What Are The First Signs Of C-PTSD?

By Dr. Betsy Usher

What are the first signs to recognize you are suffering from of C-PTSD?

The difficulty with recognizing symptoms of C-PTSD (some are calling it C-PTSR now) is that for a long long time you do not know you have C-PTSD so the symptoms are complex to view from this point of view.

For instance: C-PTSD comes from long-term trauma of abuse, usually narcissistic abuse. The person begins to have low self worth. This is the leading symptom during the time you don’t know you have C-PTSD and when you find out you do. Let’s start out with symptoms when you don’t know first because they manifest differently and manifest differntly for different people of course.

Before: This means before you realized you were being abused, before you knew what gaslighting was, blame shifting, ect. These are kind of in order but doesn’t have to be in this order. This is just my opinion.

1) Usual denial or confusion is the first place people begin. For most C-PTSD people this abuse starts in childhood. Therefore it is confusing and they don’t believe their caretaker would hurt them like that. Instead they take on the burden of badness which means they must be the person that is “bad” cause it’s too hard to fathom it’s your caregiver and too scary.

2) A person will start to feel hopeless, like they can never do or be the right kind of person the abuser wants them to be. We call this learned helpless.

3) A person will have a freeze or dissociative, fight, flight, or fawn (co-dependency) response to this continual state of trauma and not being able to flee that can appear more “dramatic” to the abuser or untrained eye.

4) Rage or Anxiety can then manifest. We will turn this fear response outward against others and look like the abuser ourselves or we will turn it inward and internalize it again as we are bad in the form of anxiety and or depression.

5) Then comes cognitive dissonance which is the state of confusion between a feeling that you know something usually about yourself is wrong, however, someone else is telling you the opposite. It becomes unbearable tension not knowing and so people with C-PTSD usually disbelieve themselves because of the learned helpless and low worth and believes the abuser: Example: Your abuse partner tells you that you aren’t a physically affectionate person. You feel that you are. You don’t believe that you are good, worthy, or lovable so you trust what they are saying.

6) This leads to a state of toxic shame about who you are. Small things can trigger you to feel shameful and you react with a fight, freeze, flight, fawn response each time your shame is triggered.

7) This response leads to more shame about how you respond in away that isn’t how you want to be or act.

8) You may then enter into another relationship if you don’t realize your deep psychology roots and trauma state you are in. Then the cycle begins again.

After you know you have been abused and have C-PTSD:

Now you know that you were abused and realize that you have C-PTSD. What happens in the beginning?

1) Confusion and denial. You go back and forth if you were the abuser or if they were the abuser. They are so skillful at making you believe you were all these horrible things you now have to untangle that cognitive dissonance. Remember you grew up with the abuse most likely, so you already have a long history of believing you were bad like the abuser said you were. You don’t trust your memories, start to rationalize they weren’t that bad, then back to rage about what they did to you. It’s extremely confusing and cloudy. Like brain fog.

2) Depression and anxiety set in. You have left this trauma bond and begin to detox off of the neurotransmitters that were firing during the traumatic states that chemically made you feel bonded to them like no other person. You feel empty, lost, alone, hopeless, uninterested in anything and possibly begin to have anxiety or obsession about what they are doing during the beginning no contact. You feel half the time like a zombie and the other half like a bomb waiting to go off with built up energy.

3) You isolate yourself. You begin to deal with the feelings of being worthless and feel like you have nothing to offer anyone so you pull back and go further into depression. Questions like who am I? What am I? What do I think about who I am? Why did this happen to me, all start to circulate and torment you daily.

4) You begin to turn inward and drug addiction might come into play, eating disorders, trying to not burden anyone will your struggles, self harm, thoughts of suicide. Some people end up looking like they have borderline personality disorder. You are easily dysregulated emotionally and aren’t a consistent person. Living seems unbearable because how will you ever trust anyone ever again? How could you let this happen? How did you not know for so long? Why would your parents do this to you? All being to circulate. Rage towards your family or men or your partner begin to surface and you no longer want to freeze but fight back and take control back.

These feelings and experiences can last a long long time. But not always. What comes next is to either 1) Stay in denial and end up back in the same type of abusive relationship that you don’t notice until it’s “too late.” Or 2) you educate yourself, read every article on narc abuse, C-PTSD, awakening the body, becoming empowered and being to grow self worth once you recognize how your self worth is the core of EVERYTHING.

How do you do this?

With good healthy mirrors (aka people who are healthy and care about you). Community is a key into coming back into worth. People who see you for who you really are underneath, the person you know you are but have been confused about because of the gaslighting.

Now the really interesting part is then doing work like Peter Levine does on the body nervous system to reawaken these dead and dissociated parts of you. Slowly reawakening your system to be able to fight back, flee if need be, and tolerating bits of trauma again slowly with someone who helps you but holding the space for you that you need. Another story for another time.