Changes in Relationship with others:It is especially hard to trust other people if you have been repeatedly abused, abandoned or betrayed as a child. Mistrust makes it very difficult to make friends, and to be able to distinguish between good and bad intentions in other people. Some parts do not seem to trust anyone, while other parts may be so vulnerable and needy that they do not pay attention to clues that perhaps a person is not trustworthy. Some parts like to be close to others or feel a desperate need to be close and taken care of, while other parts fear being close or actively dislike people. Some parts are afraid of being in relationships while others are afraid of being rejected or criticized. This naturally sets up major internal as well as relational conflicts.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Betrayal Bond Complex Ptsd Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Fear Guilt Memory Mistrust Personality Ptsd Relationships Shame Survivor Trauma Trust

Complex PTSD consists of of six symptom clusters, which also have been described in terms of dissociation of personality. Of course, people who receive this diagnosis often also suffer from other problems as well, and as noted earlier, diagnostic categories may overlap significantly. The symptom clusters are as follows:Alterations in Regulation of Affect ( Emotion ) and ImpulsesChanges in Relationship with othersSomatic SymptomsChanges in MeaningChanges in the perception of SelfChanges in Attention and Consciousness

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Betrayal Bond Complex Ptsd Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Fear Guilt Memory Mistrust Personality Ptsd Relationships Shame Survivor Trauma Trust

Alterations in regulation of affect (emotion) and impulse:Almost all people who are seriously traumatized have problems in tolerating and regulating their emotions and surges or impulses. However, those with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders tend to have more difficulties than those with PTSD because disruptions in early development have inhibited their ability to regulate themselves.The fact that you have a dissociative organization of your personality makes you highly vulnerable to rapid and unexpected changes in emotions and sudden impulses. Various parts of the personality intrude on each other either through passive influence or switching when your under stress, resulting in dysregulation. Merely having an emotion, such as anger, may evoke other parts of you to feel fear or shame, and to engage in impulsive behaviors to stop avoid the feelings.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Affect Affect Regulation Amnesia Attention Avoidance Behavior Complex Ptsd Day Dreaming Disregulated Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Fear Impulsive Memory Personality Ptsd Shame Survivor Trauma

Changes in Meaning:Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past, or that they will not live long enough to experience a good future. People who have a dissociative disorder may have different meanings in various dissociative parts. Some parts may be relatively balanced in their worldview, others may be despairing, believing the world to be a completely negative, dangerous place, while other parts might maintain an unrealistic optimistic outlook on life

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Affect Affect Regulation Amnesia Attention Avoidance Behavior Complex Ptsd Day Dreaming Disregulated Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Faith Belief Fear Hope Impulsive Meaningless Memory Personality Ptsd Shame Survivor Trauma Worldview

Changes in the Perception of Self:People who have been traumatized in childhood are often troubled by guilt, shame, and negative feelings about themselves, such as the belief they are unlikable, unlovable, stupid, inept, dirty, worthless, lazy, and so forth. In Complex Dissociative disorders there are typically particular parts that contain these negative feelings about the self while other parts may evaluate themselves quite differently. Alterations among parts thus may result in rather rapid and distinct changes in self perception.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Affect Affect Regulation Amnesia Complex Ptsd Disregulated Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Fear Guilt Memory Personality Ptsd Shame Survivor Trauma Worthlessness

People with Complex PTSD suffer from more severe and frequent dissociation symptoms, as well as memory and attention problems, than those with simple PTSD. In addition to amnesia due to the activity of various parts of the self, people may experience difficulties with concentration, attention, other memory problems and general spaciness. These symptoms often accompany dissociation of the personality, but they are also common in people who do not have dissociative disorders. For example everyone can be spacey, absorbed in an activity, or miss an exit on the highway. When various parts of the personality are active, by definition, a person experiences some kind of abrupt change in attention and consciousness.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Amnesia Attention Complex Ptsd Day Dreaming Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Memory Personality Types Ptsd Survivor Trauma

Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves.Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else’s anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Anger Angry Behavior Boundaries Broken Conflict Coping Disorder Dissociation Dissociative Healthy Boundaries Healthy Coping Inner Conflict Parts Phobia Pieces Trauma Whole

Some dissociative parts of the personality, living in trauma time, may experience the same emotion no matter the situation, such as fear, rage, shame, sadness, yearning and even some positive ones just as joy.* Other parts have a broader range of feeling. Because emotions are often held in certain parts of the personality, different parts can have highly contradictory perceptions, emotions, and reactions to the same situation.”*This explains many feelings, emotions, and doubts about the unknown haunting us at times.*Awareness and discovering the inner world may help, tremendously.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Didmpd Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotions Ptsd Trauma

Some dissociative parts of the personality, living in trauma time, may experience the same emotion no matter the situation, such as fear, rage, shame, sadness, yearning and even some positive ones just as joy.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Didmpd Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotions Ptsd Trauma

Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being just like the past and emergency emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Anxiety Anxious Collapse Danger Ddnos Decisions Dissociated Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identities Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociative States Effects Of Child Abuse Fear Fearful Fight Flight Freeze Groundedness Grounding Healing Insights Hypervigilance Multiple Personalities Osdd Overwhelmed Panic Ptsd Rage Re Enact Trauma Risk Aversion Self Defense Terrified Terror Threatened Trauma Traumatic Experiences Traumatization Traumatized Triggered Triggeres Traumatized Triggers

Most dissociative parts influence your experience from the inside rather than exert complete control, that is, through passive influence.*In fact, many parts never take complete control of a person, but are only experienced internally. *Frequent switching may be a sign of severe stress and inner conflict in most individuals.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Control Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Inner Conflict Multiple Personality Disorder Stress Management Switching Trauma Triggers

Dissociative parts of the personality are not actually separate identities or personalities in one body, but rather parts of a single individual that are not yet functioning together in a smooth, coordinated, flexible way. P14

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Disorder Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Personality Personality System Ptsd

Parts of you are phobic of anger and generally terrified and ashamed of angry dissociative parts. There is often tremendous conflict between anger-avoidant and anger-fixated parts of an individual. Thus, an internal and perpetual cycle of rage-shame-fear creates inner chaos and pain.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Angry Chaos Conflict Cycles Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Fear Inner Conflict Phobia Rage Shame Trauma

You as a whole person are thus unable to reconcile conflicts about anger and learn to tolerate and express anger in healthy ways. Inner turmoil and dissociation are maintained.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Angry Conflict Coping Disorder Dissociation Dissociative Healthy Coping Inner Conflict Trauma

Somatic Symptoms:People with Complex PTSD often have medical unexplained physical symptoms such as abdominal pains, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach problems, and elimination problems. These people are sometimes most unfortunately mislabeled as hypochondriacs or as exaggerating their physical problems. But these problems are real, even though they may not be related to a specific physical diagnosis. Some dissociative parts are stuck in the past experiences that involved pain may intrude such that a person experiences unexplained pain or other physical symptoms. And more generally, chronic stress affects the body in all kinds of ways, just as it does the mind. In fact, the mind and body cannot be separated. Unfortunately, the connection between current physical symptoms and past traumatizing events is not always so clear to either the individual or the physician, at least for a while. At the same time we know that people who have suffered from serious medical, problems. It is therefore very important that you have physical problems checked out, to make sure you do not have a problem from which you need medical help.

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Complex Ptsd Dissociative Identity Disorder Hypochondriac Medical Physical Ptsd Somatic Survivors Trauma