Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite new buzzdiagnosis – Complex Trauma (CPTSD). What is it? Why is it so difficult to name? And what does it really do to your brain, as far as creating self-destructive neural structures that can undermine your lifetime?

Here’s a biological / neuropsychological breakdown of life on undiagnosed CPTSD, AKA living with “pervasive relational trauma.” 

In a nutshell, CPTSD is the same brain mechanism and downstream nightmare we just discussed last time in our PTSD talk… But specifically it’s defined by the early timing, the relational nature, and the persistence of trauma. Let’s focus on the ways these early developmental influences tend to impart automatic, lifelong, destructive programming in your brain. 

Ready to hear more about Complex Trauma, from an experiential standpoint? Great news, this isn’t the first time around the block. There are two much longer, much less brain-directed episodes on defining the experience of CPTSD already streaming at patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers. And 150+ additional episodes where that came from. 

Check out the full backlog of science meets insight meets struggle, and then consider jumping into the TMFRs Private Discord if this method of talking trauma makes sense for your recovery. 

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Transcript / Blog Version:

Welcome back to this miniseries on all the things we’ve learned so far about trauma during the past 18 months of this podcast-support community mashup that aims to uncover,

“How much of life IS caused by unprocessed events and unhealthy brain programming?”

Here’s a general take on the knowledge gained through academic, peer-reviewed, personal, and community learning so far.

If you’re looking to jump the shark, hear the free version of this post on the public platform, available wherever you stream @ Traumatized Motherfuckers.

If you’re looking for more information like this, don’t be a stranger to the TMFRs private podcast stream or community at patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers.

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Okay, so we covered trauma last time. Not so mysterious is it, really? I mean, considering how it makes life one long episode of Scooby Doo in practicum, where the ghost always ends up being your own implicit memory system under the mask of projected past terror.

Not actually SO mysterious.

Cool. Let’s move on to talking about what might bring you here more specifically… this “COMPLEX” trauma designation. What’s the difference between PTSD and CPTSD? AKA – finding out the old timey coal miner ghost is still your brain… sorry… but it’s in cahoots with the spirits of your generationally tormented family and social system.

So, in a nutshell, CPTSD is the same brain mechanism and downstream nightmare we just discussed last time in our PTSD talk – but specifically it’s defined by the timing, the nature, and the persistence of trauma. And what I think we need to focus on, more than the trauma itself, is that all of these factors tend to impart lifelong, destructive programming on your head.

So CPTSD takes place early in life, during periods when the brain is still developing. For anyone who’s wondering, that continues into your 30s, even though it’s common to cut off “CPTSD events” at 18. The nature of complex trauma is relational, meaning it’s usually about social traumas, like cultural and environmental events, abuse, addictions, tumult, and neglect (AKA – all the things you DIDN’T experience or learn about). And it’s more than a one-time hit. Complex PTSD is generally from multiple factors, combining over extents of time known as “our developmental years,” to create brains like these.

So, sometimes there’s “an event” to point to. “A memory” we can’t handle. But under closer examination, it’s really this whole period of up to 20-30 years that’s riddled with reasons we were under stress or self-destruction.

For many people with complex trauma, the complexity comes from the entire social environment they were existing within. Their family of origin may have had some major upsets – such as being violent, addictive, cold, overbearing, scapegoating, corporeally punishing, or absent. But there were also likely even MORE subtle toxicities floating around that no one had the time to notice – such as having shaming, critical, fearful, tribalist, unemotional or overly emotional, perfectionistic, or helpless strings that were probably echoed in our larger social system, as well.

Which is to say… don’t even get me started on the prevalence of narcissistic abuse around these parts, in both the common male (grandiose) or female (vulnerable) forms. Turns out we often tend to have pretty similar parental and societal brain patterning, it just presents differently depending on our circumstances.

Because on top of these direct family influences, the surrounding culture matters, too.

Was there a whole community of accepted addiction, helplessness, violence, and lack of opportunity? Or was it indoctrinated with religious, academic, and social perfectionism that always managed to blame the individual for not being emotionless and high-achieving enough?

THESE are the characteristics that define COMPLEX trauma as being… complex. Because the trends are layered with varying degrees of subtlety, they’re dispersed among at least several humans for a bubble of trauma to surround the individual… and, you know, unraveling an entire lifetime of unhealthy brain development and neural programming is a complicated process that seemingly has no “start” or “end” point.

With “traditional” PTSD, as we’ve always defined it, there’s generally AN event or A period of time that needs to be examined, processed, and stitched into the lifelong story for a person to move on. This is not to say it’s less significant, just less hidden in the story of “a human’s entire autobiographical history,” and probably less of an “unavoidably triggered everyday” experience.

With CPTSD, there might be some big events that we can name as totally fucked up… like extremely abusive events, personal losses, or rapid transitions in life. And/or there may be more of a low-lying, simmering traumatic smudge covering the entire life history of the individual, whether they’ve ever gotten the alternative social experiences necessary to name their memories as “actually, completely toxic” or not.

For some of us, there weren’t enormous upsets. Trauma is just the family narrative.

Such as cases of what we call “basic poverty neglect,” where opportunities for enrichment are limited and the kids are brought up knowing they’re considered burdens. Or, cases of the opposite – dominating control from neurotic parents who mask their authoritarian rule in “just caring so much,” while also damning their children to “owe them everything… for life.”

Here, it’s accepted. It’s considered “typical” in our larger society. And, in these cases, you’re probably considered “ridiculous” for thinking that there’s any alternative.

Either way. Unfortunately, family cultures of abuse, neglect, and self-abandonment often dismiss even blatant traumas, such as sexual and physical abuse. Those are things (quote) “we all went through, and you should be glad you don’t have it worse. Let it go already..” I really wish I didn’t hear that account from you guys so often. But it’s real, and it’s shockingly common.

So it’s no wonder that many of our clans are also going to turn a self-preservatory blind eye towards the more subtle neglect, emotional and mental abuse. The things that don’t leave a mark on your body and can’t be pursued by law.

But these things matter. Because they leave a mark on your brain.

The build your brain with unhealthy patterns and programs that become impossible to separate from “yourself” in lifelong practice. Especially, long term, when they’re piled on top of each other in one massive orgy of unhealthy narratives, fucked up core beliefs, traumatic brain programming, identity splitting, self-shaming interpretations of the past. Which, spoilers, have a tendency to become dissociative patterns, mental health failures, chronic physical health mysteries, substance reliances, and over- or under-achieving trends riiiight around the onset of “adult” age that eventually define a lifetime.

Now. If you’re looking to properly define CPTSD, you’re probably waiting for a conversation here about ACEs.

Or, Adverse childhood Events. And I’m happy to give you the list. But I’ll be honest… you can google that shit and it’ll have the same impact.

So. Let me summarize them, and you can take a look later, if you need to have a “score for your degree of possible childhood trauma.” Was anyone in your family in jail? Violent? Sexually coercive? Addicted? Did your parents get divorced?Did they have depression or other mental health hiccups? Did you lose anyone at a young age? Were you economically challenged? Was your entire community?

At the root of it, ACEs ask “WAS your early social environment chaotic and routinely upset…. or – curveball – was it extremely emotionally distanced and falsely forced to appear completely normal through moderating your behavior?”

Either way, congratulations. You might have CPTSD. Long term, pervasive experiences of your brain getting thrown curveballs and having to make extreme corrections to stay afloat.

And what does that really mean for you, as far as this continuing life-shittery talk?

I mean, there’s the shame, the blame, the depression, the anxiety, obsession, and neuroticism, the hypervigilance, the hypersensitivity or hypersensitivity to stimulation, the insane stress responses, the systemic biological failures, the bad relationships, codependence, and attachment fluctuations, the helplessness, the memory problems, the emotional feast or famine, the avoidance, the rigidity, the anger towards self and others, the isolation, the insomnia.

I can go on. And we will, in the rest of this miniseries. But today, let’s talk about brain patterns that come out of trauma, not just the big flashy symptoms we’ve all heard about a billion times. The ways your head works, automatically, based on how it was trained to work. And the ways that those programs are creating bigger problems in your life, that snowball into creating all the aforementioned self-destroying symptoms.

First of all, with a brain that’s relationally traumatized, you’re going to have an oppositional view of yourself.

You’ve been taught that you’re good OR bad, but probably never anything in between. We tend to be overly punished or put on a pedestal. During the course of traumatic rumination, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time considering all the ways you’re the worst, as well as those fleeting moments when you were finally acceptable. This will give you a double-edged view of “self” that often winds up getting split into compartmentalized constructs of “you,” because the whole system is so black and white.

This means, you might feel capable and optimistic for a few fleeting days – finally, you see the light and feel good enough to bask in it! Only to be struck down into the filth again, the moment your brain cracks open a door that leads towards self-doubt or your assumptions about how others are interpreting you.

Secondly, with this system of “I don’t know who I am or how I feel about that” in your own brain, you also don’t have a baseline to decide how you feel about…. Anything or anyone else.

This means, you’ll have what people like to call a “hard life” with “indecisive or impulsive strings” much of the time, in which you commonly sacrifice your own wants and needs to cater to undeserving outside entities. If you estimate your own worth to be zero, then everyone and everything ranks more highly than you. You’ll put them first. You’ll appeal to their opinions. Even when internally your body and brain are on fire, because this is clearly not the right thing for you. You’ll spin in a lot of circles, trying to figure out what’s the “right thing” that you’re “allowed to do.”

In a similar vein, you’re also going to wind up with a lot of later social troubles, which become life-performance troubles for those of us who have to interact with other humans to hold a job or not feel completely destitute and alone.

We end up with abusive relationships, because (to answer a question we all have) we do (sorry) put off “I’m traumatized” vibes. As in, revealing through subtle cues that “my brain isn’t fully representing who I am and what I want, so this opens the door for you to come in and just tell me how to use that to YOUR advantage.”

If you tend to be in controlling relationships, not only was this likely patterned by your family of origin, but your subsequent brain confusion about your value on this planet will keep you replaying those interactions on a loop with new characters who are happy to fill the void. The same goes for work opportunities – which, no, you aren’t alone if holding a job destroys your head. We often find positions that are unfulfilling, over-responsible for everyone, and full of toxic vibes… because they feel so close to home.

Complex trauma sets us up to be mutable to most situations – not just relationships, as we traditionally think of them, but also work relationships, educational environments, and community influences. We’re sensitive to others’ energies and interpretations of us. We’re preoccupied with trying to analyze our place in whatever social structure we engage with, looking for signs of danger.

This means, we’re often trained to bend to the will of others, to actively predict their future actions, and to put ourselves last so that we’re worthy of any positive regard at all. OR, alternatively, we refuse to engage with any of those other-performing patterns, and wind up self-isolating through obstinance and anger. We become fearful overachievers or defiant underachievers, sometimes fluctuating from one to the other.

Either way, with complex trauma, other people are dangerous for us.

Life feels “unpredictable” for us all the time, because we live in a world that requires human interactions, and those undesired events are often like pulling the grenade pin in your brain. One wrong move – one wrong word from another human or even the impression that their energy is revealing negative thoughts about you – and you fall down a self-assessment rabbithole that only ever leads back to the ways you’re disgusting, foundationally damaged, and unacceptable for viewing.

{This happens because your brain was trained to shame itself into submission, not because you’re “weak.” This is an evolutionary function turned into a weapon by the people who need to control you from the inside out. But there are entire episodes available on that.}

So, with a lifelong pocket full of “Please, don’t even look at me,” we’re chronically on edge, searching for signs that we’re at risk, and making them up at times when our brain doesn’t know that there’s any other option for life. Such as, NOT being scared and predictively expecting doom around every single corner.

And I guess that’s another CPTSD brain pattern to bring up. Hypervigilant premonitions of terror.

We predict the future based on the past, and the past hasn’t been so fucking wonderful. In fact, when things were semi-settled… that always meant they were about to be rapidly un-settled. So we assume that the worst is always yet to come. We’re always in the line of fire. Bad things are always coming our way. People are always going to hurt us. The world is a scary and cruel place, this lifetime is the worst destination in the universe.

BUT, we might be the worst of it all.

OR, we’re the helpless victim of it all.

OR, because of having gone through so many raging shit-streams, we’re the most amazing, glorious, entitled, victor of it all.

OR, all of the above, somehow.

And this brings us back to the first point. We aren’t sure who we are, what we’re worth, or where we fit into this whole scheme. We’ve heard one thing or another our whole lives – often variably, depending on circumstances outside of our control that were causing emotional dysregulations in the people around us. So we became the scapegoat.

On that note – those old trauma partners? The people who you’ve designed faulty brain coding with?

If you keep them in your mental orbit now, even as an adult… They will suck you under. They will halt your progress. They will instill additional personal upset. They will trigger your past memories and behavioral programs. And, hey, they’ll also probably shit all over your attempts to get some actual help for the things that they’ve been willfully ignoring. Because, you know… it wasn’t “all that bad, and other people (definitely them, at the top of the list) have had it so much worse.”

If you weren’t tied to the shed and beat with a broomhandle, what do you have to complain about?

Welp. At least now you know. There’s an army of people out there who can’t stop tripping themselves up, sabotaging everything, and acting for acceptance of everyone but themselves, just like you. Because of people… a lot like your caretakers.

There are reasons why your brain, the biological organ, which is different from YOU, the whole creature with some sort of karmic value, works this way. And there are ways to fix it.

That’s the point of this show. Not digging INTO the trauma on repeat. But understanding how it forced our synaptic program development, and learning how to undo the coding we never knew we were carrying because it all seemed perfectly “in line with what everyone has to go through,” according to our limited experiences.

On that note, just one last reminder that trauma doesn’t have to look any particular way. It doesn’t have to fit into the category of “extreme physical abuse,” or any of the other examples I’ve provided. And that makes it even harder to diagnose or disable those unwanted brain ticks, which is why a lot of us fail to get the right answer in the first place, or to find therapists who know how to hellp.

CPTSD can be more easily diagnosed from the litany of symptoms that we’ve touched on – rather than starting with the identification of nuanced, normalized, lifelong bullshit – if you ask me.

So if this has sounded familiar. If your whole mental health history has been a flurry of checking new boxes, your physical health degrades without warning, and your life tends to follow looping patterns of extreme behaviors… you might want to guess that it’s complex trauma, get help, and start working the bugs out with someone who can tell you what is and isn’t acceptable human to human behavior. What is and isn’t worth keeping in your possible brain apps for daily operation.

What you need to remember, most of all… is that all of this IS fixable.

You don’t have to keep operating a system that gives you bad information and instructional programs, which lead to unwanted life outcomes. You CAN rewire your brain. You CAN grow beyond your family narratives. You CAN learn to live alongside your Self without all the resentment and fear. You CAN escape from the zoo.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about next time. Not the black sheeping that you’ll absolutely endure from your family and friend group if you start making these positive changes – and not my story of… that… leading to this current moment – we’ll get to all THAT another day. But the best course for getting started on making those changes, as humans who’ve often been failed by modern psychology and feel nothing but terror at the thought of another therapeutic disaster.

Next time, let’s chat about the challenges of therapy and the best suggestions a motherfucker can give for having a successful round of trauma counseling.

Because, no, all therapy isn’t equal. All therapists aren’t equal. But a good one will change your life. And your complex trauma is going to require a different approach than talk therapy, if you don’t want to trigger yourself to high hell to flop around in slop while trying to fix that wiring issue in the first place.

Sounds good? Good. Awesome. Thanks for the chat on this shitshow we all have known as “life, undiagnosed,” and I’ll see you next time when we rap about finally getting into effective trauma therapy.

Cheers Fuckers.

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Need the detailed depths of these discussions, right away? Well, it’s been done. For a mix of trauma talk, discussions of particular brain patterns, and journal-like revealing reflections on actually living the life behind high-achieving closed doors… Check patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers to get access to the full backlog of prior podcast episodes. It’ll run you the cost of a cup of coffee with post-pandemic inflation.

Then, if you take a listen to the backlog and decide you’re into what we do around here – spoilers, I’m not for everyone – you might want to take this a step further. If you’ve never heard anyone talk about your brain like this before – spoilers again, you’re not alone in any of this – you might want to hit up the TMFRs private discord community, where we talk about these realizations and ways to make it all stop, nonstop. This is a 24/7 chat community for support and seeing the light. Just know, we focus on HEALING, not on digging around in the muck. This isn’t a crisis line or a woe-is-me dumping ground. It’s a way to move on, with better brains.

Hit up patreon.com, search “traumatized motherfuckers” to see if any of these resources might be a good fit for you. And don’t ever forget about the complex trauma bibles – From Surviving to Thriving and The Body Keeps the Score – if you’d rather get your education that way. Google the words “complex trauma books” and they’ll come right up.

That’s it, friends. See you there. Plus, don’t forget to hit up the instagram account at traumatized.motherfuckers, where you can get bite-sized bits of this conversation “plus” snarky memes. Because this fucked up life can still be… kindof… funny. At least our brains can be.

Enjoy, y’all. My name is Jess. A const-achiever, passable “real human adult,” and previously secret, recovering, traumatized motherfucker. And I’ll catch you next time. Hail yourself. Hail Archie. And hail the answers you’ve always been waiting for, to finally understand your stupid fucking brain.

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Cheers

Jess