Is C-PTSD Something You Have to Live with Forever? How Do You Overcome it?

By Dr. Betsy Usher

This is the question everyone wants to know the answer to.

Let’s start with the second question first.

Is C-PTSD something you have to live with forever?

I assuming this means will it impair you forever, or will C-PTSD be impacting you negatively forever? The answer to this is not simple because for some people they will be able to recover from C-PTSD where it is not impacting you negatively on a daily basis and forever and for some people it will impact them forever.

This will depend on many factors such as: did they go to therapy, what type of therapy, and did they connect deeply (trust) with their therapist? Also, some survivors where so deeply abused and betrayed that it could take a long time for new coping skills and view of the world to change and some many never be able to trust again. However, it is very possible but you must do the work.

The last part of the question will this be a part of you forever I would say yes, but that doesn’t mean negatively. It could be transformed and transcended into something powerful and beautiful. I took my abusive childhood and abusive ex-husband and became a therapist and am now helping people with C-PTSD. My trauma is still a part of me, but in a way that it has been transformed into a power of strength for me to hold my truth, have a voice, and to help others.

C-PTSD changes you in so many ways it is a part of you but that doesn’t mean it has to cripple you.

Now for the first part of the question:

How do you overcome C-PTSD

Depends on who you ask and who you are. This is good news because we can all find our own road to get there because there is no right or perfect path. We all must walk whatever path we choose BUT not alone.

Instead of directly quoting the survivors before us like Pete Walker, Judith Herman, & many others, I’m going to describe a plan of action for recovering from C-PTSD using a mix of ways.

Goal of C-PTSD: The Road to Empowerment

You Cannot Do This ALONE

You cannot do this (recovery and healing) alone is in the literature and by all writers of C-PTSD recovery. Trust was broken with C-PTSD by the people we trusted the most. Attachment was tampered with that impacts our future relationships for years to come. We were betrayed and abandoned by important people to us. We were made to feel worthless, unlovable, and as a burden. Undoing this will be our life’s work.

How we would build trust, change attachment, work on controlling feelings of abandonment & betrayal is by learning with new healthy people. People that don’t make you feel worthless, unlovable, and a burden. All abusive and problematic people in your life must go. We learn to no longer self-protect, go into trauma states, and take care of other’s feelings before our own. We need to feel safe in order to do this. It is a difficult task to try and trust again, but the journey is powerful.

So, this can start with a therapist you connect with and build trust with. Building trust with a therapist means you tell them the parts that you don’t want to share. The times when they disappoint us, hurt our feelings, when we will not as important as we thought we were. We share with them and let go of sparing their feelings. We are not responsible for how others feel, we must give them the chance to show us how to respond in a healthy way so we can experience compassion and understanding for maybe the first time.

Then we venture onto friends to try out sharing our feelings, practice containmentwith how we feel, learn consistency in self, as well as begin to build our true identity.

It is in these relationships with others that we find our identity that had been tampered and misshapen in our abuser’s eye as our truth. We discover how to be intimate and vulnerable by sharing our true feelings and letting others share back. If the person cannot hear your experience and listen with compassion then they are most likely problematic, a great lesson to learn before you become too invested and another unhealthy attachment is created.

In the beginning you may isolate, this is very normal, but it’s getting back to people that we begin the true healing and transformation process. Isolation will keep you stuck in a place of trauma flashbacks and keep old beliefs about who you are and who others are alive. Learning to spot reg flag people early on becomes a great skill so then we can invest and feels safe when we do decide to be vulnerable and share and show our true feelings.

Education to allow for mourning

Education is also vital for recovery. You do this in order to understand what you experienced was real and valid so you can hold your truth and mourn the loss of your childhood, relationships (parents you never had, partner who wasn’t who you thought), the loss of who you thought you were, and the pain you had to endure.

Education can be through books, podcasts, articles, other survivors experience, and learning about your true past, not the one you remember or were convinced of but the one that will become your intuition of knowing your truth so you can hold it no matter what you face. Telling your story to a safe person in full before, middle, after is away to allow for mourning in its totality and you must physically feel your emotions in order for this to work. The body goes with the mind and the body must be explored and felt. Pulling down the mask you had to wear, the lies you kept from yourself and others, begins the transformation of a new self to emerge.

Here you will learn about your inner critic that is not you but a voice that has been haunting you very loudly since before you can remember. This voice must and will shrink as you learn your truth and find compassion for your inner child/person that was hurt and abused. This voice constantly commentates on how worthless you are, she/he is all the toxic thoughts you think of yourself and she/he must go in order to free the feeling of toxic shame. This is a voice from someone of your past that grew into a life of its own and has been your main voice that dictates your identity. She/he is always looking for a way to criticize you, to isolate you from others, and to keep you in a place of toxic shame.

Toxic shame is that experience of feeling abandonment and depression stemming from our parent’s contempt of us. It is the voice that says you are inherently bad and not good enough.

Since the dark internal critic leads to toxic shame, we the respond by feelings of abandonment and depression which goes into a flashback and dissociation; hopelessness.

This voice being as loud as it is and us believing it holds truth is why we must have new healthy mirrors (people) in our life that rejects these ideas we hold of ourselves. This allows us to create the possibility that we may have it all wrong about how we view ourselves and possibly others as all bad.

Moving Forward with your life: Transformation

Once you have found safety in yourself and others by not only being away from abusive people but by also practicing trusting others with your vulnerable moments and feelings you begin to feel valid. Valid in your past experiences as well as your present experiences. For so long you were gaslight and blame shifted into every feeling you had was wrong, incorrect, bad, a problem a burden, ect. After enough time has passed for you personally to trust what your new experiences is of you and what others have shared about their experience of you and the two harmonize, you being to build your truth.

Your truth will go everywhere with you. It will be not only the foundation of identity but prevents you from going into a trauma state when not necessary. Here you will know you so when someone share’s their experience of you such as:

“you’re being really defensive, “you are able to calmly check in to evaluate if you are or not. If you feel that your truth is you are not you will be able to hold that without needing to shut down, push that person away, attack back, ect. You will instead be able to give a boundary and have a voice. You: “You are feeling I’m being defensive, although I can see why you may think that, I feel that I am sharing my opinion and I don’t feel defensive about it.”

With a boundary you may realize this person is unhealthy or talking in a disrespectful way. Allow yourself to hold your truth and walk away without being triggering into a toxic shame hole. I’m not saying you won’t have any feelings, you will, but you will be able to contain them (not have to do something with them), just hold them, experience them, validate them, feel them in your body, and know that you feel differently and that you trust your truth of yourself.

Your truth and your voice will be testing all the time. It is part of human interactions. If you can hold your truth and have a voice, your reactions and experiences will surely change; stopping the cycle of the inner critic, trauma states (dissociation), depression, low self-worth, confusion, fear, ect. You will know and trust yourself and most importantly love and like yourself even if you make mistakes and have “bad” moments.

This my friends is empowerment.