146. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Tir and Gabriel

While you may find Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)  in the DSM and on the internet, the author of “Trauma and Recovery”, Judith Herman, came up with “Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” which is much more extensive than the common PTSD. We have had many of the symptoms she lists below.

These symptoms are of people who have experienced totalitarian control in their life over a prolonged period of
time, meaning many months to many years. Her examples include hostages, prisoners of war, and survivors of
some religious cults. She also includes those who have experienced domestic battering, childhood physical and/or
sexual abuse and organized sexual exploitation.

The symptoms are .....

Mood

-    persistent depressed mood

-    chronic thoughts of suicide

-    self-injury

-    anger – either explosive or extremely inhibited or may alternate from one to the other

-    sexuality - compulsive or extremely inhibited or may alternate from one to the other

Consciousness

-    amnesia – don’t remember the trauma at all

-    or hypermnesia - remembering every detail of the traumatic event

-    dissociative episodes - cutting out conscious awareness of some parts of an event, detaching oneself from an experience, feeling outside of your body

-    depersonalization - a feeling of watching yourself do things and feel like you have no control over it

-    derealization - things feeling unreal, dream-like quality

-    reliving experiences – either in a very intrusive form such as “flashbacks” or preoccupation and obsessive thinking about the event

Self-perception

-    feeling a sense of helplessness

-    feeling shame, guilt and or self-blame for what happened even if you had no control over the situation

-    sense of defilement or stigma

-    feel very different from other people which may include feeling special, utterly alone, the belief that no one else can understand what you feel, or feeling nonhuman, alien

Perception of perpetrator/abuser

-    preoccupied with relationship with perpetrator

-    preoccupied with revenge against perpetrator

-    attribution of total power of perpetrator – could be unrealistic or realistic

-    idealization of perpetrator

-    paradoxical gratitude towards perpetrator

-    feel as if relationship is special or supernatural

-    accepting belief system or rationalizations of perpetrator

Relationship with others

-    isolation, withdrawal from others

-    problems and disruption in intimate relationships

-    often looking for rescuer though may alternate with isolation and withdrawal

-    distrust of others, won’t let them get too close

-    often unable to protect self from being exploited and hurt by others

Systems of meaning

-    loss of faith

-    sense of hopelessness and despair