Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
On this week's episode of Imperfect, Lisa shares her experiences and knowledge of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's an important issue facing many moms, so please join us for this special episode of Imperfect.
Moms coming together to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the really ugly. Join host Lisa - aka MessyStressyMama - as she discusses both the joys and challenges of being a parent and raising young children, with special guests and subject-matter experts along the way. Presented in an entertaining, non-judgmental style, join us on life's greatest adventure!
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:18:01
Speaker 1
Hey, guys. Today I want to talk to you about complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It's something that I deal with on a daily basis. I've been on this what seems like a forever journey of healing from it. So I wanted to to talk about it, and it's kind of teaching us about it. We're going to get into what it is.
00:00:18:20 - 00:00:44:17
Speaker 1
Some signs and symptoms to look for and then ways to cope and eventually heal from it. Throughout the episode, I'll also be sharing my personal struggle with PTSD. This is a recent discovery of mine, so it's been quite a huge undertaking trying to move through this and heal. And you know, there's just my childhood trauma is a beast, but we will get through this together before we dove in.
00:00:45:03 - 00:01:07:15
Speaker 1
Let's talk about the differences between PTSD and complex PTSD. So when a lot of people think about PTSD, they think of military veterans who come back from war zones as terrible flashbacks to what they saw and experienced overseas. However, the list of things that can cause someone to develop PTSD is never ending anything from going to war to being involved in a car accident.
00:01:07:19 - 00:01:43:17
Speaker 1
And most PTSD survivors. The flashbacks and feelings all revolve around one incident or one time period in that person's life. There may be multiple incidents, but they're all individual incidents that have their own individual memories and feelings attached to them. Complex PTSD is a little different, though. The C and C PTSD stands for complex, so complex trauma. So complex trauma is defined by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network as both children's exposure to multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive or interpersonal nature in the wide ranging long term effects of this experience.
00:01:43:22 - 00:02:09:17
Speaker 1
It's complex trauma because it's twofold. It's, you know, you have the series of events happens, but then you have the the lingering long term effects of that. And, you know, sometimes we have these long term symptoms and we don't even remember what happened. We just have all these triggers and I'll get into that later. Complex PTSD stems from ongoing trauma, usually in childhood that was never resolved.
00:02:10:00 - 00:02:32:16
Speaker 1
So PTSD Foundation talk to find see PTSD by saying, quote, It always involves being hurt by another person. These hurts are ongoing, repeated and often involving a betrayal and loss of safety. End quote. There are so many different things that can contribute to complex PTSD from physical or sexual abuse to emotional neglect. This is a surprise for me when I discovered my own PTSD journey.
00:02:33:02 - 00:02:51:15
Speaker 1
I didn't realize that the lack of something could be traumatizing. I thought that in order for the event to be considered traumatic, it needed to be abuse. Nope. Emotional neglect can be just as damaging feeling as a child's like you weren't enough for that. You were never able to express your emotions the way you needed to, either out of fear of shame.
00:02:51:17 - 00:03:13:05
Speaker 1
These can have lasting effects on how those children grow up and behave in their adult lives and relationships as human beings, we need safety. We need safe people, safe places and safe things. And we need the safety from childhood through adolescence in order to for our brains to develop in the healthiest way possible, since complex trauma is essentially a loss of safety.
00:03:13:06 - 00:03:32:20
Speaker 1
This means that adult survivors of complex PTSD had no control over themselves, other people or their environments during crucial points in their childhood. This loss of safety and security, both physical and emotional, halted their growth, and they were never able to fully create the life they wanted. A lot of these adult survivors have no real sense of self-worth and no sense of self.
00:03:33:04 - 00:03:55:09
Speaker 1
At the time of the trauma, the children are often unable to understand what's happening so because of this, the brain invents ways to protect them from the dangers they can't understand, and those coping mechanisms are carried on through to adulthood. So let's take a step back. As humans, we all respond to trauma in one of four ways. We've all heard of fight or flight, and those are the ones that are most commonly referenced.
00:03:55:14 - 00:04:22:04
Speaker 1
We talk about people's fight or flight response. However, according to Pete Walker, who wrote the book on that's most commonly used, talk about PTSD. It's called Complex PTSD from surviving to Thriving. So Pete Walker talks about two more responses in that those are frees and fun. Let's define the trauma types real quick. So fight is an aggressive response to a perceived threat or to an actual threat.
00:04:22:17 - 00:04:48:00
Speaker 1
Flight is fleeing either physically or mentally by becoming hyperactive. Then you have freeze, which is numbing out dissociating and just kind of accepting the inevitable. And then you have fun. And fun is, you know, trying to appease the threat by pleasing it and being helpful, you know? Maybe this won't be as bad if I, you know, make them happier or what have you as children.
00:04:48:00 - 00:05:11:03
Speaker 1
When the threat was real and the traumatic events were first occurring, these innate responses up to protect us as adults. Unresolved childhood trauma. We live our lives. The shame, hypervigilance and other coping mechanisms that we learned as children, even after years of the threat being gone. We're physically and emotionally safe from harm, but we all feel like we're in danger, even if we can't remember that original trauma, as is the case with me.
00:05:11:11 - 00:05:41:06
Speaker 1
I have bits and pieces, but a lot of my childhood has been locked down. This continued hypervigilance and the trauma responses we learned that are still triggered can lead to some less than ideal personality traits. According to complex PTSD, from surviving to thriving, Pete Walker says the most common personality traits that stem from all four trauma types are as follows Flight response equals narcissistic tendencies, flight response, obsessive compulsive freeze, dissociative and often codependent.
00:05:41:09 - 00:06:00:05
Speaker 1
Some people can have a mix of two trauma types and minor freeze in fun. As soon as they bring the Texas threat, either go to full appeasing mode or if the stress gets to an unmanageable level, my brain shuts down. I don't feel anything. This is called dissociation, which means that my brain will just shut down when things get to be too much for me to handle emotionally.
00:06:00:12 - 00:06:26:13
Speaker 1
The dissociation is often described as zoning out. We also not every now and then, but with dissociation it's usually prolonged and happens in times of high stress. Some of the ways that PTSD manifest in adult survivors are amnesia, alienation, chronic distress, chronic physical pain, re victimization, flashbacks, the nightmares sometimes of physical sensations, anxiety, dissociation troubles, emotional on affect regulation.
00:06:26:19 - 00:06:50:21
Speaker 1
And then we have depression, toxic shame, and even autoimmune diseases, which I don't even know. A few symptoms that I wanted to get into more detail about or affect is regulation, toxic shame and victimization. So affect your emotional dysregulation is the inability to manage your emotions. So the repressed trauma results in internalized feelings often of rage. These emotions come bubbling up to the surface in times of unrelated stress.
00:06:51:04 - 00:07:08:11
Speaker 1
When these emotions are triggered and it can be very difficult for CBT survivors to calm themselves down. So the next one that I want to talk about, a toxic shame. So shame happens and something about you or your identity is looked at negatively, harshly. A child is taught shame when they are told that something they're doing thinking it's wrong.
00:07:08:14 - 00:07:26:19
Speaker 1
We all experience shame in different ways, but toxic shame happens when the shame starts to break down your sense of self. When your self-worth starts to go down because of all of the shame that you feel, that's it. Shame is usually closely followed by anger and self-disgust. Once toxic shame is a hold of you, it can be incredibly difficult to get rid of.
00:07:26:19 - 00:07:53:01
Speaker 1
Suddenly you're stuck in an endless cycle of negative self-talk. In the book Complex PTSD From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker describes toxic shame as the inner critic. The next one victimization. After a trauma, the mind creates ways to regulate and regain civility. The symptoms of PTSD that I listed earlier always in mind teach self to cope. Sadly, these same defense mechanisms can also leave the survivor vulnerable to experienced similar trauma again.
00:07:53:06 - 00:08:13:18
Speaker 1
That story victimization occurs. An example of this would be if the mind learned to be helpless and passive in the face of danger, that individual may not be able to actively get away from a future traumatic situation. Before adult complex PTSD, survivors are able to get the help that they need. They often learn to cope with their feelings of insecurity by isolating themselves from others in the world.
00:08:14:02 - 00:08:39:12
Speaker 1
Sadly, isolation often leads to depression and sometimes even suicidal behavior. Even worse than that, as an adult with untreated PTSD, as children who in the same coping mechanisms from watching their parents. This leads to a cycle of intergenerational trauma that continues. The cycle is not broken. I've basically made it my mission, my nation and my motherhood journey to to break the cycle.
00:08:39:15 - 00:09:01:22
Speaker 1
It's just, you know, it's easier said than done. But I am working hard on it. Okay. So when we get back, we'll talk about some coping skills. The most important thing you can learn to help you battle PTSD, battle the trauma response you have in your everyday life is how to regain presence in the current moment. The trauma responses in emotional flashbacks that you experience play out of the present moment and into a painful past memory.
00:09:01:23 - 00:09:17:19
Speaker 1
Even if you don't see it, you still feel it, even if you don't remember what happened. The painful feelings associated with what happened are still there. Learning to be present in the moment, mindful will do wonders for you and will help regain control of your central nervous system so that you can break free from thoughts and pull yourself back.
00:09:18:03 - 00:09:35:15
Speaker 1
A lot of this has to do with becoming attuned to your own body and mind in moments of distress. It can help to ask yourself what is needed in that moment. What part of you feels off? What can you do to soothe that specific part of yourself? Do you need to splash some water on your face? It always works for me, but honestly, I sometimes I just need a whole last shower.
00:09:35:16 - 00:09:53:14
Speaker 1
When you're able to focus in on what specific parts of yourself need something and what those specific needs are, then you are grounded in the current moment and therefore, you know you'll start feeling better. Honestly, it's all about choosing something different to focus on something happening in the here and now. Of course, this is a way easier said than done.
00:09:54:00 - 00:10:11:11
Speaker 1
I mean, I have a three year old and especially needs one year old. So honestly, I spend a lot of time feeling like I'm floating above my body because the stress is too much. But again, work in progress in therapy. My therapist and I spent a lot of time talking about mindfulness techniques. My favorite trick that works for me is asking myself questions about what's in front of me.
00:10:11:18 - 00:10:27:14
Speaker 1
You can do this in your head or out loud. Whatever works, works both ways. One time I was in the car with my husband and I had recently told him about the skill I started feeling bad suddenly and he started talking about the cars in front of us and asked me questions about them. What color is that car?
00:10:27:14 - 00:10:44:14
Speaker 1
What color is that truck? What's the color of the light we just passed? Things like that. This brought the focus back to sitting in the car with my husband. And I was back in my car, my husband. And if I was back in the car with my husband, I couldn't be in that scary memory if I was focused on what color the truck was.
00:10:44:16 - 00:11:05:18
Speaker 1
I couldn't be focused on negative feelings from the past. Some other skill similar to this. And while focusing on breathing or meditating. But if you associate, like I do, meditation is just going to take you further away from your body in the current moment. And Walker's book devotes an entire chapter to exactly how to get out of an emotional flashback those difficult moments when we're triggered and can't seem to escape the feelings.
00:11:06:07 - 00:11:27:06
Speaker 1
In this outline, there are 13 steps and I'm going to run through them quickly with you now. Step one is to identify that you're in an emotional flashback so you can say to yourself in your head and say it aloud. I'm having flashbacks. This serves as a reminder for yourself that you're okay. This is in the past. This isn't happening right now and can't hurt you right now.
00:11:27:12 - 00:11:48:05
Speaker 1
Step two is I'm scared, but I'm not in any danger. So validate your feelings. You know, it's. It. It's a sad memory or a scary memory. It's okay to feel scared, but know that you're safe, said three, is to own your boundaries. So remind yourself that no one is allowed to cross your boundaries and you can get yourself out of uncomfortable situations if need be.
00:11:48:16 - 00:12:06:22
Speaker 1
Step four Love on your inner child. They're in need of comfort and security in this moment and needs to know that your you love them and care for them unconditionally. Step five is to remember that this feeling is not forever. It may have felt that way as a child, but it's just a bad memory. Now it'll fade. Step six is just tell yourself that you're an adult.
00:12:06:22 - 00:12:27:00
Speaker 1
Now the flashbacks will have you back in the body and mind that was experiencing the trauma for the first time. So you just need to remind yourself, Hey, I'm in a different body now. I'm bigger, I'm an adult. Step seven is to come back to your body, surround yourself in the current moment by focusing on your breathing or just feeling it front surroundings or asking yourself questions.
00:12:27:00 - 00:12:42:11
Speaker 1
Like I mentioned, the floor under your feet feel that. And you know, if you need to touch the walls of your room, you know, feel the walls. And if you still feel nervous or panicky energy in your body, just don't let it control you. Shake it out if you need to step in. It serves as the inner critic.
00:12:42:15 - 00:13:01:13
Speaker 1
Don't allow yourself to change your situation. Some ways to do this, as explained by Pete Walker, are through. I thought, stopping or thought correcting just an example instead of thinking I'm so stupid for doing that, say I made a mistake and that's okay. If you're a mom. The best way to describe this is talk to yourself as you talk to your child.
00:13:02:00 - 00:13:21:02
Speaker 1
I would never call me stupid, so why would I call myself stupid? I don't know why we do this, but there it is. Step nine is to allow yourself to breathe. It's okay to be sad about things that happened in the past. Practice self-compassion. It's okay to feel sorry for the child that you once were. And all of these flashbacks may make you feel anger.
00:13:21:03 - 00:13:40:02
Speaker 1
Turn that anger and self-protection down and never let that happen again. Step ten Associate Comfort and healthy relationships. It's okay to take time to be alone in moments of distress, but don't let yourself be completely isolated from those that can help you. 711 Identify your triggers so you can avoid them in the future. Again, easier said than done.
00:13:41:02 - 00:13:59:02
Speaker 1
I mean, my kids trigger me and I can't just, like, leave them and go peace and leave. Right? But when we take a closer look at those triggers from our kids, we see that it's it's not actually kid's behavior that's triggering, but it's it's a thought or belief in that moment associated with that behavior. If Lily isn't listening to me, she's three.
00:13:59:03 - 00:14:17:19
Speaker 1
You know, the thought that I have that I always come back to is I'm failing at discipline and it's triggering. And, you know, and then I don't feel good and I'm no longer in the current moment. So when you try to figure out what your mind is flashing back to, you're it's something that happened or it's a belief that was instilled in you to young age.
00:14:17:22 - 00:14:38:10
Speaker 1
Flashbacks allows to discover things we may not have discovered otherwise. They can also give us the motivation we need to ask for the thing we need it and get that need met and lastly, step 13 is to be patient with yourself. It takes time to come out of an emotional flashback. Even if you follow these 13 steps, the letter over time, this process of coming out of flashbacks will get easier and quicker.
00:14:38:18 - 00:14:56:06
Speaker 1
But it will take time. Don't rush yourself. The most important thing is that you are doing the work to help yourself, no matter how long it takes. These skills are great and work wonders in times of high stress. But what about we're currently feeling triggered? How we cope with PTSD long term. These skills are great and work wonders in times of high stress.
00:14:56:06 - 00:15:17:13
Speaker 1
But what about when we aren't currently feeling triggered? How do we cope with PTSD in the long term? When I come back, I'll discuss how to actually start healing from those traumas that are holding you back. Probably the best way have come across and one that I'm currently working on myself is re parenting. The idea that you can heal your inner child by giving them yourself what they you never got on the trauma is happening.
00:15:17:16 - 00:15:37:11
Speaker 1
If your parents or someone close to you is abusive or neglectful when you were growing up, you can still undo the damage it caused by being a better parent to your inner child. Pete Walker is the author of Complex PTSD From Surviving Just Thriving describes complex PTSD as, quote, a learned set of responses and a failure to complete numerous important developmental tasks.
00:15:37:16 - 00:16:00:05
Speaker 1
His entire book is devoted to free parenting and how to do that. Quote What is learned can be unlearned and vice versa. What was not provided by your parents can now be provided by yourself and others. Recovery from PTSD typically has important self-help and relational components. The relational piece can come from others friends, partners, teachers, therapists, therapeutic groups, or any combination of those.
00:16:00:17 - 00:16:18:07
Speaker 1
I like to call this re parenting by committee and quote So unlike a lot of mental health disorders, it's not something we're born with. And for us, it can actually be healed instead of just minutes. That's good news in T Walker's book, he talks about the yin and yang of re parenting, which is re mothering and re fathering.
00:16:18:18 - 00:16:45:16
Speaker 1
I understand that the times have changed and that may no longer be P.C. to use those terms, but bear with me. So re mothering. So Pete Walker states that what is gained by a child whose mothering needs were adequately met as a child is self-compassion. This is the home base that children can return to in troubling times. Self-compassion can also be described as a sense that we are deserving of love and lovable, that the child is accepted for all aspects of their experience.
00:16:46:02 - 00:17:08:05
Speaker 1
The underlying concept here is that unconditional love is every child's birthright. Sadly, the lack of this unconditional love can never be fully resolved. According to the Walker, unconditional love is only appropriate and developmentally helpful before two years of age. After a huge role in start to learn gradually. Very gradually. There's much love as they get. There are some limits, there are some boundaries.
00:17:08:05 - 00:17:28:14
Speaker 1
And crossing them is unacceptable. So now we have re fathering. So when a child has a core of self-compassion, self-protection starts to develop as well. The goal of re fathering is to become assertive and protect yourself from external and internal harm as you should have been protected as a child. Pete Walker describes himself fathering exercise called to the time machine rescue operation.
00:17:28:19 - 00:17:46:23
Speaker 1
Essentially, you tell your inner child what you would do to protect them from the abuse of time troubles ever invented. You describe exactly what you do to stop the threat before it can harm an traumatized man or child. I will call the police on them if they ever lay a hand on you or I'll put masks on their face so they can't give you menacing stares, that sort of thing.
00:17:47:05 - 00:18:05:05
Speaker 1
To finish up this segment, I want us to read some real parenting formations that Pete Walker listens. Look, if any of the episodes resonated with you, I'm sure you'll find comfort in these phrases. I'm sure the first ten. But if you want to see the rest of them or if you'd like to learn more about PTSD, there's a lot that I didn't have time to cover.
00:18:05:06 - 00:18:26:21
Speaker 1
Be sure to check out complex PTSD and surviving just writing by Pete Walker. I am so glad you were born. You are a good person. I love who you are and I'm doing my very best to always be there for you. You can come to me whenever you're feeling hurt or bad. You do not have to be perfect to get my love and affection.
00:18:27:20 - 00:18:44:09
Speaker 1
All of your feelings are okay with me. I am always glad to see you. It is okay for you to be angry. And I won't let you hurt yourself or others when you are. You can make mistakes. Your teachers. You can know what you need and ask for help.