Part 1 of 4
C-PTSD climbs into your soul, permeating the fibers that make up your humanity.
No matter how smart you are, C-PTSD (PTSD with COMPLEX features) climbs into your soul, permeating the fibers that make up your humanity. Who are you? You are your thoughts, your learned experiences, your learned warehouse of stored information, but you are emotional. Now what do I mean by that? It does not matter how smart you are, it is the emotions that take over. By the nature of our being, if growing up in an ideal setting, our emotions ebb and flow; they are the innate feelings that make us who we are, smoothly, spontaneously reacting to what our environment presents to us. A general, relatively calmed, regulated (fortuitous) experience of being. This naturally smooth experience of emotion allows us to come forth into the world with free use of our innate mental faculties, i.e., we can think clearly and easily learn in the moment. And our life is made up of stored experiences in a long winding freight train of present moments, yes? What has been stored in our train of life’s boxcars? Yet, of course, we do not all live in an ideal environment. Many of us in childhood are subjected to emotional neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and an array of gaslighting tactics involving deception and control. This scenario leaves many of us with an internal emotional and psychological state of confusion and an inner world of utter turbulence and chaos. As mentioned above, this situation can interfere with our cognitive reasoning, mental processing, and our ability to learn as well as retain knowledge.
Complex PTSD is the hidden bugaboo of human suffering.
Oh my God… internalized trauma, the horrid pain of it. Complex PTSD is the hidden bugaboo of human suffering. (Complex PTSD will be defined as we go along here.) Trauma is a ‘living’ crisis of the moment, forever stored in our unconscious mind. Within, the damage done, IS the internalized trauma (trauma is an internal wounding). Drama, emotions, and reacting to a crisis, are all now anchored within us; the emotions of crisis blister our brain’s neurons, metaphorically speaking. Those of us who have lived this experience have been subjected to too much and have lived in a state of overwhelm.
As abuse or gut-level FEAR is experienced, activating and dramatically awakening our emotions, we become hypervigilant, ready for the next episode to unfold. We have known terror. Intellectually learning the name of a condition such as Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is of little importance, in the case of repeated terror. Awakening and the journey of healing is coming to see and know your reality of secret, hidden, still living trauma, not intellectually learning a tag of a here today, gone tomorrow term such as C-PTSD, although, granted it aids in communication. Coming to know what it is that you suffer from answers the nagging existential question: “What is wrong with me?” It frees one up to focus now, with a better self-understanding, on the task at hand, working to heal the internalized damage. I spent a lifetime seeking, as best I could, to be someone smart, erroneously intuiting that if I knew all the answers somehow the questions would no longer need to be asked, and somehow, miraculously out of that I would be healed. My condition of C-PTSD severely limited my educational options and abilities in my life. In my case, my fundamental burning necessity pushed me repeatedly toward simple, basic questions: What is wrong with me? What happened to me and why am I like this? And that realm of what is wrong with me lies in the emotional, not the intellectual.
That realm of what is wrong with me lies in the emotional, not the intellectual.
It was not the learning of C-PTSD as it were, in my life, that set my new path. I was just ready to face my inner demons. My world was awash in desperate, ungrounded visions of what my past life was like and about, and who I was; I lived in a land of magical thinking, literally like a fairytale story. The stone-cold truth of reality was more than I wanted to know, that I was mixed up, abused, and seemed to be someone I did not want to be. I hid from the question of who am I. At my core, I felt I was such an intrinsically flawed person, being completely undeserving or capable of being loved. Why me? Further and forever that sense of being unacceptable pushed me deeper into despair, isolation, and alienation. You are reading in these words my life’s battle to rise out of a mental illness that has always been with me. My core sense of being, who I am, was tarnished beyond my recognition of being a lovable little boy. Repeated traumas… the hidden bugaboo of C-PTSD. How do we deal with it?
Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.
** Copyright notice. All of my writings are copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress.
- My name is Jesse Donahue. In 2015, at the age of 58, I took up writing, and since then I’ve written two novels, poems, and essays about my journey struggling with CPTSD. The essays, 70+, were an adjunct to journaling in therapy to amplify my learning and self-understanding.
My writings, which include therapy notes, poems, novels, and essays, are all a part of my ongoing personal therapy. Many of my essays are in a stream-of-consciousness style, unleashing, sharing, and delving into energies that continuously process in my subconscious. My writings, initially, geared for me and my therapist’s eyes only, began with my exposing my thoughts, fears, and feelings (or the lack of) onto paper… a journal of therapy notes. Then, with fear overcome and via a personal decision of choice, I shared them here with the readers. My essays, most all, originate from my weekly therapy notes. My intent and desire is to encourage readers to recognize traits in themselves and find a therapist if they are willing and able to do so. If you are in therapy, ask your therapist to read them and discuss what pertains to you. For some, it can be a long and difficult process over extensive periods to awaken to the unconscious issues that have us acting out in life. Our behavior can seem like dancing to a buried, invisible energy that we are not able to directly see or confront. It is my sincere hope that my insights will assist the reader in the process toward reaching a deeper self-understanding. Bringing the unconscious out into the light of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance fosters self-love and the process of change.
My published writings with the CPTSD foundation: The Hidden Bugaboo (*recommended). The Beganning. Twelve Days Without Coffee. Learned Helplessness. Cast Out of Eden by Toxic Shame. The Crumbs and The Banquet. What an Outside Appearance may Not Show. Obedience to the Light – Bombs or Love. Stepping Into the Shoes of Who You Are. Personal Honor, Integrity, Dignity, Honesty. Inspirational Tugging – Teachers. Codependency – Overriding the Monster of Self Hate. Surfing the Light Through the Darkness. We are but Storytellers. A Writer’s Brain – The Gift. The Highway of Worries. The Emptiness of Yesterday. The Man Who Lives Under the Bridge. Living in the Dis-World. SPECTRUM.
