Trauma can result from many different experiences. Sometimes, it follows a single overwhelming event, such as an accident, assault or natural disaster. In other cases – particularly circumstances that are difficult or impossible to escape – you may adapt in specific ways designed to help you survive an unsafe environment.
Repeated or prolonged traumatic experiences may influence how you regulate your emotions, see yourself, respond to stress and connect with other people. Some people live with these effects for years without recognizing them as consequences of trauma.
September is CPTSD Awareness Month, making it an opportunity to look beyond the stereotypes and better understand the lasting effects complex trauma can have.
CPTSD vs. PTSD
People with PTSD often experience intrusive memories, vivid nightmares, avoidance, an inability to relax and changes in mood and thinking. While complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD, can include many of these same symptoms, it also leads to broader difficulties involving emotional regulation, self-perception and relationships.
Regardless of terminology, the effects of prolonged trauma are real, and if you struggle with them, you don’t need to determine which diagnostic label applies to you before asking for help.
Complex Trauma Can Affect How You See Yourself
One of the less obvious effects of prolonged trauma is a persistently negative self-image. You may experience intense shame or believe that you are fundamentally flawed, unworthy or even somehow responsible for the things that happened to you. These beliefs can become so deeply ingrained that they feel like facts rather than the natural consequences of what you’ve gone through.
This quality is particularly influential when your trauma began early in life. If mistreatment, instability or fear were part of your formative experiences, you may have had little opportunity to learn what healthy relationships and self-perception should look like.
Emotional Dysregulation and Numbness Can Both Occur
The paradox of complex trauma is that it causes self-contradictory reactions. Some people become overwhelmed by dysregulation, in which minor stressors trigger intense anger, anxiety, sadness or panic. Others become numb, disconnected or shut down.
Feeling everything intensely at one moment and almost nothing the next can be confusing, but it’s often a natural result of trauma’s influence.
Relationships May Feel Complicated
Repeated trauma can also affect your ability to trust other people. If someone who was supposed to protect or care for you instead became a source of fear, unpredictability or harm, close relationships may feel unsafe years or decades later. You might keep people at arm’s length or develop a condition called rejection-sensitive dysphoria, in which you become painfully aware of signs that someone is angry with you and always assume the worst.
These patterns aren’t necessarily conscious choices. They represent strategies you learned when closeness was genuinely risky. Recognizing their origins is an essential part of learning healthier ways to connect with others.
Substance Use Can Become a Way to Cope
Living with hypervigilance, painful memories, shame or overwhelming emotions can be exhausting. Some people use alcohol or drugs to quiet racing thoughts, fall asleep faster, silence a harsh inner critic or temporarily alleviate tension. While these substances may provide short-term relief, they will also make your underlying mental health symptoms more challenging to address.
Dual-diagnosis treatment is the gold standard for addressing co-occurring trauma and substance use. Addressing substance use without considering the experiences that have fueled it is counterproductive. Unless you learn healthier ways to manage the distress you hoped to escape, you’ll continue repeating the same unhealthy patterns.
Trauma-Informed Treatment Looks Beyond Symptoms
Complex trauma can be tricky to diagnose because it doesn’t always have a specific calling card. Its symptoms often resemble other behavioral health concerns, including depression, anxiety, chronic stress, anger problems and attachment issues.
That’s why a comprehensive, trauma-informed evaluation is valuable. Rather than assuming a symptom has one obvious explanation, a trained mental health professional can consider your history, current experiences and unique needs while helping you develop healthier ways to regulate your emotions, cope with stress and build relationships.
Pine Grove provides comprehensive mental health and substance use treatment for children, adolescents and adults. If your experiences continue to affect how you feel, function or connect with others, reach out today to learn about our behavioral health services.
