Complex-PTSD

and its differentiations from PTSD

I recently finished Stephanie Foo’s memoir: What My Bones Know. Foo endured years of physical, mental and emotional abuse from her parents, before they abandoned her to fend for herself during her junior and senior years in high school.

The book discusses her journey of understanding her diagnosis and treating it.

I was intrigued by her account because I often question whether my PTSD is “complex” or not.

She frames Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (or C-PTSD) to be one that occurred over years of time, such as the case with ongoing abuse. In other words, the “trauma” was not one event but, instead, chronic and a state of being, after years of continuous trauma it can be hard to parse out one event when you live at such a heightened state of hyper-vigilance, in fight and defense mode, when doing so becomes imperative to your survival.

I consider the correlation to my own: I understand my journey to be one in which there was so much grief and loss over such a short period of time that I was unable to process and integrate all that happened. I know my father was verbally and emotionally abusive as an alcoholic, and I have my own scars because of that—assuming the hero role of an alcoholic family, trust issues, feeling incredibly uncomfortable with tense moments of conflict, like I must moderate and/or diffuse the situation.

But, by Foo’s definition, research and diagnosis, I certainly would label my own condition as regular ol’ PTSD.

Though by her account, anyone who has endured any continous parental abuse growing up could experience complex trauma and could have/develop complex-PTSD. She also notes that people of color with the micro-aggressions with racism and blatant police brutality in the killing of unarmed black and brown people, which certainly makes sense in this country.

Though, yet again, I am struck by the need many of us feel to pathologize or minimize others or our own trauma. (“Oh, it’s not 'capital ‘t’ trauma.” or “It’s not as bad as yours.” or “It’s not like I was in a war,” etc.).

It is certainly worth noting that those who endure such level of constant abuse for years would have complex trauma and coping, defense and survival mechanisms as a result, which is in essence what Foo’s book focused on.

But sometimes there isn’t just one big event that defines many people’s trauma, sometimes when that chaos is simply the state of your life, your home, it can therefore be challenging to understand that that still is trauma and your brain is being coded a certain way, adapting to help you to survive those chronic conditions.

I am again struck by the limitations of our language to describe such experiences and the need to adapt to encompass all that “anxiety” and “trauma” can mean, to hold space for different, lived embodied experiences and conditions, and when they bleed into each other.