PTSD and c-PTSD – The fundamental Difference

Hey, brave soul!

Good to see you here. This post is about an important topic that needs more explanation as I have figured over the course of time. PTSD – or to name it fully: post-traumatic stress-disorder gets caused by different things then the complex-Post-traumatic stress-disorder that this blog project is mostly talking about. Even with the PTSD being part of the c-PTSD, the evolution of both is different to one another, which also has an effect on the healing journey and the chosen treatments.

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P.s: If your befriended or favourite person send you this, it is likely that they are searching for words on how to bring this topic closer to you, without getting overwhelmed themselves. So, this is not a critique of your knowledge or your support!

Here are links to official websites, where you can read in scientific-lingo about the current data and facts, regarding complex-PTSD. These pages are important, and the sources are reliable, yet it is absolutely okay, if you feel overwhelmed and maybe struggle to grasp entirely what they say because oftentimes science is not very “layman-reader”-friendly to begin with. Let alone for stressed out brain.

A ‘classic’ PTSD

Disclaimer! If you are a person who has a vivid imagination when listening to stories, please make sure to read the following section with an emotional support person at hand, or your pet, or some other skill/tool that helps you stay grounded. People who have traumatic memories of earthquakes or similar events, please skip this section.

The Earthquake:

You are a person who lives in an area that is normally not affected by vast nature catastrophes. The day is sunny, and you are currently standing in your kitchen, cleaning dishes and listening to your current favourite song.

Without any warning signs, the floor below your feet starts shaking. The ground grumbles and a first wave of impact his hitting your home, and you within. You struggle to stand up straight, and run to seek cover under your kitchen table, as the world sounds and feels, as if it is about to devour you whole. You see cracks running up the walls, and you hear items of your home falling from their shelves, shattering on the kitchen tiled floor. In the distance, you hear your neighbours shouting and a kid crying. Within seconds to a few minutes, your home lays in ruins, as you stand up with shaking hands, and a racing heart beat.

This is a very mild description of what can happen to someone who gets struck by an earthquake, but I am not a fan of detail-indulgence in these sensitive topics, while I hope you know that this is not written in an ill attempt to play down what some people had to live through, in these situations. My good hopes and thoughts go out to all survivors.

This event will most likely be scared into your nervous system. The nervous system is the first responder in your body that holds all the information and does the analysis and quick-time reactions, regardless of the wider outcome. One thing to note here is: The less likely an event is, and the less you are actually accustomed to even the idea of something like this happening, the more shocking it will be to your nervous system.

You will now likely accumulate triggers as such:

• The feeling of cracking in the floor
• The feeling of the floor moving
• The feeling of the floor being unstable
• The sound of items like food plates falling on the floor, shattering
• The sound of glass breaking
• The sound of people screaming in fear
• The sound of kids crying in fear
• The sound of an earthquake itself, sometimes described as a deep rumbling tone
• The song you listened to at that moment
• The smell of the air at that moment, maybe from lunch you cooked previously
• and many more, based on what exactly happened.

From my experience, there is no fixated tell on which of these triggers will become important to you, and which not. This is entirely based on the person going through the events, and there will be some that are more severe (arguably the shaking and cracking floor f.e) and some that might be lighter (like a glass crashing on the tiled floor).

With time, therapy and a lot of reflection and experience, you will be able to deal with your triggers and overcome them. You can teach your nervous system and your brain, that this is not your new “every Tuesday afternoon”-event, and maybe even how to operate next time, making you more prepared. These are a small set, of manageable number of triggers directly bound to this one event.

The c in c-PTSD

Now let us get to the c-PTSD.

c-PTSD is a term referring to a “complex-posttraumatic syndrome”. And when we have learned one thing in medicine, it is that neither “complex” nor “syndrome” are good indicators for a mental wellbeing disruptor. Complex says it comes from a multitude of things, and syndrome says that we cannot pinpoint down how it shows up in people. Complex truly is the vibe here.

Disclaimer! If you are a person who has a vivid imagination when listening to stories, please make sure to read the following section with an emotional support person at hand, or your pet, or some other skill/tool that helps you stay grounded. People who have traumatic memories of traffic accidents or similar events, please skip this section.

The Commute:

For this inner image, I want you to think about a normal day, where you leave for work, in the morning. It is Monday, the sky is blue, the sun is out, you are wearing your favourite red hoodie and a pair of washed out blue jeans. You walk the way because it is not that long, and you got a few minutes to spare and look at the birds sitting in a tree.

The next moment, you come to a cross road, the traffic light is green for you and you step onto the street. What happens next is something that, sadly, many, many people experience multiple times in their life (gladly not always with a terrible outcome). A car driver ignores his red signal and his car catches you in the middle of the road. The car was blue like the sky, the driver had a bright shining white base cap, he honked but did not manage to slow down fast enough.

Triggers now can evolve as:

• Sunny sky with warm morning weather
• red hoodie with blue jeans
• the one tree and the birds
• the sky-blue car
• the driver with the white base cap
• the sound of car honking
• The street and crossroad where it happened
• Green traffic light

After your physical healing journey and gathering enough strength to take on your daily life again, you decide to take a different route through the city, avoiding that exact street and crossroad.

You now take your bike, riding towards your workplace through an alley. This day is grey, in the autumn, the smell of rain fills the air and many other cars are parking in the alley. You wear your yellow rain jacket and your black shoes for cold weather. On your back you have the backpack that is very heavy this day, laying on your body while you drive your bike along the street. You watch the people walk by, until your gaze fixated a neon magenta sign that talks about the next music event in town.

This time you have an accident because of a motorbike driver, who comes from behind, loses control over his front tire because of slippery tree leaves on the ground. The motorcycle crashes, the machine slides forward and rips you and your bike off the road. You get ripped off your bike and come crashing down backwards. You hear the screaming of a woman in the close distance, and the barking of a Chihuahua.

Your triggers this time:

• Rainy autumn weather, with the scent of rain in the air
• Yellow rain jacket and black boots
• Heavy backpack
• The road through the alley
• The road covered with wet, slippery leaves
• The sound of the motorcycle tires on the ground when the driver tries to stop it
• The sound of a heavy body (the motorcycle) hitting the ground
• The sound of metal scratching over the ground
• The feeling ov your body getting ripped off its feet, falling backwards
• The scream of a woman and the barking of a Chihuahua
• The god-damn magenta sign.

And this happens to you over, and over, and over, in many different variations.

Every time on a different route, every time with different clothings, a different way of transportation, maybe even with a different dangerous event. A robbery in the subway, a train having a jump because of a branch on the rail-roads.

The number of potential triggers is rising, as your inner feeling of security is falling constantly, regarding the once so simple task of “getting out of the house and arriving at work”. Your trust in your living area, the people in it, any kind of transportation and your own judgment skills, will be shock to the core.

Okay, so lets…

Recap / Summary

c-PTSD is a (mainly) social problem

The entire set-up, the roads, the traffic, the cars, etc. is all standing for the people we encounter and the social interactions we have with them. The drivers are people like your family, your friends, your teachers, your bosses, your relationship partners.

A (sadly) very common case of c-PTSD are children who are living with one parent with narcissistic tendencies and one emotional absent partner. Or generally speaking, children with a rough background. May it be because of harm being wilfully done, or parents being mentally ill, or divorced, or a missing parent because of one reason or the other.

Being scarred in your childhood, is a major interruption in your development as a healthy human being, and sadly carves out the way for the next decades in most cases.

Parents are not only here to provide shelter, food and learning opportunities. They are so important because they have to gift their kids the ultimate basic building blocks to become a healthy human. Basic sense of trust in the world (external) and in themselves (internal). The gift of rational problem-solving, empathy & respect for other living beings, as well as the gift of self-reflection, emotional management, self-acceptance, self-love and self-effectivity.

Parents, Guardians, Relatives – children are dependent on the people around them. No matter how you turn it and no matter how everyone in your family or in your community behaves. Children are the results of their parental figures + their environment. Parental figures, according to children’s minds, are similar to natures law. What the parent vocalises, must be the truth. What the parent does, must be the way of how life works. What the parents display in form of beliefs, must be how everyone thinks and feels. Or manages their feelings, even.

And by the look on your face right now, I am convinced that you have at least one person in mind, who has displayed themselves as an unfit-to-be-parent person based on the requirements I just displayed.

Nonetheless, the more you will learn about the mentioned above mental health conditions, and metal wellbeing disruptors, the more you will see the world with different eyes. Internal, as external. And you will start questioning what you went through, or what your favourite person went through, slowly building an understanding between cause and effect.

It might at times happen, that you feel like we all belong in a therapy clinic, and I must admit that this feeling has a true side to it – but gladly I can say, that there are many people out there who do not display any ‘radioactive behaviour’, and from whom we all can learn. And must, to be fair.

I will conclude this blog post here, and hope you have learned something of value! Please support my work by sharing it with someone who is important to you, or leave a little coin to finance the coffee that goes into all of these blog posts! 😀

Until then, have a great rest of the day & remember:

You are not alone. Not in this world. Not with this topic. Stay strong, brave soul. ♥

Cheers, Alka.