Trauma PTSD and cPTSD

Trauma, PTSD and cPTSD

Many individuals experience symptoms associated with painful and traumatic circumstances.

Anxiety, fear, and hopelessness are a few emotions that can linger after a traumatising event whether a single encounter or a prolonged situational trauma.

We are very experienced at dealing with clients who exhibit cPTSD symptoms and are able to effectively understand the unique challenges that this little understood condition presents for clients.

Please see below so that you can clearly grasp the difference between these serious conditions and find out how we can help and support you. We can successfully treat you so that you can be free from these issues forever and go on to continue to live your life positively and productively, with the richness of experience behind you, the wisdom needed to help others and with direction and freedom from emotional pain.

Understanding Trauma, PTSD and cPTSD

Trauma

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and isolated can result in trauma, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective circumstances that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized.

One-time events, such as an accident, injury, or a violent attack, ongoing, relentless stress, such as living in a crime-ridden neighborhood, battling a life-threatening illness, bullying, domestic violence, childhood neglect, surgery, bereavement, loss of significant relationship, a humiliating or deeply disappointing experience, especially if someone was deliberately cruel or witnessing natural disasters can all cause trauma.

PTSD

PTSD is caused by the brain laying down memories in the wrong place. During the traumatic event it’s as if the brain gets overwhelmed. The memories get filed in the ‘immediate action’ part of the brain, instead of the normal place.

For people with PTSD, these memories are as distressing and immediate as when the event first happened.

Everyone who has PTSD will experience it differently.

Some people with PTSD have suicidal feelings and want to self harm. Often people with PTSD also have depression or anxiety, or abuse alcohol or drugs.

Other symptoms are intrusive memories of the event that you have no control over, flashbacks, nightmares, distress when you come across things that remind you of the event, physical symptoms like sweating or heart palpitations, feeling watchful or ‘on guard‘, distressing dreams or trouble sleeping.

cPTSD

For people who have been victimized by many traumatic events over a period of time, the struggle to survive and grow after trauma can be a long one. These survivors may suffer from a different form of PTSD, called “Complex PTSD” (cPTSD). cPTSD is different because it often occurs in people who have experienced extreme trauma over an extended period of time. People who have experienced ongoing domestic violence, severe child abuse, sexual abuse, war, police violence, or forced (non-consensual) sex work are all at risk of developing Complex PTSD.

People who suffer cPTSD experience long-term symptoms. These include shame, guilt, a false idea that you are responsible for what happened to you (of course, you’re not at all!), dissociation, feeling watchful or ‘on guard‘, angry or emotional outbursts, hopelessness, fear of interpersonal relationships, have a negative self belief, a lack of trust and extreme situational and interpersonal hyper vigilance.

The was a cPTSD client feels has been perfectly described by this watercolour painting (by kind reproduction permission of artist Tina Klitgaard Eriksen) and resonates with many clients.

Having to live like this understandably makes it hard for people with cPTSD to navigate relationships and daily life.

You CAN recover from Trauma PTSD and cPTSD

The good news is twofold! Firstly, not everyone who experiences a traumatic event gets PTSD. In people who don't, it’s thought that the brain gradually comes to terms with the memories and they are no longer as vivid.

Secondly, for those who go on to develop PTSD, it is important to know that, with help, you can recover and go on to have a positive and productive life, free from the trauma that you encountered.

Remember that if you have cPTSD you’re not broken or alone — you’re having a very common and understandable reaction to a really difficult experience.

Sarah Morris is extremely experienced at dealing with clients that want to be free from the triggers, flashbacks and disassociation that chain clients into prolonged debilitating trauma. Using the teachings of over 60 years of different therapeutic approaches, the very best from each model has been combined to really tackle this issue at all levels from all disciplines of psychotherapy. During therapy we give you all that is available therapeutically from a tried and tested and proven therapy model to support your relaxation into freedom from the past.

The process can be quick, enlightening and enriching to the soul. The robust Human Givens informed therapy will help guide you to see your world and all of its beauty in a way that you have not been able to access for some time. With guidance your healing can be a beautiful process of letting go of all that you wish to so that you can move positively forward to embrace all that you want to from life again.

The Rewind Technique

To help you overcome trauma and PTSD and cPTSD we use the well known fast, effective solution focused Rewind Technique to assist PTSD.

For complex PTSD we additionally bolster the client with a full armory of techniques that are needed to effectively manage and overcome this condition. The therapy is longer than for PTSD clients, and profoundly moving.

Please click below to find out more about the Rewind Technique Technique.

Find out more

Sarah Morris Therapy