How Do You Find Out If You Have C-PTSD?

By Dr. Betsy Usher

Ethically I need to start out by saying you should go to a mental health professionalwho specializes in trauma and get properly diagnosed. Now that I’ve said that here is what you can look for in yourself…….

Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) comes from extended and sever childhood abuse/neglect. This could be from a dysfunctional family, if you grew up in a toxic cult, were a hostage, prisoner of war, and those who have been sexually exploited.

The abuse is sexual, verbal, emotional/psychological, spiritual, physical, and neglect. Now you can also have C-PTSD from being in an abusive intimate partner relationship. Many people who have suffered from an abusive adult relationship also had childhood abuse that they may or may not be aware of.

Mostly when we are talking about C-PTSD we are talking about it starting in childhood. Then it can resurface in adult relationships in later years where you can actually understand that something is wrong and it’s not just you. However, that isn’t always the case.

Five Features of C-PTSD

1) Emotional Flashbacks (emotions/feelings of shame, fear, anger, depression) Regression

2) Self-Abandonment: rejecting the self, feeling suicidal, self harm, self hatred

3) Toxic Shame: A feeling that you are worthless, stupid, flawed, unlovable,

4) Vicious Inner Critic: A voice telling you that you are worthless and flawed

5) Social Anxiety: Distrusting of others, paranoid, fearful of getting close to others

~Pete Walker

Here is a link to a more extensive list of characteristics one can have; I want to focus on explaining it instead of lists

Judith Herman and the formulation of C-PTSD

So….how do you know if you have C-PTSD after looking through both of these definitions?

For the majority of your life you believed that you were bad, inherently evil, unlovable, difficult, toxic, harmful to others, worthless. There was a feeling of why am I even alive. There was no feeling of self-compassion; you may have even put other’s feelings before your own. There was a deep dark hole inside of you that nothing you could do could fill it permanently. You felt full of rage, fearful, hopeless, powerless, shameful, and guilty.

You never felt seen, heard, or understood. Never truly connected or loved. It was difficult to feel real connection with people and you often wondered if anyone understood you. This could lead to a feeling of being special, unique, or utterly alone.

Many people with C-PTSD have waves of feeling suicidal. You may have struggled to tolerate the feelings of the internal loneliness and no one fully understanding you. You feel that you are to blame for everything that is wrong in relationships and your family. You vacillate between from being in a good place to a dark place when triggered by someone’s comment that triggers your toxic shame, easily. Toxic shame comes on like a bang. It hits hard and you regress to a child like stage.

Wanting to runaway from a conversation that has hurt your feeling, hurt the person back with words so they feel shameful, you may freeze and dissociate like a dear in headlights and you can’t move, or you may make attempts to please the person who has hurt you so they don’t think so ill of you. When triggered you may explode in rage, you can be highly reactive because of your sensitivity to flashbacks which remind you of the abuse you endured as a child (conscious or unconscious).

You are hypervigilant meaning you pick up on everything. Subtle changes in other’s moods, someone having an off day, feeling an unsafe situation (but ignore it usually), and noticing how people feel about you. You may be right, you may be wrong, but most of the time it feels that feelings you are picking up from others is negative about you. It’s hard to believe people like you.

You may have engaged in self harm either with physically hurting yourself, using drugs to regulate your emotions, dating abusive people, having toxic friends, not reaching your potential, putting yourself in dangerous situations. You may feel that you deserve to be punished, no one gives a Fuck why should you, you are trying to feel something or connected, you are may be escaping the suffering of the childhood trauma and these experience feel good (see my article on self harm).

You struggle to trust people. It’s difficult to let people in. You may be open but not vulnerable. Meaning at your time of need is when you isolate. You can go into a deep depression and isolate for a long time, fearful of the world and others after a flashback and then feelings of toxic shame. Here you dissociate, fantasize of being rescued, and wait for someone to save you. Usually people with C-PTSD have a lot of rescue fantasizes. They don’t feel capable of saving themselves or they simply need someone to love and care about them more than they do. They need to know someone cares if I’m alive or dead and daydream about someone saving them from themselves.

This makes them open to perpetrators who are abusive. Abusers love to act like the rescuer in the beginning and know exactly the part to play to a vulnerable person needing attention, to feel special, and seen/understood. Once in this relationship you feel a total lack of control and power. It’s not even on your radar that your being abused for a long long time and once you do there is a lack of agency that you can leave. You feel trapped and hopeless. The abuser, just like your parents made you to continue to believe that you are the problem, you are at fault, you are bad, difficult, mentally unstable, and unlovable (see my article on how to be responsible for the broken parts of us after abuse). That’s why it’s important to stay single until you’ve worked on your past. You should not be attractive to a healthy person when you are broken. A predator would see you as a perfect match however.

Lastly, life seems like a dream, not really living it, like you’re waiting for something to fix it and to be okay. You aren’t close to many people if any and struggle to trust anyone from the past or new in your life. You truly feel no one understands you, you are not understandable and fear that you will never truly connect with someone and feel safe with someone. It’s difficult to not self criticize everything you do and therefore you don’t let anyone in, in fear they will do the same and send you down an even deeper hole.

So you can look at a list of symptoms and see if those fit you, you can see a specialized trauma therapist, you can read up on C-PTSD by Pete Walker, Judith Herman, & Peter Levine to see if your childhood matches what they write about and see if you feel the way I wrote above. Doesn’t have to be a perfect fit but an over all feeling and then most likely you have C-PTSD. But if you had childhood abuse and are struggling to find self love, trust in relationships, have flashbacks, and vicious inner critic you most likely do.

Please get help if you feel this way. I will say that there is so much hope with C-PTSD and more everyday. I write about this in my other article. You are not doomed to feel this way forever, you will struggle but we all do, you will have relapses but we all do. Understanding your childhood abuse or intimate partner abuse is so important and then doing body work since your body has been traumatized too. There is another side of C-PTSD that is peaceful, stable, helpful to others, being a beautiful parent and partner. Do not give up, there is hope I promise. I am a C-PTSD survivor and I have lots of hope. We can do good with this trauma and help each other so we don't repeat more toxic relationships.

This was not your fault, ever, you are not bad, evil, broken, or bad. You were abused. Period. That will destroy people for a time, but not forever warriors.