Can C-PTSD Impact How You Regulate Your Emotions?

By Dr. Betsy Usher

Many mental health diagnoses including C-PTSD that looks like BPD all formulate around emotional regulation. It can become very confusing then for many to understand why they have emotional dysregulation and what their diagnosis could be.

Like BPD, C-PTSD is all about emotional dysregulation. when we look at why this is, we can formulate and understand emotions which will deepen and widen our conscious mind, leading to expansion and emotional regulation. I’m a firm believer in education being a huge proponent leading to the ability to understand oneself. Leading to then being able to regulation one’s emotions in a more contained way.

Children who experience abuse which inevitably leads to trauma and C-PTSD, were not taught to label, accept, or understand their emotions. Instead they received a message that went like this:

1) We Caregiver(s) cannot tolerate your emotions

2) Your emotions are a burden

3) Keep your emotions hidden

4) We do not understand your feelings

5) Your feelings/emotions are not valid

Every child has emotions. Period. Lots of them! Emotional abused children have very complex emotions and attachments to their caregivers or as an adult to their abuser.

Abusive parents do not leave room for a child to be autonomous (healthy independence). They do not have the tolerance themselves for their own emotions let alone their child’s emotions as well.

So it goes like this: The child has a conflict on the playground with another child and goes running to their parent crying. The parent may say:

“Why are you crying, you are being a baby.” “I can’t understand you when you cry, when you stop we can talk.” “Stop crying, suck it up, it’s just a ball.” “If you keep crying we are going to have to go home, Mommy/Daddy is trying to have a nice day and you’re being a brat.” “There is nothing to cry about, you need to learn to not let things bother you so much.”

All of those are examples of emotional invalidation. It teaches the child:

1) I don’t have room for your emotions

2) You are a burden on me

3) Your impacting my space get out

4) I (the parent) am not a safe person for you to talk to

5) You shouldn’t have the feelings you are having

6) You shouldn’t have feelings at all

The last two are the major points here. The child learns through this style of parenting coupled with abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, verbal, ect) that they should not have the feelings they are having, that what they feel is WRONG.

This is a huge problem. For one, we cannot pick and choose emotions we feel; they just happen. We can down the line, when we understand our emotions allowing us to choose what to do with them. However, you can’t stop yourself from having a feeling- that’s not how emotions work.

The child learns that all of their emotions are wrong, thus leading the child to trying to turn their emotions off, while at the same time they are also becoming overwhelmed with emotions. A child that does not know how to label their emotions can become easily overwhelmed and feel invalidated . Validation is extremely important to helping a child feel safer, more contained, and allowing themselves to move on from the feeling in a healthy way.

The child lacking the ability to label, validate, and tease apart their emotions rejectshow they feel in any given situation. They never learn the language for emotions- a vital component for having a relationship with yourself and others. Without a label the child does not understand what they are feeling which turns into a feeling of chaos. Without the emotional validation by someone else or the child/person themselves, the emotional experience turns into emotional dysregulation.

After years and years of these types of confusing interactions with their emotional self, the child does not learn to regulate their emotions and feels mostly chaos and a deep hateful inner critic telling them all the time how wrong, bad, awful, worthless, and so on that they are. This is a vicious cycle leading back to more emotional dysregulation.

The lock and key here is to find others who see you and can emotional validate you and help you discover what you are feeling. Over time you won’t need outside validation as you will learn to know your truth over your feelings regardless of what others think (mostly problematic people) and you will be able to emotional validate yourself leading to emotional regulation and containment.