Playing nice comes naturally when our neuroception detects safety and promotes physiological states that support social behavior. However, pro-social behavior will not occur when our neuroception misreads the environmental cues and triggers physiological states that support defensive strategies. After all, playing nice is not appropriate or adaptive behavior in dangerous or life-threatening situations. In these situations, humans - like other mammals - react with more primitive neurobiological defense systems. To create relationships, humans must subdue these defensive reactions to engage, attach, and form lasting social bonds. Humans have adaptive neurobehavioral systems for both pro-social and defensive behaviors.

~ Stephen W. Porges

Stephen W. Porges Complex Ptsd Dangerous People Defensive Distrust Fear Interpersonal Relationships Neurophysiology Polyvagal Theory Social Triggers Trust Unsafe People

But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

~ Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand Captivity Complex Ptsd Dehumanization Dehumanize Held Captive Inhumane No Longer Human Prisoners Of War Self Respect Survivors Of War Traumatic Experiences Traumatized War Worthlessness

Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Complex Ptsd Fear Of Intimacy Pain Survivor

Survivors who don’t stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. They turn their anger inward and become prone to headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions and insomnia.

~ Beverly Engel

Beverly Engel Abuse Survivors Anger Control Complex Ptsd Depression Headaches Helpless Helplessness Hopeless Insomnia Somatic Survivors Survivors Of Abuse

Physical symptoms such as muscle tension, back problems, stomach distress, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, obesity or maybe even hypertension can be caused by suppressing your emotions. Suppressed anger may also cause you to overreact to people and situations or to act inappropriately. Unexpressed anger can cause you to become irritable, irrational, and prone to emotional outbursts and episodes of depression.

~ Beverly Engel

Beverly Engel Anger Complex Ptsd Depression Irritability Ptsd Survivors Unexpressed Emotions

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Survivors Abused Child Abusive Parents Betrayal Betrayal Trauma Child Abuse Complex Ptsd Coping Defense Mechanism Helpelessness Out Of Control Overwhelmed Overwhelming Parental Abuse Personality Personality Disorders Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Powerlessness Psychological Defence Ptsd Terrifying Trauma Traumatic Experiences Traumatized Trust Unsafe Untrustworthy

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

Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Child Sexual Abuse Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Grieving Healing Healing Process Loss Ptsd Rape Recovery Safety Sexual Abuse Trauma

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

First, the physiological symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been brought within manageable limits. Second, the person is able to bear the feelings associated with traumatic memories. Third, the person has authority over her memories; she can elect both to remember the trauma and to put memory aside. Fourth, the memory of the traumatic event is a coherent narrative, linked with feeling. Fifth, the person's damaged self-esteem has been restored. Sixth, the person's important relationships have been reestablished. Seventh and finally, the person has reconstructed a coherent system of meaning and belief that encompasses the story of trauma.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Complex Ptsd Healing Healing Abuse Healing Process Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Psychotherapy Ptsd Recovery Recovery From Abuse Therapy Trauma Trauma Therapy Traumatic Stress

In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Abuse Survivors Abuser Belie Belief System Captivity Complex Ptsd Core Beliefs Domestic Violence Healing Healing From Abuse Healing Insights Intimate Partner Violence Perpetrator Powerless Powerlessness Prisoner Ptsd Recovery From Abuse Stockholm Syndrome Survivors Trauma Traumatic Stress Victim

When you notice someone does something toxic the first time, don't wait for the second time before you address it or cut them off. Many survivors are used to the wait and see tactic which only leaves them vulnerable to a second attack. As your boundaries get stronger, the wait time gets shorter. You never have justify your intuition.

~ Shahida Arabi

Shahida Arabi Abusive People Boundaries Complex Ptsd Healing Healing Insights Healthy Boundaries Healthy Relationships Toxic People Toxic Relationships

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships, it cannot occur in isolation.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Child Sexual Abuse Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Healing Healthy Relationships Isolation Ptsd Rape Recovery Relationships Sexual Abuse Trauma

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy.Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships.The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure.Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Healing Healthy Relationships Isolation Ptsd Rape Recovery Relationships Sexual Abuse Survivor Trauma

By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Attachment Betrayal Betrayal Trauma Child Abuse Complex Ptsd Identity Incest Parental Abuse Personality Personality Disorder Self Stigma Stigmatization Victims

Patients with complex trauma may at times develop extreme reactions to something the therapist has said or not said, done or not done. It is wise to anticipate this in advance, and perhaps to note this anticipation in initial communications with the patient. For example, one may say something like, It is likely in our work together, there will be a time or times when you will feel angry with me, disappointed with me, or that I have failed you. We should except this and not be surprised if and when it happens, which it probably will. It is also vital to emphasize to the patient that despite the diagnosis and experience of dividedness, the whole person is responsible and will be held responsible for the acts of any part. p174

~ Elizabeth F. Howell

Elizabeth F. Howell Complex Ptsd Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Disorder Responsibility Responsible System Responsibility Trauma Therapy Traumatized

It is a rare person who can cut himself off from mediate and immediate relations with others for long spaces of time without undergoing a deterioration in personality.

~ Harry Stack Sullivan

Harry Stack Sullivan Abuse Abuse Survivors Abused Children Abusive Parents Complex Ptsd Dissociation Domestic Violence Effects Of Child Abuse Interpersonal Partner Violence Interpersonal Trauma Isolation Mental Health Mental Illness Personality Personality Change Personality Disorder Social Isolation Structural Dissociation Survivors Traumatic Experiences Traumatized

I have tried to communicate my ideas in a language that preserves connections, a language that is faithful both to the dispassionate, reasoned traditions of my profession and to the passionate claims of people who have been violated and outraged. I have tried to find a language that can withstand the imperatives of doublethink and allows all of us to come a little closer to facing the unspeakable.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Atrocitis Complex Ptsd Double Think Doublethink Horror Of Incest Horror Of Rape Horror Of War Rape Recovery Trauma Trauma And Recovery Traumatic Experiences Unspeakable Violated Violations Violations Of Human Rights

...the vast majority of these [dissociative identity disorder] patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as posttraumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.2,10A history of multiple treatment providers, hospitalizations, and good medication trials, many of which result in only partial or no benefit, is often an indicator of dissociative identity disorder or another form of complex PTSD.

~ Bethany L. Brand

Bethany L. Brand Complex Ptsd Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Illness Misdiagnosis Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Posttraumatic Psychiatric Drugs Psychiatry

I am continuously struck by how frequently the various thought processes of the inner critic trigger overwhelming emotional flashbacks. This is because the PTSD-derived inner critic weds shame and self-hate about imperfection to fear of abandonment, and mercilessly drive the psyche with the entwined serpents of perfectionism and endangerment. Recovering individuals must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the many inner critic processes that tumble them back in emotional time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust that were part and parcel of their original childhood abandonment.

~ Pete Walker

Pete Walker Abandonment Abuse Survivors Complex Ptsd Flashbacks Healing Insights Imperfection Perfectionism Self Criticism Self Disgust Self Hate Shame Survivors

Complexly traumatized children need to be helped to engage their attention in pursuits that do not remind them of trauma-related triggers and that give them a sense of pleasure and mastery. Safety, predictability, and fun are essential for the establishment of the capacity to observe what is going on, put it into a larger context, and initiate physiological and motoric self-regulation.

~ Sarah Benamer

Sarah Benamer Abused Child Abused Children Attachment Theory Attachment Trauma Childhood Trauma Childhood Traumas Complex Ptsd Healing From Abuse Self Regulation Sense Of Safety Trauma Traumatic Stress Traumatization Traumatized

Those who were molested or beaten as children or teenagers might later be vulnerable to sexual abuse or violence, because their natural impulses to protect themselves and protest (physical and verbal) were extinguished. Expectation of hurtful treatment by others or one's own failed capabilities can stubbornly persist despite overwhelming evidence that such is no longer the case.

~ Babette Rothschild

Babette Rothschild Child Abuse Childhood Abuse Complex Ptsd Physical Assault Rape Revictimisation Self Defense Self Help Sexual Assault Survivor Trauma Traumatic Experiences Traumatic Stress Victims Vulnerability

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

A refusal on the part of psychiatrists and therapists to validate the horrors of their patients' tortured past implies a refusal to take seriously the unconscious psychological mechanisms that individuals need to use to protect themselves from the unspeakable. Such a denial is, however, no longer ethical, for it is in the human capacity to dissociate that lies part of the secret of both childhood abuse and the horrors of the Nazi genocide, both forms of human violence so often carried out by 'respectable' men and women.

~ Felicity De Zulueta

Felicity De Zulueta Abuse Deniers Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Childhood Abuse Complex Ptsd Denial Denial Of Child Abuse Dissociate Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Genocide Hidden Pain Horror Of Incest Horror Of War Ignore What Is Wrong Invalidation Misdiagnosis Mpd Nazis Not Serious Psychiatrists Psychiatry Psychological Defence Psychologists Ptsd Respectable Men Respectable Women Society Denial Survivors Survivors Of Abuse Therapists Torture Survivors Traumatized Unethical

The happy family is a myth for many.

~ Carolyn Spring

Carolyn Spring Abusive Father Abusive Father S Abusive Mother Abusive Parents Child Abuse Child Abuse Survivors Childhood Abuse Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Disorganized Attachment Dysfunctional Families Dysfunctional Family Happy Families Happy Family Neglect Perfect Childhood

One of the reasons a survivor finds it so difficult to see herself as a victim is that she has been blamed repeatedly for the abuse: If you weren't such a whore, this wouldn't have to happen. Each time she is used and trashed, she becomes further convinced of her innate badness. She sees herself participating in forbidden sexual activity and may often get some sense of gratification from it even if she doesn't want to (it is, after all, a form of touch, and our bodies respond without the consent of our wills). This is seen as further proof that the abuse is her fault and well deserved. In her mind, she has become responsible for the actions of her abusers. She believes she is not a victim; she is a loathsome, despicable, worthless human being—if indeed she even qualifies as human. When the abuse has been sadistic in nature...these beliefs are futher entrenched.

~ Diane Mandt Langberg

Diane Mandt Langberg Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Child Sexual Abuse Survivors Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Dehumanization Incest No Longer Human Self Blame Victim Blaming