Complex PTSD is:

Hi everyone,
I was talking about this with another member last night and they encouraged me to post about this today.

Having been diagnosed with complex PTSD by a psychiatrist back in 2006 and then treated for PTSD and a PD NOS for 6 years after that it is my belief that complex PTSD is a combo of PTSD and PD. Why do I say that? Well in my research I've read such books as The body keeps the score where the author talks about a new diagnosis: developmental trauma disorder. Additionally my former psychologist and I talked at length about how my early trauma (before age 13) rewired my brain. I take a mood stabilizer and when I talked to my former psychologist about going off it he said he thinks its doing some good for my brain so perhaps I should leave it as it is. I've also heard from other people who suffered the same abuse as I (narcissistic abuse in my family of origin growing up, physical abuse) that their brains were also wired by trauma. Then after that experience I found myself in an abusive marriage, which further added to the trauma. As I met my ex husband before I was 21, my brain was not finished developing so I'm sure that relationship fed into the trauma wiring.

It is my belief that early traumatic experiences, and I've read about this other places, are what cause a personality disorder as the personality is warped as it is forming. I was one of the success stories, mine was successfully treated and now its been downgraded to a mood disorder/anxiety disorder. I still have the PTSD.

I invite others to contribute their thoughts on this topic.

my thoughts on this is that here in ....my location.... we no longer use the term "complex PTSD" Im not saying the problems dont exist, just that my locaiton does not use that diagnosis labeling anymore....

short version here in my location in 2013 many things changed. one of those things that got changed is relabeling and individualizing mental disorders to better fit people with mental disorders which enables people with mental disorders to get better and more mental health care based on their individual problems\symptoms and how those problems and symptoms affect their individual lives.

for example here is a list of what my location goes by for trauma related mental disorders....

Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders (mental disorder category underneath this label is the various mental disorders in this category)

Reactive Attachment Disorder
Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Acute Stress Disorder
Adjustment Disorders
Other Specified Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorder
Unspecified Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorder

what happens is for example i go to my treatment provider with a whole list of problems....anxiety, depression, sleep issues, relationship issues, anger issues, flashbacks, nightmares, feeling numb, feeling spaced out, feeling like everyone else is moving in slow motion or not have any connection to me...when activated the symptoms last for so long then subside then get activated again for so much time

my treatment provider looks at all this and assesses the severity and what in my life is affected. then the psychiatrist says to me you have Acute Stress Disorder/PTSD with specifiers depersonalizaiton and derealization ...

boiled down everything covered by these two new mental disorder way of labeling and diagnostics covers everything that was my problems when I was diagnosed with complex PTSD before 2013.

the plus is that because my problems are now better defined by the new labeling I have more treatment options available to me then before like more therapy sessions that are better geared to what my problem areas are, different kinds of medications....

my views on how my location has changed to a more individualized symptom oriented system that better defines and treats my problems... for me it works.

Interesting and you may be right. When you start talking about the brain you can really into some complicated stuff. The brain and body are actually amazing on how they work. The dependence of one thing on the other. The right brain vs. the left brain thought patterns....it's truly amazing.
With my first remembered traumatic experience being around 5,6 or7 I'm sure it did some damage, in fact I know it did. But back then counseling was not an option, parents would beat some sense into you. So catching these things now earlier with kids has got to help.

Certainly makes sense to me. And then I had several very painful experiences with bad therapy (for me) that probably just ingrained the bad wiring more.

Yeah this new character in my life, eleven, or el for short, is bringing up all kinds of stuff. I am not sure if I should post about it on this thread or start a new one on what she represents to me. I definitely have some trauma from age 5 onwards, and even younger, age 3.

I am sorry here today that you had bad experiences in therapy.

I do not agree that cPTSD is a combination of mood disorder plus PTSD. There are many of us with cPTSD who do not have mood disorders. I think to try and define something based on one person's experience and diagnosis is extremely problematic. That's why there are scientific studies done on these illnesses and demographic tracking. If cPTSD were simply the combination of a mood disorder and PTSD, then the DSM wouldn't be so hesitant to define it at all. It would be like schizoaffective, which is a combination of a mood disorder and schizophrenia.

It is widely accepted that trauma changes the brain. That's why they recommend therapy ASAP or people in traumatic experiences...to prevent that rewiring. However, that rewiring does not necessarily lead to a mood disorder. I feel this is faulty reasoning here.

What I do believe is true about cPTSD is that it develops after prolonged exposure to ongoing trauma/abuse/neglect and can affect us greatly in that almost everything in life becomes a trigger for some PTSD response, from hypervigilance to missplaced anger.

I think it's important to remember that just as PTSD will present itself different in each person that so will cPTSD. I do not think we should attempt to define it based on a few people's experience of it.

Seesaw

I said a combo of pd and ptsd makes c-ptsd not mood disorder, that's why complex ptsd and borderline look similar on the surface. i was speculating as to how a therapist gets at complex ptsd since they can not diagnose it.

All I can say is it has been heavily documented that hurricanes produce tornadoes...

And if PTSD is a hurricane...



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As I understand it, a pd is from birth, wiring awry from birth. Ptsd and cptsd are a psychiatric injury, not intrinsic to who we are.
My mother was finally diagnosed with a pd six years ago, in her 70s (and indeed sectioned because of how ill she had become). While I suspect she had experienced something traumatic in her childhood, there is a history of psychiatric illness in her family (I am adopted). With her,mit has been co-morbid with depression and anxiety.
As for narcisstic abuse: that is very much the story of my relationship with my mother.
I suspect anxiety is nearly always going to be a part of ptsd, due to the fear, terror, we have experienced.

I appreciate your input.
I can only speak for myself.
I don't have a PD anymore, it was successfully treated, so in my case it is gone.
I also have read and heard that with treatment bpd for example can go into remission and the patient no longer meets diagnostic criteria.
Since mine was NOS it never met bpd criteria.
What I am saying is that trauma can alter the development of the personality.
I know I have read this numerous places. Unfortunately most of my psych books come from the library so I'd have to check them out again to reference them.
I have been learning a lot about how NPD develops, actually bpd too.
I'm going to start doing some volunteer work on this issue maybe then I will be able to present my ideas better to this community.
Thank you for reading and replying.

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It will be great to hear about your volunteer experiences and more about your ideas, if you can.

Ty I appreciate your support. It's hard presenting my ideas in a forum where they get challenged. I know that when you get a ph.d you do a dissertation so I'm sure this is nothing compared to that. I do know that you can work to prevent the development of PD in children. Yes PTSD is caused by psychic injury however early trauma can rewire the brain and therefore the personality. When you boil it down personality is just wiring anyways.

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this meme speaks to how personality is shaped by early experiences


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as i have posted previously, i believe that PTSD is a form of traumatic brain injury. it only makes sense that it would manifest differently in response to the variety of causes and environments, and responses by others.

i, for one, have found that early childhood traumas CAN be overcome and repatterning accomplished. however, this does not protect me from being re-traumatized in a society which devalues me and allows horrible things to happen to me, repeatedly.

additionally, even if one cannot remember many actual traumas, the accumulation of many small personal and social traumas can add up to the same kind of damage. what we tend to call our 'personality' is actually, for the most part, a set of perceptual patterns and responses, i believe; and this is something that can also be changed.

there are well-documented therapies that help the brain to actually make (and unmake) neural connections so that it may operate in a new 'schema' or whole pattern. there are many threads in this site on EBT, EMDR, and other 'repatterning' therapies. (pardon me if i got those initials wrong, perhaps someone can post on that.) my personal favorite is the combination of Binaural Beats and meditation. i find the self-control factor greatly enhances the permanency of changes.

wishing all well who are struggling with this debilitating and confusing issue.

I think that when you delve into studying NPD you will begin to recognize there are several different variables that can contribute to the behaviors that can fit into what is deemed NPD.

There are individuals with NPD that were traumatized and often abandoned in childhood, but there are children that struggled with learning disabilities and struggled to learn not understanding "why" and grew to find ways to self protect that are simply not their fault, but instead these individuals found ways to compensate for having low self esteem because of this learning challenge. However, children can also be raised by a parent to believe they "are" the center of the universe too, so this kind of upbringing is very different than being abandoned or neglected or traumatized.

Children see themsleves as the center of the universe for several years, if a child is not guided in developing empathy, that child can have that deficit right into and throughout adulthood. Children can have a difficult time thinking about how others feel, but simply see the world according to how "they" feel and what "their" needs are and begin to see others around them as a threat to having "their" needs met. Often their desire to be adored, or what is often called narcissistic feed, is connected to "lack of" in their youth that is something they try to make up for all their lives "unknowingly". This is part of the reason behind, "Narcissists do not know they are Narcissists".

In the case of narcissist a resent study concluded that when asked a narcissists will say yes when asked if they are... When shown what one is... I read the study but the main stream article is here...

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5654763

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Lots of interesting points here, I can almost hear the thoughts clicking away.

I have heard many times that pwNPD (I don't prefer the term narc as I think it is derogatory) don't get better with therapy or medication and they do not change. The people that have that point of were victimized or abused. However the mental health community the outlook is not so grim, the belief is that if someone believes they may have NPD and seeks out help they can get better.
I know from talking with two of my therapists about my father why it is that he has narcissistic traits, but I digress.
I have not heard that c-PTSD and NPD overlap, I was more referring to c-PTSD and bpd. I may start a thread about NPD in personality place to deal with this belief in the abuse community that narcissists do not get better. There is a difference between a malignant narcissist and a person with narcissist traits. I appreciate the thoughts.

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Hi Gus and thank you for replying. Do you mean Dbt? I have started to use binaural beats along with solfeggio frequencies when I sleep at night. Here's a YouTube playlist link http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...8zsvmcstcp_4nF

Just speaking for myself because my childhood neglect was so severe EMDR did not work for me however I did have much success with DBT and am continuing to benefit from it. I am also starting to learn EFT from a trained therapist in my area.

I agree about the recurring trauma part, I've several traumatic situations in my life that I can't do much about right now.

Thank you for your input.

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I find this thread interesting from the point of view that there are different understandings.

For example. It is my understanding and I thought was generally considered to be the common understanding that PD's accompany PTSD. Take Scott Walkers book as an example. Hence why I earlier used the hurricane, tornado analogies.

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I think you mean Pete walker. If so I was not able to get his second book from library , complex PTSD, but I did read the Tao of feeling. It covered a lot of stuff I had learned in therapy, recovery and reading. What book did you read?

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I have read many excerpts from his books online but the one I finished reading & bought on Amazon is

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

This book has been helpful for obvious reasons that I do not need to go into here.

I was planing on sending in to you with the "hdwe" box.

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I think you meant Pete walker. I didn't know you had bought and read it, you hadn't mentioned it. As you know I'm going to start reading psychopath free. I imagine that's going to be hard. As you know my father mocks all self help books.

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Yes you are correct I have the gov of Wisconsin confused... Yes Pete Walker

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