world as undiagnosed sufferers of ‘Complex PTSD’. We know that all isn’t well, but we don’t have a term to capture the problem, we don’t connect up our ailments – and have no clue who to seek out or what treatment might help.

So here are the next 6 leading symptoms of Complex PTSD. You might think about which ones, if any, apply to you (more than 7 might be a warning sign worth listening to):

7. We are prone to losing our temper very badly😡😤; This is sometimes with other people, but more often just with ourselves. We aren’t so much ‘angry’ as very very worried: worried that everything is about to become very awful again. We are shouting because we’re terrified. We look mean, but we’re in fact defenseless.

8. We are highly paranoid😨; It’s not that we expect other people will poison us or follow us down the street. We suspect that other people will be hostile to us, and will be looking out for opportunities to crush and humiliate us. We can be mesmerically drawn to examples of this happening on social media, the unkindest and most arbitrary environment, which anyone with C-PTSD easily confuses with the whole world, chiefly because it operates like their world: randomly and very meanly.

9. We find other people so dangerous and worrying that being alone has huge attractions😶‍🌫️; We might like to go and live under a rock forever. In some moods, we associate bliss with not to having to see anyone again, ever.

10. We can’t afford to show much spontaneity🤖; We’re rigid about routines. Everything may need to be exactly so, as an attempt to ward off looming chaos. We may clean a lot. Sudden changes of plans can feel indistinguishable from the ultimate downfall we dread.

11. We don’t register to ourselves as suicidal👿 but the truth is that we find living so exhausting and often so unpleasant, we do sometimes long not to have to exist any more☹️.

12. In a bid to try to find safety, we may throw ourselves into work👨🏽‍🏭; We constantly work to amass money, fame, honour, prestige. But of course, this never works. The sense of danger and self-disgust is coming from so deep within, we can never reach a sense of safety externally: a million people can be cheering, but one jeer will be enough once again to evoke the self-disgust we have left unaddressed inside. Breaks from work can feel especially worrying: retirement and holidays create unique difficulties.

The summary of all 12 signs of C-PTSD will be in Part 3, and the actionable cure; so be sure to stay tuned😛.

Hope your week is going well so far, mine definitely is😁.

See you for the final part.

Reagan.