C-ptsd after narcissistic abuse?
C-ptsd after narcissistic abuse?
If you have experienced relationship difficulties, maybe like me, you found that you had married a narcissist and suffered trauma in a long-term relationship. In your recovery, you are trying to put yourself back together again and you have discovered the term ‘C-ptsd’. It means complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It sounds very like PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), which is quite another issue and relates more to distinct traumatic episodes that have put someone under threat of death and it is officially recognised as a diagnosis.
However, C-ptsd is quite different and is not an officially diagnosed condition as yet. In this newsletter, I am going to give a brief explanation about this condition and how it may relate to the after-effects of splitting up from a narcissist. This is how I became aware of the term in my recovery.
I healed a lot of my C-ptsd
So I am going to explain some of the symptoms of CPTSD and how I experienced them after leaving a 20-year marriage to a sociopath. There may be some similarities to how you are feeling and maybe there are differences. This is because everyone who has C-ptsd is experiencing their own unique vulnerabilities. Whatever the case, it is really important that you take steps to understand your own vulnerabilities and know that they can be healed and repaired and you can get your amazing life back on track and make a really good recovery.
That’s what happened for me in my transformation. So please don’t despair.
I left the marriage of 2 decades and because of all the active healing I had done, I got to a very balanced and steady place in 6 months. Your healing starts when you decide that you are going to put yourself back together again, no matter what. You set very strong intentions for how you want to start living your new life, free from narcissism.
The healing process happens in layers. When I worked on myself in those 6 months post-split, I was most definitely in survival mode. Essential repairs! I still use my healings today but I feel it’s to support maintaining my happy life and working towards creating a good life in the future. This is how I know I’m in Thriving mode! Or another way of putting it is ‘Maintenance Mode’!
Tools that help to heal C-ptsd
Please look at ways in which you can work on your issues with a trauma-informed therapist. Somatic therapies, breathwork, EMDR and CBT are just few tools that are now available for us and can really help. We don’t need to suffer. We know more about C-ptsd than we ever have done in the past and there is a lot more to be learned about it in the future.
Patterns and symptoms of behaviour
I will just present a quick rundown checklist of some of the terms that collectively go together to create a pattern of symptoms and behaviours which indicate C-ptsd may be present. You are the best person to decide.
It is now believed that some people suffering from chronic serious depression and anxiety may also be dealing with C-PTSD. I think this was the case for me, since I addressed my healing on these issues, I no longer suffer from debilitating episodes of depression.
If these issues have been affecting you throughout your life, then please remember none of this is your fault. There is nothing wrong with you. You are behaving normally to abnormal stress from your childhood. But I want you to know that you can deal with all of this. You are not stuck. You can transform to live a happier life in less time than you think.
C-ptsd symptom checklist
Here are the symptoms, they may show up often, once in while, or be a pervasive chronic part of who you feel you are:
Intense and emotional flashbacks (triggers)
Low Self-esteem
Hypervigilance
Avoidance of Triggers
Emotional Detachment/distance/avoidance
Emotional dysregulation (overwhelmed by very strong emotions)
Intense guilt and shame, intrusive thoughts, shame attacks
Dissociation - numbing out, blocking out, feeling 'otherworldly', checking out or 'away with the fairies'
A distorted perception of the abuser, thinking they are the embodiment of perfection
Problems with trust, becoming withdrawn, overly cynical, strongly independent
Chronic behaviours and patterns
These symptoms collectively create chronic behaviours and patterns, such as repeated relationship difficulties, social anxiety, anxiety, anxious for approval, nervous rashes and chronic inflammation of various kinds, negative selfperceptions, self-blame, self-disgust, decreasing self-esteem, eating disorders, shame-based ideas and perceptions about the body. Generally feeling helpless and powerless in other areas of their lives, such as work and career. Chronic depression. Disrupted concentration and attention to tasks, procrastination.
You may think that these symptoms started with the narcissist that you married, but as I got to find out, many of these symptoms were already present in me before the narcissist came along. It's just that in that marriage, there was an increase in the severity of the symptoms and my triggers kept being hit over and over again because of the abuse. I became further traumatised.
Increased understanding and awareness of C-ptsd
What is now generally understood is that these symptoms have a root cause in childhood, at a developmental age before the age of 7, also before the age of three and even younger. So trauma was present in our lives at that age because children absorb their experiences they take on beliefs and behaviors that help them to adapt and stay safe.
They don't feel safe when they are not loved, soothed,validated or nurtured. The experiences that created the trauma are usually chronic and repeated. So that the child takes on adaptations in behaviour that becomes a part of who they are. They are not single incidents of trauma but repeated many times. Chronic and pervasive. By trauma, I mean actual abuse of all kinds, chronic neglect, invalidation, living in poverty, experiencing loss or witnessing abuse and mistreatment of others.
This may come as a surprise to you, or you may think ‘well that makes sense’ or ‘I always knew I had a difficult childhood’. Although it’s a very challenging time to realise that this has happened to you, I want you to know that there are incredible therapies that can help you recover a secure sense of self and process these early developmental traumas.
Adverse Childhood Experiences
In my case, I had experienced a difficult childhood because I had a narcissistic mother, that fact alone will cause developmental trauma for a child. But I had other factors to contend with as well. When I became a bit more knowledgeable about this topic, I realised that I had a very high ACE score. The Ace study began to start a good mainstream understanding of childhood trauma.
ACE is short for Adverse Childhood Experiences.
You can find out your own ACE score it will be between 0-10
If you want to know more you can take a simple free test online, there are a few available online. Answering 10 questions will give you your ‘ACE’ score. As a result of reading this article, you may well know what experiences have impacted you in your childhood. It’s important to have the validation though.
Narcissism showed us what we needed to know
I think the challenging aspect of all of this, is that the narcissistic relationship brought all of this to our attention. Which seems a paradox doesn’t it?
In some ways, I’m glad I got know what I was dealing with. It answered so many questions about why I had such low self-esteem and lack of confidence throughout my life. I also experience serious bouts of depression for quite a long time from my early adulthood. I now know it was as a result of C-ptsd from my childhood.
I want you to understand that these behaviours are normal reactions to abnormal experiences. What happened to us was not our fault. Who could ever fault a child for trying to make the best of a traumatic situation? We can get to know our vulnerabilities, We can start to nurture and love ourselves. If we don’t know, we can work out how to do that.
If you needed any further motivation for working on your C-ptsd, then it’s impartant to realise that by not doing the work, you risk staying stuck in cycles of abuse indefinitely. Our subconscious programming and coding will keep running the loops to find a resolution. This is why may people keep attracting narcissistic relationshipp on repeat.
Check out my youtube channel here. I share the road maps to recovery on these topics. I specifically teach how to learn to love yourself and grow your self-esteem.
Your relationship trauma now?
How does this relate to your relationship trauma now? Well in my case, the effect of living with the abuse of a sociopath kept me in a state of feeling triggered and reacting to events from a place of activated chronic childhood traumas. Re-living the feelings of the past in the present.
Don't get me wrong, living with a sociopath or psychopath, or any other kind of narcissist will also bring with it particular terrifying and isolated experiences and incidents that could also lead to PTSD. This is because they are capable of carrying out terrifying acts of interpersonal violence, emotional, physical and psychological. Stay tuned for further content on this issue.
We can recover and we can be happy, no matter what
So if the content of this blog article resonates, please understand that you can get a lot of healing and relief. You can commit to using trauma processing therapies, such as EMDR, CBT, and Somatic healing therapies. This is how I help my clients with my 90-day programme. It's how I helped myself too and achieved personal transformation. You can get a good recovery, it just takes focus and commitment on your part.
You can turn your life around in 6 months.
We deserve to live a happy life, and we can do exactly that if we develop an awareness of our vulnerabilities and commit to healing those stuck traumas. Re-parenting our inner child is incredibly valuable too. Check out my youtube channel for an upcoming video that explains my road map about how to get started with inner child healing. We are living in a much more enlightened age now and we have access to lots of trauma-processing tools to help us get the job done. Try them out, see which work best to shift out that trauma. Some will suit you better than others. We don't need to stay stuck in trauma.
We've got the rest of lives to live and we can live our happy ever after.