All the wrong filters – c-PTSD and its distorted perceptions of social interactions

Hey, brave soul!

Have you ever found yourself in a situation, where you talked to someone – and something inside of you answered faster / reacted faster – then you could even imagine? Replying to a simple question with a kind of harsh attack as answer? Or even perceiving the reaction of someone, as something way more harmful or dangerous, than it actually was? Well, then you are not alone. We all have these moments, in which we “bark back” at someone, out of a so-called “affect”. But people who struggle with trauma, have something that I call “the wrong set of filters”, which makes interacting with other people daily very hard at times. Today I want to share some of my very own examples. How my survival-trained-brain made my life a lot harder because I could not hear what somebody wanted to tell me because I was not in control any more.

Welcome to another episode of: My security system is faster than me, for hell’s sake.

Okay, before we start with how this mental health manipulator is interfering with our everyday life situations, here is a short recap from my blog entry “This is: complex-PTSD” about c-PTSD and its nature.

“C-PTSD, or complex post-traumatic stress-disorder, is the definition for a disorder caused by repeatedly traumatizing events. Science calls this “chronic trauma”. The pool of triggers grows with each event and year that a person is not getting out of the initial situation, as well as not going through therapy. “Complex” really is the tune for this cluster of problems / this disorder, because of old wounds and radioactive mental structures that might sabotage us for decades on end if we don’t intervene.”

To make it short: Our repeated trauma experiences, cause our security system (which all of us have) to become extremely: Hypervigilant (overly alerted), reactive (no time to think or process, chained to what happens around us) and low-key intrusive. This does not make us less of a human, but more of a security system overall.

We are the radar in the room, catching up on the slightest changes of mood and posture from others, always ready to react in the ways we have learned by surviving prior situations.

The PPT: Predictive Processing Theory

The brain doesn’t just remember; it rewires. Neuroimaging and sensory research reveal changes in the very circuits that help us read faces, tones, body language, and even the internal signals from our bodies. Everything feels amplified, a little blurry, or straight-up wrong-footed. Here’s a closer look at how this inner turbulence shows up, especially around social cues and self-awareness.

EXTERNAL to Internal: Hypervigilance and Threat Detection

In our brains, we have this little thing called the “amygdala”, which is a part of us that manages emotional control and processes. It also plays a role in memory and learning. Now consider the amygdala to be your smoke detector. Its job? To notice danger as fast as possible. In c-PTSD, the amygdala doesn’t just fire when it smells actual smoke – it goes off for burnt toast, a lit candle, even a harmless whiff of steam. Everyday social cues, for example a co-worker’s sigh, a friend’s silence, or a partner’s frown get flagged as highly dangerous emergencies.

What’s happening in the brain:

• Research shows that chronic trauma ramps up the amygdala’s sensitivity, while weakening regulation from the prefrontal cortex, aka the part of your brain that whispers, “Hey, it’s probably fine.”
• This shift means your mind is primed for false alarms. The filter gets set to “danger first, ask questions later.”
• Neuroimaging also points to noisy, out-of-sync communication between sensory regions and the social brain. According to recent evidence, key networks for seeing, hearing, and feeling the world are rewired in PTSD, which leads to overwhelming, distorted input from sights and sounds.

How it feels day-to-day:

• Neutral faces look angry, neutral texts feel cold, even laughter might carry a hidden jab.
• You find yourself unreasonably exhausted after social events. That’s your brain burning tons of fuel just to sort real threats from shadows.
• Small cues snowball. A raised eyebrow in a meeting? Suddenly, your mind is sprinting through worst-case scenarios.

“Why can’t I trust my gut?” you might wonder. If you learned early on that ‘normal’ could flip to chaos in a heartbeat, your brain adapts by cranking up the threat detector. For a much deeper dive into the science behind predictive processing in trauma, have a look at this summary from the National Institutes of Health.

INTERNAL to external: Interoceptive Dysfunction and Emotional Misreading

Now, let’s zoom in on a less obvious, but equally draining distortion: your ability to read signals from your very own body. This is called interoception. Imagine you’re trying to tune a radio, but every station is fuzzy. That’s what living with trauma can do to your awareness of heartbeats, breath, tension…everything that clues you in on how you’re really feeling inside.

Why interoception matters:

• Your brain relies on these bodily “updates” to guess what’s happening emotionally. When the signal is scrambled by trauma, everything gets murky. Am I anxious, angry, hungry, or just tired?
• In C-PTSD, studies show that overactive threat circuits hijack even normal feelings. A racing heart (from walking upstairs or excitement) might be read as panic.
• You start doubting your own reactions. Was I actually “too sensitive,” or is my body just stuck in that old, high-alert setting?

How it plays out in relationships:

• You freeze up or withdraw, convinced you’re “too much” or always getting it wrong (“Why do I always feel off in groups?”).
• Emotional misfires happen in both directions: you might underrate your own needs or seem cold, or swing to loud, open distress that feels embarrassing later.
• Self-criticism sharpens. Every misunderstood cue, yours or someone else’s, turns into another reason to feel broken.

The science backs this up: research on PTSD, summarized in this article on how the brain processes internal signals after trauma, points to real, observable changes in brain regions that process interoceptive and emotional information. These changes make it harder for trauma survivors to get an accurate emotional “readout”, which piles on the confusion and anxiety in social settings.

Given that“PTSD is the “core” of c-PTSD, you get this exact complex of problems with all its follow-up problems → just with a multitude of situations, triggers and filters, it is linked to.

Quick recap:

• C-PTSD doesn’t just make you feel out of place. It scrambles the very sensors your brain uses to make sense of people around you and yourself.
• Predictive processing theories explain why these old, trauma-shaped “filters” are so sticky.
• Whether it’s scanning rooms for danger or misreading your own heartbeat, the struggle isn’t your fault. It’s your survival wiring doing what it once had to do.

Now, when you think back about all the times that you felt ‘off’ after expressing how you felt – or reacted according to how you felt – and your surrounding humans looked baffled – this might make a lot more sense now, does it?

PTSD and c-PTSD cause you to live in a different reality.

When I try to explain to my friends and my beloved favourite human, what exactly happened right now and why I had an emotional reaction to a non-emotional simple question, it often follows a very set action line. What I have figured out, and what you can find in the science I have provided above, is the following.

// Haaah, classic, now that I try to grab an example from my recent experiences, I can’t remember any. I should write more things down daily, dammit. //

The situation: When my partner and I brought things from my kitchen to his because I didn’t need them here any more, I also had packed a few of these large smoothie-glass bottles into my bag. I had been using them as storage for lentils, dried banana chips, nuts and other things. (All the bottles were still in use, mind that.) We arrived at his place and I started to unpack them, and wanted to put them on the shelf in his kitchen.

His message: When my partner saw these bottles he“said to me, “Hey, I need to clean these bottles, before they go into the cabinet. “They are dirty.” (Actually, they were not that much dirty, but he mistook the crumbs on the inside of the dried banana glass bottle, as dust and fat from cooking in the kitchen.)

My filter: My filter has been set to “The world is judgy, and I am a low-quality human being, if I do not do things perfect every single the time.” since an early age.

My trigger: The fact that my partner saw my glass bottles and said, “They are dirty”, spiralled in my system and caused me to feel startled, anxious, and frozen.

My wound below: In the past, my grandmother had been very aggressive in telling me that the way I did things was wrong and that I never did enough. So often and so hard, that I have grown (in her case a home/chores connected) a sensitive spot, for being judged about these things. Over the years, I had grown very anxious that people think I could not handle my life, if my kitchen has not been sparkling clean or the floor was dusty. If you have read my blog post about perfectionism, you might already know that this can easily (and did) spiral into a perfectionism behaviour, to avoid further punishment.

My reaction chain:It felt as if I had fallen together and shrunk. I was again the young adult version of myself, standing in the kitchen and waiting with shrugged up shoulders (turtle mode) for the yelling and judgement of my grandmother. I started to talk very quietly and careful. So much so, that my partner came over, worried, because he didn’t know what he had said wrongly. The fact is: Nothing. He had said nothing wrong.

The rigged perception: The situation from his side of the event was, that he saw the glass-bottles and because he knew that I had been under a lot of pressure lately, he wanted to help me. He knew that once these bottles would be in the cupboard, they would stay there forever – and wanted to take action by himself, cleaning them. He“did not say “Seriously, can’t you clean these things before you give them to me?!” or “Why are the” so filthy?!”. Nothing of sorts. But because my energy level and my “mental buffer to keep my inner demons in check” had been so depleted, I was unable to hear what he wanted to say.

My reaction on a good day: “Oh? They are not really filthy, this is just the inside of the glass, because of the dried banana crumbs. But if you want to, that would be wonderful, I just have not found time to do so myself.” An entirely different person. I would have been able to tell that my inner demons had been playing on the security system control panel again and that my c-PTSD rigged brain wanted to protect me from further harm. Taking away what might come, and cause me to be small and invisible because this was the only way to deal with my grandmother. Acting up, or telling her she was in the wrong? Terrible idea.

To be honest with you, having good and bad days, really plays a considerable role – yet, to sort out things, and control your reactions is only possible, if you know who is living rent-free in your mind. Who was the one in the past that scolded you, who judged you, who told you very hurtful things or punished you? Once we get out of these hurtful surroundings, we tend to add these stories and blameful stories. This happens thanks to the “inner critic” that we all have – and who gets the biggest Super Mario booster, when fed by people who hurt us, especially when we look up to them or love them even. But we will talk about this one in a later article (or I have it linked >here< depending on when you read this).

The more you are aware → The more you can counteract them (your inner demons).

The more you counteract them → The more good days you will have

The more good days you have → The more buffer you have for their shenanigans.

Remember: We do not go to therapy and heal, so we can deal with stress and catastrophes. We are absolute experts in dealing with disasters and our stress-tolerance is in some instances inhuman. We go to therapy and work with our wounds, so we can live in peaceful times without sabotaging ourselves, hurting ourselves and destroy our chances of a good and enjoyable life. Our survival mechanisms are worth gold in dangerous situations, but they backfire in times of peace.

Well, first things first: Seek professional help. That is and will always be a key stone for your healing path. You should look out for someone specialised in working with c-PTSD and PTSD patients, which often comes with a mix of trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). Yes, I know, these words all sound scary – but I am working already on some articles to explain to you what happens there, and show you that there is nothing to be fearful about.

And until you get a spot in therapy, here are some things that I use personally, to make my everyday life and the co-existing with other people easier for me. And yes, I absolutely do have bad days when my security system reacts faster than I can even process what has happened just now. It is normal and it will get better.

1. Take a deep breath, the moment you feel “the engine turning up” and step out of the situation.
   • This can be the most difficult part on some days, but the more often you do it, and it works, the less likely it will get that you “explode” (against others) or “implode” (against yourself). It is a bit tricky, because it needs you to understand and live by it, that it is your right to take a step back and not solve every burning fire within the first couple of minutes.
   • Tell the human in front of you as calm as possible “Hey, this really got to me and I feel very emotionally right now. This situation and you are important to me, so I would rather not lash out on you. I will step back and take a moment to sort my thoughts and feelings. We can discuss this further, once I have cooled down.” This will tell them that they are seen, and that you want to take action to solve this situation with them, rather than you both ending in an emotional fight.
2. Listen inside and make note of your triggers.
   • Your triggers will lead you to your inner wounds and your inner wounds tell you about the filter they have applied to your overall experience of this world.
   • Carry a little notebook with you, and without the need to tell or show anyone, note everything down that makes you emotional or that makes you feel “off”. This can also be a great resource for when you have a therapy place and your therapist wants to dig down and see where the pain comes from.
   • Be absolutely non-judgemental with yourself. Try to note these things, rather like a stranger watching another stranger, and making notes like a movie director on how people react. Judgement will only deepen the rift between you and your inner child/younger self.
3. Learn about self-soothing / self-regulating body exercises
   • No, these are not workouts, and to be fair, once I started I felt as if they were so minor they could not possibly help. But actually, they do. A lot. There are…
     • progressive muscle relaxation (good for when you want to sleep)
     • TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises) (good for releasing stress trapped in the body)
     • somatic relaxation exercises (good for calming the nervous system down right at the moment)

Most important of all: Be kind to yourself.

Healing needs time, but it will lead to a better future. Even though I know you will hate me saying this on certain days. Don’t worry, I am with you in this. If you have a feeling that you are “broken” right now, I also get that. So I want you to have a look into the topic of “neuroplasticity”, whenever you feel like you are stuck with all of this. You are NOT. Your brain has the insane ability to re-wire itself, build new pathways and declutter old ones. It just takes time and practise.

But you are worth it. Never forget that, and never let someone else convince you otherwise.

Okay my brave Soul, I would conclude the article here – I hope it helped you gain some insights and lift the burden off your shoulders a little. If you found this article to be helpful, it would mean a great deal, if you want to support my work!

Support does not need to be much or loud. A simple coffee to fuel the brain cells for the next article to come, is fairly enough!

Have a great rest of your day and I see you at the next article!♥

~ Cheers, Alka.