8 Hidden Signs of CPTSD | Trauma

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on Eight Hidden Signs of Complex PTSD. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. If you're interested in learning more about working with people who've experienced trauma, a masterclass in trauma informed care is available@allce.com tic. For those of you who are unaware, let's talk about what complex PTSD is. Complex PTSD is a traumatic injury that occurs when a person is repeatedly or continuously exposed to an extremely overwhelming or threatening situation for which they believe there is no hope of escape. Now there are a couple important points there. I, I said it's a traumatic injury. People can endure a lot of trauma and not develop complex PTSD under the right circumstances if they have resources, if they have support, if they did not have pre existing mental health issues, for example. However, a lot of people, especially those who are exposed to ongoing trauma, don't have the necessary support and resources. So it does end up causing traumatic injury, which is complex post traumatic stress disorder. Complex post traumatic stress disorder is often misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder, ADHD or anxiety. There in people with cptsd, there may be a loss of a sense of self, especially if there was a trauma bond. The person may switch from loving somebody to hating somebody. They what we call splitting, it's all or nothing. You love me or you hate me like that. And that is a protective mechanism that they developed. The person with CPTSD, like the person with BPD, also experiences extreme emotional dysregulation. Their stress response, their HbA axis, has been activated for so long, it's actually undergone structural changes, neurological changes in the brain. And they go from being flat, where they just don't have a whole lot of energy to feel much of anything, to frantic or furious like that. So instead of having a wave of emotions that happens like most of us get when we go from being, you know, okay, content, whatever, to anxious, where it's a wave. They go from being flat, you know, almost a dry beach to a tsunami. And that tsunami of stress neurochemicals causes them to become frantic or furious. So it's important to recognize that CPTSD and bpd, borderline personality symptoms almost completely overlap. Adhd, it's very common for people who've experienced trauma to be agitated, to be fidgety, to have difficulty sitting still, to be hypervigilant, and to have difficulty concentrating, which means they also have difficulty paying attention to details, following through with tasks. A lot of the symptoms of ADHD can be seen in people with PTSD or cptsd, same thing with anxiety. So it's really important to trace back and examine the roots of the problem to identify whether trauma is potentially an underlying cause for the symptoms. Treatment for CPTSD focuses on helping the person feel safe and empowered. Process the traumas and evaluate their current schema, that is their current belief systems about themselves, other people and the world. So what are the eight hidden signs? And I'm sure there's more hidden signs, but some of the more common ones. If you expect the worst from people, you may have complex post traumatic stress. People who are regularly exposed to a traumatic situation in which there is little or no hope of escape. It's hard to trust other people are going to have your back if you've been enduring that or if you've witnessed that. If you have difficulty feeling happy because you're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, that may be a sign of cptsd. Remember, CPTSD is traumatic events or threatening events repeatedly occurring or constantly occurring. So, so for the person who, who's experienced it, they may have had periods where they were not experiencing the trauma, but they knew it was too good to last and bad stuff was going to happen again pretty soon. And as they grow up, even if they're not in that same exact situation, they may just habitually expect bad things to happen. If you rapidly jump between being depressed, irritable and anxious, it might be a sign of cptsd, depressed or flat. When you just don't have the energy to care. You don't have the energy to be happy. You don't have the energy to get real angry either. That's when the body's going, I'm out of gas. Irritable is another word for angry. And, and people may, when they feel vulnerable, when they feel threatened, may become irritable as a way to fight off a potential threat. And anxious is the flea, it's the fear side of the threat response. So people may be fearful that that other shoe is going to drop. Fearful of other people when they're fearful and it may make them more irritable. They may feel like they've always got to be poised to defend themselves, but at a certain point they can only do that for so long. They can only remain on guard for so long before they go into a period where they're feeling depressed and exhausted. If you have frequent pain or other stress related symptoms for no identifiable reason, now obviously if you sleep wrong, that can cause pain. If you have stress related symptoms right before you've got to do a big presentation at work. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is if you're having frequent pain or stress related symptoms and you can't figure out why, you've got GI upset, your autoimmune issues are flaring, your A1C levels, your blood sugar is all over the place, you're. You're having frequent headaches for no apparent reason, you may want to examine, are you experiencing activation of that stress response? Are you hypervigilant? Are you constantly under a low grade stress because you don't feel safe, you don't feel empowered as a result of your previous traumas? So you're constantly stressed and that's just your normal. And you don't know any better because you don't really realize that, hey, I don't have to feel this way. I can feel safe. I just, I've never felt that way because of my past traumas. If you have difficulty concentrating, and I talked about this a little bit earlier, when you are stressed, when you're hypervigilant, when you are on guard, when you're scanning for threats, however you want to say it's, your brain is not saying, all right, well, there could be a threat at any moment, but let's work on this spreadsheet. No, your brain is not focused on prefrontal cortex, higher order thinking at that point. Your brain is focused on trying to keep you safe, which makes it difficult to concentrate. If you have low self esteem or one of the direct symptoms of complex PTSD in the ICD 11 is low self esteem, people feeling shame, people feeling bad about themselves, and sometimes you don't even know why that is. And that may be an indication to get curious. Why is it that I feel bad about myself? Do I feel ashamed because of a past trauma or because somebody told me that I should feel ashamed because of abuse that I experienced? Experienced. If you cannot seem to naturally get a good night's sleep, and I put naturally in there, because if you're having to take melatonin, if you're having to take sleep aids, if you're having to jump through six different hoops to try to sleep, that's not sleeping naturally. If you cannot seem to lay your head down on the pillow at roughly the same time each night and get a good solid seven to nine hours of sleep, then you might want to examine why. If it's because you don't feel safe, if it's because you can't relax, that may be an indication of prior trauma. And finally, if you have an extremely low libido when you're under stress, your brain says hey, this is probably not the best time to procreate if there are all these threats out there. So libido goes down. Your sex hormones are actually altered when you're under chronic stress. And remember the overarching theme of complex post traumatic stress is feeling unsafe and disempowered, I. E. Constantly feeling like you're under threat. Which would make sense that your libido would probably being the crapper as a result. If the videos on this channel have been helpful for you, please help us make high quality practical content available to everyone. You can donate@doc snipes.com donate. You can join the channel at doc snipes.com join or purchase a thanks on any videos that you particularly like. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder results from frequent or ongoing trauma as opposed to standard ptsd. The ongoing nature of these traumas negatively impacts many more areas of the person's life. It creates triggers in many, many more places that so pretty much wherever they go, there's something that's going to remind them of the trauma and keep them from feeling safe and empowered. When people feel trapped in a dangerous situation, it makes them more aware of the threats. Constantly seeing threats in people, places, events changes people's perception of themselves, others and the world. You start to see the the world as a pretty unkind, unwelcoming place, which makes you feel even more helpless, hopeless and powerless. If you experienced ongoing trauma but do not seem to be responding to treatment, consider getting evaluated for complex Post Traumatic stress disorder.