What helps you feel emotionally safe?

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There is a strange thing that can happen when a trauma survivor finally reaches a quieter life. They do not relax; they wait. They wait for the phone call, the slammed door, the accusation, the shift in someone’s tone, the bill they forgot, the person who seemed fine yesterday but may turn cold today. They wait for the next threat, even when nothing in the room says a threat is present. The body is not being dramatic. It is running an old survival program that once helped that person stay alive, stay prepared, stay watchful, or stay out of the way.

That is one of the crueler parts of trauma recovery. Safety may arrive before the nervous system believes it. A person can be out of the violent home, away from the abusive partner, years removed from the childhood environment, and still feel uneasy when nothing bad is happening. Sometimes the uneasiness gets worse when nothing bad is happening. Calm can feel staged. Quiet can feel temporary. Stability can feel like the pause before someone changes the rules. Kindness can feel like the first move in a longer game.

People who have not lived this often misunderstand it. They may say, “You’re safe now,” as if the survivor missed an obvious fact. They may think reassurance should work quickly because the danger is no longer visible. Some even become hurt or annoyed when the survivor cannot receive peace the way they expected.

But trauma does not train the nervous system through reassurance. It trains through repetition, shock, betrayal, threat, helplessness, and consequence. If safety once disappeared without warning, the body may not trust safety just because the room is quiet.

Safety Is More Than the Absence of Danger

Most people think safety means danger is gone. For trauma survivors, that definition is too thin. Safety is not only the absence of yelling. It is not only the absence of violence, manipulation, chaos, humiliation, addiction, neglect, sexual threat, emotional punishment, or household unpredictability. Those absences are necessary. No one heals well while the injury is still being repeated.

But safety also has to become recognizable inside the body, and this is where many survivors get blindsided. A survivor may enter a genuinely safer environment and still carry an internal alarm system calibrated to the old one. The body may scan for changes in tone. It may track footsteps. It may notice silence that lasts too long. It may read a delayed reply as rejection, facial neutrality as contempt, ordinary conflict as abandonment, or someone else’s mood as an incoming threat.

This is often misperceived a weakness but, in reality, it is conditioning. The nervous system learned that small cues could mean trouble. Sometimes they did. In a dangerous home, the shift from ordinary to unsafe can happen fast. A look across the room may tell a child whether to disappear. A pause in a conversation may tell a partner whether an explosion is coming. A change in breathing may tell someone whether to leave, freeze, flatter, explain, comply, or brace.

Then later, in safer adult life, those same detection systems keep firing. Sure, the danger has changed, but the body has not caught up yet.

Temporary Calm Trains the Body to Wait

One reason safety can feel like a trap is that many trauma survivors did not grow up with steady calm. They grew up with temporary calm and temporary calm is very different.

Temporary calm is the quiet before someone starts drinking again. The soft voice before the accusation, the good day before the withdrawal, the apology before the next incident, the holiday where everyone performs normal life for visitors, the clean kitchen before the screaming starts, and the calm adult who stays calm only until the child makes one wrong sound.

A nervous system raised around temporary calm does not automatically experience quiet as relief – instead, it’s more like a countdown.

That survivor may become more tense when things are peaceful. They may create tasks, problems, plans, or mental noise because stillness leaves too much room for waiting. They may over-prepare, over-check, over-explain, over-clean, or over-function. They may feel restless in healthy relationships because nobody is making them earn their place every few minutes.

Then the shame comes in. They know they “should” enjoy the calm yet may feel guilty for not enjoying it. They may tell themselves they are ungrateful, damaged, difficult, or impossible to satisfy. And that kind of self-attack does not help the nervous system learn safety. In reality, it adds another layer of pressure.

The Body May Associate Safety With Exposure

For some survivors, danger did not arrive when they were already guarded. It arrived when they trusted, slept, disclosed, hoped, loved, laughed, needed, rested, or believed someone. And that personal history leaves a mark.

• If vulnerability was punished, the body may treat peace as exposure.
• If tenderness was followed by betrayal, kindness may feel suspicious. If rest was interrupted by chaos, sleep may feel unsafe.
• If asking for help led to ridicule or punishment, dependence may feel humiliating.
• If happiness drew jealousy, mockery, sabotage, or control, joy may feel risky.

This is why a survivor may seem calm during crisis but uneasy during intimacy.

Crisis is familiar and gives the body a job. The survivor knows how to assess, act, manage, scan, solve, or endure. Quiet safety asks for something much more difficult. It asks the survivor to lower the shield without knowing, at first, whether lowering it is a wise or safe move. For someone who survived repeated harm, the fear is not always danger itself. Sometimes the fear is being unprepared for danger. Vigilance can feel like participation while trust can feel like standing still in a room where the exits have not been checked.

That is a large request for a nervous system that learned survival by staying ready.

Why Safer Life Can Feel Worse at First

From the outside, mistrust of safety can look confusing. A survivor may pull away from stable people and may become irritable when life improves. They may feel emotionally flat after good news, mistrust a partner who is consistent, and feel more anxious after leaving the unsafe situation than they felt while inside it. That last one especially confuses people, but it happens.

During active survival, the body often stays organized around immediate demands. Get through the day, keep the peace, watch the mood, protect the children or pets, hide the evidence, make the money, say the right thing, avoid the explosion, and by all means, do not collapse… yet.

Once the survivor gets out, the body may finally begin releasing what it had to hold. And that release can feel like deterioration when it is delayed impact. The survivor may think they are feeling worse because distance gives the system room to reveal the damage. That does not mean the safer life is wrong. It means the nervous system needs time, repetition, and evidence. Not one peaceful day, not one kind conversation, not one safe person making promises, but repeated evidence for your body and mind. In other words, safety has to stop being an idea and become lived experience.

Rebuilding Safety Is Often Repetitive Work

Real safety recovery is not usually a sudden breakthrough where the survivor announces they are healed and then moves through life regulated forever. Instead, it may look like noticing that someone disagreed without punishing you, going to sleep and waking up without crisis, asking a simple question and receiving a simple answer, a partner staying steady during inconvenience, a friend respecting a boundary without sulking, a therapist not rushing interpretation, or the survivor leaving a room and realizing no one chased them, mocked them, or made them pay for it later.

Small evidence counts because trauma was often built from small evidence too. The nervous system did not learn danger only from major events, it learned from the repeated signals surrounding those events. Tone, timing, facial shifts, silence, footsteps, doorways, names called from another room, text messages, late arrivals, alcohol breath, forced smiles, and the false calm before punishment.

So recovery often requires a new body record. Consistency is not glamorous, but it can be corrective.

Safe People Do Not Demand Instant Trust

One of the cleanest ways to assess safety is to watch how people respond to a survivor’s pace. Unsafe people often demand trust as proof of loyalty. They rush disclosure, punish hesitation, frame boundaries as rejection, become offended when the survivor needs time, and may say, “After everything I’ve done for you, you still don’t trust me?”

That is not safety, it’s pressure with better manners. Safe people do not need instant access and do not treat a trauma survivor’s caution as an insult. They understand that trust built under pressure is compliance, not trust. This does not mean survivors should never challenge their fear. Avoidance can shrink a life until the person is technically protected but emotionally imprisoned. Healing does require risk, practice, and contact with situations that are uncomfortable but not actually dangerous.

But the pace has to make sense because a survivor needs enough challenge to grow and enough control to stay present. Too little challenge can keep life small but too much challenge can recreate helplessness. That middle ground is where real trauma work often lives.

The Goal Is Accurate Response, Not Constant Calm

A healthy nervous system does not feel safe every second. That’s a good thing because that would not be realistic or useful. The goal is accuracy. An accurate response.

A recovering trauma survivor learns, slowly, to tell the difference between old danger and current risk. Between discomfort and threat. Between disappointment and abandonment. Between someone’s bad mood and personal danger. Between a pause and rejection. Between privacy and secrecy. Between conflict and catastrophe.

That takes work because trauma compresses categories and teaches the body to treat many different signals as one warning: harm is coming. Recovery begins separating those signals again.

That process is not always smooth especially when survivors overcorrect. They may trust too fast in one season and trust no one in the next, mistake boredom for safety or intensity for connection, and may confuse predictability with emotional deadness because chaos once felt like proof that something serious was happening.

This is where patience has to be practical rather than sentimental and that’s why the nervous system needs new data, and new data takes time.

When Safety Starts to Feel Real

Safety begins to feel real when the body stops waiting for every calm moment to turn. It may happen quietly. For examples, a survivor realizes they did not flinch when the phone rang, did not rehearse 12 explanations before answering a message, have finally slept through the night, allowed someone to be mildly disappointed without rushing to fix it, and accepted kindness without immediately searching for the catch.

For a trauma survivor, these are not minor moments – they often signal steps in a major nervous-system correction. Safety does not become real because someone announces it. It only becomes real when the survivor’s body has enough repeated evidence to stop treating peace as a setup.

That is why telling themselves “you’re safe now” can feel hollow when it is said too soon. Instead, saying “my body may need time to believe what my life is trying to show it” is more accurate. It also accurately reflects the work. Not forced trust, not denial, and not pretending the past is over because the address changed, the relationship ended, or the crisis passed. The work is teaching the body, through repeated reality, that calm does not always mean danger is waiting behind the door.

Sometimes calm is just calm and, for many survivors, believing that is not the beginning of recovery – it is one of the hardest-earned outcomes.

Sources

Courtois, C. A., & Ford, J. D. (2016). Treatment of complex trauma: A sequenced, relationship-based approach. Guilford Press.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Post-traumatic stress disorder. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). SAMHSA’s concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. (2025). Complex PTSD. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

How have you changed through healing?

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

I really didn’t expect to find anything and could hardly believe all the websites that came up—websites where other women were writing about their experiences with middle- of- the- night panic, their trips to the emergency room, and the various medications they needed to get through the night.  Since I’d been able to manage my rather intense struggles with PMS in my younger years, I figured I’d be able to manage my perimenopausal symptoms just as well.  Everything would be just fine, wouldn’t it?  

Over the next few days, the shaking not only continued but worsened, leaving me trembling 24 hours a day.  Soon, a whole host of other symptoms began to appear—unmanageable anxiety, little to no sleep, panic attacks, hot flashes, cold flashes, a racing pulse, skyrocketing blood pressure.  Needless to say, I was terrified.  Not knowing what was causing all these symptoms, I began running from doctor to doctor, from ER to ER, desperate to find someone who could help me.  Knowing I wasn’t thinking clearly, I did ask a few of these doctors to admit me to a psychiatric facility, but each time I asked, the doctors refused. 

Still thinking my symptoms might be related to perimenopause, I also tried pleading my case for bio-identical hormones, but these requests were also denied.  With no diagnosis and no help in sight, I decided to go back online and start searching for my own answers.  Through my frantic research and worsening emotional state, I concluded that I had contracted some dreadful disease and that I was dying. I told my sons I was dying.  I told my husband I was dying.  I told some of the teachers at my sons’ school that I was dying.  I even wrote my obituary and an epitaph for when the time came. 

Growing more and more frantic each day, about three months into this crisis I made an appointment with a neurologist to see if there was anything he could do to help me.  As soon as I finished telling him about my symptoms, the first thing he asked me was, “Were you ever molested?”  I was stunned.  How could he possibly know?  The neurologist went on to explain that he has a lot of women coming into his office “like this” (with symptoms like mine) who were molested.  

The neurologist then said he’d run an EEG, just to show me that my brain was perfectly normal.  Turns out that I had slowing brain waves—wave after wave of severe slowing.  Even the neurologist was shocked by what he saw.  Although he wasn’t able to offer a diagnosis, he did prescribe a certain medication, but I refused to take it since one of the side effects was thoughts of suicide and, well, at that point, I was already having more than enough of those. 

A week later, still battling thoughts of suicide, I was finally admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  Not even 24 hours into my stay I learned that I wasn’t the only woman on my ward who had experienced childhood trauma and neither was I the only woman there struggling with issues related to perimenopause.   After speaking with some of these other women, I began to wonder if maybe my symptoms weren’t due to any sort of fatal disease but were in some way related to my history of abuse and to the hormonal changes of perimenopause.  One of the nurses on my ward did mention a relative who’d experienced a menopausal psychosis.  I thought maybe that was what I was experiencing as well. 

One of the symptoms that made me believe I had some sort of psychosis was that I wasn’t able to cry. 

Ever since the beginning of my crisis, it seemed that the only emotion I could access was fear.  Then, one morning, while reading something from my journal to my hospital therapist, it finally happened.  The tears began to fall!  Although I was still shaking and could still barely think straight, somehow, in that moment I felt a sliver of hope. 

Armed with this bit of hope, as soon as I was released from the hospital, I started immersing myself in every mind/ body healing practice I could fit into my budget and schedule.  I already had a daily yoga and journaling practice, so I started going to talk therapy and group therapy, massage therapy, hypnotherapy, movement therapy—all with the hope of accessing and releasing more of the emotions that were driving my symptoms. 

Although it took some time and a whole lot of tears, much to my surprise and relief, little by little it worked!  With each emotion I released and with each episode of trauma I remembered, I began to feel more grounded and more like myself.  Soon, I was able to go off all four of the psychotropic medications I’d been prescribed while in the hospital as well as the bio-identical hormones I’d finally started taking.  

Inspired by the positive effect mind/body practices were having on my healing, I decided to become certified in hypnotherapy.  After I told the hypnosis instructor about my psychosis—about the shaking, the sleeplessness, and the psychiatric hospital—without any hesitation he said, “That sounds like a Spiritual Emergency!”  Having no idea what a Spiritual Emergency was, as soon as I got home, I bought a few books and started to do some research. 

I quickly learned that a Spiritual Emergency is a crisis of personal growth and transformation—a sort of healing crisis— and that there are many different types of spiritual emergencies.  Based on what I read, it seemed that the type of Spiritual Emergency I experienced was something known in ancient Indian Philosophy as a Kundalini Crisis. 

A Kundalini Crisis is an energy- based mind/body healing crisis that can be triggered by many life events, including the hormonal fluctuations of perimenopause.  Some of the symptoms of this type of Spiritual Emergency include intense shaking, feelings of heat and cold, electric vibrations, and insomnia. 

I was so in awe of everything that happened to me and how I was able to heal that I went on to earn an MA degree in Transpersonal Psychology with a focus on Spiritual Mentoring and Feminine Spirituality.  My first course in this program was Spiritual Crisis and my last course was writing a memoir about my experience as my Culminating Project. 

Today, there are many books and online articles that describe how a history of childhood trauma can make menopausal symptoms much more intense and frightening.  Many women’s health experts believe this is due to the emotions and energies of past traumas that need to be acknowledged, processed, and released.  One book that I found to be especially helpful in presenting the healing aspects of perimenopause is The Wisdom of Menopause by Dr. Christiane Northrup.  In her book, Dr. Northrup discusses how the fluctuating hormones of menopause work to set the stage for this time of profound healing.  

There really are no words that can express how terrifying this type of perimenopausal crisis can be, especially for women like me who are used to having everything under control.  I had carried my trauma so well for so many decades.  I earned college degrees and held full time jobs.  I got married and had children.  But when perimenopause came, I simply could not carry the trauma any longer.  My mind, body, and spirit would not allow it.  So, in a way, I really was dying.  The old me was dying to make room for the new me—the older, wiser me who would finally have the courage to speak about my abuse, to let go of the pain I was carrying, and heal.    

It’s important to keep in mind that what happened to me is not the experience of all midlife women—only 15- 20%.  But with more than two million women entering perimenopause each year that means 300,000 to 400,000 each year are likely to experience symptoms so severe that they can’t help but fear that they’re either dying or losing their minds.  Hopefully, with information about Spiritual Crisis making its way into various psychiatric manuals such as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), we will begin to see some changes in how menopause and trauma-related crises are treated within the medical and psychiatric communities.  My hope in writing and speaking about my experience with perimenopause and trauma is to offer insights, support, and hope to women who are experiencing what may appear to be a “menopausal psychosis” but is actually a very challenging and yet liberating and empowering call to healing. 

Wishing all of us much hope and wholeness on our healing journeys.

Many blessings,

Lynda Wisdo, MA, CYT

Grof, Christina and Stanislav Grof, MD. Eds. Spiritual Emergency. New York: Penguin     

   Putnam. 1989. Print. 

Northrup, Christiane, MD. The Wisdom of Menopause, Creating Physical and Emotional 

   Health During the Change.  New York: Bantam Dell.  2001. Print.

Barbach, Lonnie, PhD. The Pause, Positive Approaches to Perimenopause and Menopause.    2^nd. New York: Penguin Putnam. 1993. Print.

“How Menopause, PTSD and Complex PTSD Interconnect.” https://www.cptsdrelief.co.uk/how-menopause-ptsd-complex-ptsd-interconnect/

October 17, 2024. Web. 23 May 2026.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

It’s the moment they realize:

“I thought I had moved on…so why does my body still feel this way?”

Why does anxiety still show up when life looks okay on the outside?

Why does connection still feel uncertain, even in safer relationships?

Why does the past still feel present?

For a long time, I thought healing meant getting to a place where the past no longer affected me. Where I could close the door on what happened and finally be “done.”

But what I’ve learned – both personally and through my work – is that trauma doesn’t resolve just because we understand it or because life improves on the surface.

Especially when trauma has been ongoing or relational, the nervous system adapts in deep ways. Even when the danger is gone, the patterns of protection can remain.

I know this place well.

There have been seasons where everything in my life looked “fine” on paper, but internally I was still carrying tension, hypervigilance, and a sense of bracing for something to go wrong. Not because I was broken, but because my system had learned that was the safest way to exist.

What I’ve come to understand is this:

Healing is about learning how to move with what has happened.

To stop fighting the parts of us that still carry impact.

To stop judging the responses that once protected us.

And to begin building enough internal safety that those patterns don’t have to run everything anymore.

Healing is not erasing your past.

It’s learning how to be in relationship with it differently.

And from that place, something new becomes possible!

A Small Action You Can Take Today

Take one quiet moment today and notice your body, not your thoughts.

Ask yourself gently:

Where am I bracing right now?

What might this part of me be trying to protect me from?

You don’t have to fix anything.

Just notice.

Then place a hand somewhere on your body – chest, belly, arm – and offer a simple reminder:

“I’m here with you.”

That alone is a form of healing. Not dramatic. Not forced. Just present.

To the journey,

Rachel

P.S. If you’re ready to take the next step in healing from abuse and would like to explore enrolling in the Beyond Surviving program, start by applying for a Discover Your Genuine Self Session.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

What has your anger taught you?

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

When the System Signals Danger

Althea sat at her desk, staring at the email from her supervisor. “I’d like to discuss some concerns about the Henderson project.” Simple words. Routine, even. But in an instant, her entire system went into alarm. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her vision narrowed into a tunnel. A cold wave swept through her body, leaving her fingers tingling and numb. Her breathing turned shallow and fast. It wasn’t a thought, exactly—more like a jolt of wordless certainty. Something primal and terrifying gripped her: she was in danger. Not physical danger, but something even more threatening. It felt like her very existence was under attack.

For the rest of the day, Althea moved through a fog of dread. The rational part of her knew it was probably just a standard check-in. But some younger, preverbal part of her was convinced it meant catastrophe—not just for her job, but for her worth. Her right to take up space. Her right to exist.

Across town, Koji experienced a similar internal collapse. At a neighborhood gathering, someone casually mentioned that his fence might be a few inches over the property line. The comment wasn’t unkind or accusatory. Still, something inside Koji crumbled. His face flushed hot. His throat constricted. For the rest of the evening, he felt both painfully exposed and disconnected—as if everyone could see some shameful truth about him he’d been trying to hide, even from himself.

Where others might see a harmless comment or a minor mistake, complex trauma survivors often experience something else entirely. These moments trigger existential shame—the bone-deep fear of being fundamentally unacceptable. Unworthy. Unlovable.

The Hidden Infection: Understanding Existential Shame

Unlike ordinary feelings of guilt (“I did something wrong”) or even general low self-esteem (“I’m not good enough”), existential shame cuts deeper. It’s the terrifying belief that “There is something inherently wrong with who I am at my core” and often, “I am irredeemable.” This isn’t just about feeling worthless—it’s about feeling wrong, defective, or inherently bad in a way that can never be fixed.

Think of your sense of self as a magnificent tree—designed to grow tall, reach for the light, and bear fruit. Existential shame is like a hidden fungus that enters the tree during its vulnerable sapling years. From the outside, the tree still grows and may even appear healthy to casual observers. But internally, this invisible infection has spread throughout the inner pathways where water and nutrients flow.

This hidden infection affects everything:

• How you process feedback and experiences (like nutrients in a tree)
• Your ability to reach your full potential (like a tree’s height and strength)
• Your contributions and creative expression (like a tree’s fruit)
• Your confidence and resilience (like the strength of a trunk and branches)

The tree continues to grow, but never as it was meant to—its very nature seems compromised from within.

Where Does This Core Belief Come From?

For survivors of childhood trauma, CPTSD, or narcissistic abuse, this belief often forms through:

1. Relentless criticism and impossible standards: When caregivers consistently focus on failures rather than efforts, children internalize the message that their worth depends on perfection. This is like the first entry point for the infection in the young tree.
2. Conditional love: Love and approval that’s only given when the child meets certain standards teaches them that they must earn acceptance through performance. The infection begins to spread.
3. Blame-shifting and scapegoating: When adults blame children for problems, conflicts, or their own emotional states (“You make me so angry!”), children learn to see themselves as the source of all problems. Even without explicit blame, a lack of reassurance that difficult situations are NOT the child’s fault can lead to silent self-blame, especially when combined with a lack of emotional attunement from caregivers. The infection extends further.
4. Emotional neglect: Sometimes the wound forms not from what was said, but what wasn’t—when emotions are ignored or dismissed, children learn their authentic feelings are unacceptable. The infection infiltrates the emotional centers.
5. Gaslighting and reality denial: When children’s perceptions and experiences are consistently invalidated (“That never happened” or “You’re too sensitive”), they learn to distrust their own reality and wonder if they’re fundamentally broken for experiencing the world as they do. The infection reaches the cognitive centers.

What makes this belief so devastatingly cruel is how deeply it becomes embedded in our nervous system and identity—typically before we have the cognitive abilities to question it. Left unaddressed, this core wound has the potential to derail a person’s entire life, coloring every experience and relationship through the lens of inescapable defectiveness.

How Existential Shame Shapes Our Lives

This deep doubt about whether we are fundamentally acceptable as a person doesn’t just cause occasional distress—it shapes our entire way of moving through the world, like how a hidden infection can alter every aspect of a tree’s development:

Perfectionism as Protection

For many, perfectionism becomes a survival strategy. The unconscious logic is clear: “If I can just be perfect, then maybe I’ll finally be acceptable or redeemable.” This provokes relentless self-improvement, workaholism, and exhausting vigilance against mistakes. This “trauma drive” can fuel remarkable achievements, with survivors becoming highly successful in their fields—all while unconsciously trying to outrun that core belief in their fundamental wrongness.

Just as some trees respond to stress by producing extra growth in other areas, this hypervigilance is the system’s attempt to compensate for perceived internal failings. For many survivors, perfection and achievement become not just a goal but a means of proving they deserve to exist.

The tragedy is that perfectionism can never deliver what we hope, because:

• Perfect performance is humanly impossible
• There is no amount of achievement that will offset such a deeply held belief
• Each inevitable failure re-confirms the core belief: “See? I knew I wasn’t okay.”
• Paradoxically, perfectionism often increases mistakes—exhaustion from relentless striving undermines the very competence we seek to prove.

Hypersensitivity to Rejection and Criticism

When you already secretly fear you’re fundamentally flawed and possibly irredeemable, even minor criticism can feel like confirmation of your worst fear. This creates a heightened vigilance for any signs of disapproval and can lead to:

• Catastrophic interpretations of neutral feedback
• Defensive reactions when feeling judged
• Rumination for days or weeks over a single comment
• Difficulty receiving constructive criticism even when delivered kindly
• Disproportionate panic responses to making mistakes

People-Pleasing and Fawning

Many trauma survivors develop a finely-tuned radar for others’ needs and moods, becoming experts at managing others’ emotions while neglecting their own. This isn’t just about avoiding conflict—it’s about continually seeking external validation that they are, indeed, acceptable.

The unconscious belief might be: “If everyone approves of me, maybe that means I’m okay after all.” This drives exhausting patterns of self-sacrifice, boundary violations, and emotional caregiving at one’s own expense.

The Collapse Response

For some, the weight of existential shame becomes too heavy to fight against. This can lead to:

• Giving up (“Why try when I’m fundamentally flawed anyway?”)
• Self-sabotage (unconsciously confirming the belief in one’s badness)
• Depression and loss of meaning
• Substance use to numb the painful core belief

Existential shame potentially brings dissociation—a sense of detaching from your body, feeling unreal, or going numb. This too is a protective response, designed to shield you from pain your nervous system feels too overwhelming to process.

Defensive Externalization

Some (not all) survivors manage existential shame by projecting it outward—becoming harshly judgmental of others, developing a false superiority, or even becoming abusive themselves. This defensive strategy temporarily relieves the pain by locating the “badness” in others instead of oneself.

This pattern, which can manifest in narcissistic traits, is often unconscious—a desperate attempt to escape unbearable shame. This isn’t an excuse for harmful behavior, but understanding that hurt people sometimes hurt people can be important for breaking intergenerational cycles. The difference lies in whether one takes responsibility for healing their core shame rather than continuing to project it onto others.

Recognizing the Pattern in Yourself

Many survivors have lived with this core belief for so long that they don’t recognize its presence or influence. Here are some questions that might help you identify if existential shame is operating in your life:

• Do you find yourself thinking, “If people really knew me, they wouldn’t like/love me”?
• When you make a mistake, does it feel like evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you? Or, do you have an unpleasant, visceral, physical response?
• Do you feel like you must be “on guard” constantly to prevent people from seeing your “true self”?
• Does criticism, even when constructive, send you into an emotional tailspin that seems disproportionate?
• Do you have difficulty accepting compliments or positive feedback?
• Do you find yourself longing for validation or reassurance from others?
• When conflicts arise, do you automatically fear that you might be in the wrong?
• Do you hold yourself to impossible standards that you would never expect from others?

If these questions resonate, you may be carrying the burden of existential shame. But please understand: this belief, no matter how deeply ingrained, is not the truth about who you are. (I know that statement might be hard to accept right now—that’s normal and expected. As you continue reading, we’ll explore how to begin loosening its grip.)

Understanding the Neurobiological Roots

Existential shame isn’t just a psychological belief—it actually changes how our brain and nervous system work in ways we can measure:

• When our mind wanders or we’re not focused on a specific task, our brain’s “thinking about ourselves” network becomes overactive in trauma survivors (this is called the “default mode network”). Instead of normal self-reflection, this network gets stuck in negative loops of self-criticism and dwelling on personal inadequacy. While we see this overactive self-focus in trauma survivors, it’s important to remember the brain is complex—this pattern doesn’t mean you’re broken, just that your system learned to scan for threats in a way that once helped you survive.
• Our brain’s alarm system (the amygdala and limbic system) becomes hypersensitive, treating even mild social cues as potential threats or rejection.
• Shame triggers a full-body stress response that can include tight muscles, shallow breathing, digestive problems, and difficulty thinking clearly.
• The connections in our brain that link thinking about ourselves with feeling pain become stronger each time they activate together. Eventually, simply focusing on yourself automatically triggers shame.

Understanding these brain changes helps us recognize that healing requires more than just changing our thoughts—it involves rewiring our entire mind-body system.

Read the rest of this article with steps toward healing is in the first book of Ellen’s “There’s A Word for That” series: https://a.co/d/00xlkvLa

Copyright Notice: This excerpt is from my book. All content is © 2025 Worldwide Groove Corporation. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or use of this material without permission is prohibited. Thank you for respecting my work. 😊

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In mental health, trauma is trauma. What matters is not how an event appears to an outsider, but how it lodges in the body and nervous system of the person who endured it. If an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, it is trauma

My adult life was built on buried memories: a cruel, narcissistic mother, an uncaring alcoholic father, and a home ruled by chaos, neglect, and emotional abuse. I lived through beatings, emotional abuse, and neglect. There was little food because my father drank away his paycheck and, according to my mother, consorted with prostitutes. I was six years old and did not even know what that word meant. The air in our house was volatile. I learned to be invisible. Shouting was the spoken language, and vulgarity took the place of affection. Violence was not an exception; it was part of the atmosphere.

 When you grow up in an environment of disregard and danger, your brain adapts to survive. Mine learned hypervigilance. I learned to read the room, read my parents, and anticipate threats. The woods near our house became my refuge. Even at six years old, I roamed the hills alone because I dreaded going home.

 When I finally crossed that threshold in 2001 and began an eight-year healing journey with my psychiatrist, Dr. Dan, I had to confront not only the truth of my upbringing but also the chaos it was still creating in my adult life. It had taken two years of sinking deeper into darkness before I made the call to his office. I was consumed by depression and anger. My nights were filled with recurring nightmares—wars, tornadoes, floods, and, most hauntingly, dreams that returned me to the childhood home where danger still lived.

We often imagine therapy as quiet and orderly: a comfortable chair, gentle questions, and a swift revelation that fixes everything. My experience was different.

The room was inviting, but my heart pounded as I fought the urge to flee, terrified of being judged or berated yet again. During that first visit, after hearing only an overview of my life, Dr. Dan told me that healing could take years, given the depth and duration of my trauma. I was stunned. I interrupted him and said he had three visits to fix me. I was exhausted and wanted the pain to stop.

Yet amid the emotional havoc of that first visit, I experienced a breakthrough. As we talked, something carried me back to childhood. I was five years old again, hiding under our dining room table in the dark. After dinner, my father had gone back to the Polish drinking club a few blocks away. My mother, expecting him to come home drunk and furious, locked the doors, as she had done before. When he could not get back inside, he erupted. My parents screamed at each other while my father yelled for me to unlock the door, and my mother ordered us to leave it locked.

I was paralyzed with fear, crying and pleading with them both, trapped once again in the middle of their fight. Then my father smashed the glass in the door, unlocked it, and went after my mother in the kitchen—and the flashback ended.

Dr. Dan asked gently, “Where did you go?” It took me a few seconds to decide whether I would tell the truth. My instinct had always been to say I was fine, but I knew that if I wanted to heal, I had to open that door. I described the scene in detail, looked at him, and broke down in tears. I did not just cry; I sobbed with a force I had never allowed myself to feel. The trauma I had carried into that room was suddenly visible. There was no judgment, no hostility—only empathy. That was the power of the room I spent eight years in: it could hold the toxic pain I had suffered for most of my life.

Healing required me to stop protecting the people who had hurt me and start protecting the child I once was.

The stigma around family dysfunction is powerful; we are taught that loyalty means silence. For me, that silence was corrosive. Healing came through years of intense psychodynamic therapy, during which I relived traumatic events and uncovered others I had buried even deeper. For a long time, I feared I was losing my mind or developing schizophrenia like my older brother.

Again and again, I asked Dr. Dan whether what I was feeling was normal. His answer never changed: not normal, but typical of someone in my situation. Those four words gave me more than comfort. They gave me language—and language made healing possible.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

The focus of my clinical practice is to help clients live fully and peacefully through adversity.

My clients have ranged in age from approximately 20 to 90, and they consist of parents, grandparents, sons, and daughters who are all trying to navigate estrangement.  Several clients have peaceful relationships with their adult sons and daughters, but they work with me to improve those bonds.  Although my observations are aimed at supporting estranged parents, they can apply to any difficult relationship.

Clinical Observation #4:  Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

As of this writing, I am grieving the loss of my beloved 91-year-old mother.  As an estranged parent, funeral services were quite triggering in addition to being grief-ridden.  I was surrounded by those who loved my mother and by several who are estranged from me in addition to my adult son and daughter.  The ripple effect of estrangement was evident at the funeral and brought up a sense of betrayal in addition to triggering symptoms related to my most recent diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD. The sense of betrayal came from wondering who in this room I can trust, as it was obvious some people had chosen sides in my estrangement. For weeks after, I felt numb and out of touch with my body, a hallmark symptom of trauma. PTSD generally refers to trauma that is caused by a traumatic event.  Whereas C-PTSD results from too much or not enough of a behavior that impacts a child’s development.  For example, there is a major difference between a parent keeping a child safe and a parent being consistently hypervigilant. Ongoing unhealthy scrutiny by parents can lead to a sense of being smothered or controlled as the child grows into adulthood, possibly leading to estrangement.

Before my own diagnosis, I had already begun to see a pattern in my clinical practice. Most of my estranged parent-clients shared with me some degree of deep woundedness in childhood.  Several from that group presented themselves as being wounded in the form of trauma.  A significant number of my clients are both estranged parents and trauma survivors.  This dynamic prompted me to raise the question: Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

How can I connect my trauma to how I raised my children?  Based on my clinical experience, there are layers to surviving trauma and surviving parental estrangement.  The first layer is self-awareness, during which you begin to recognize unhealthy behaviors that have become your trauma responses.  For me, yelling at my young children became a consistent reaction because that is how people often communicated in my family, and oftentimes that was the only way I got heard as a child.  I also recently recognized that when I yelled at them, it felt like an out-of-body experience.  I simply could not stop myself. These behaviors were symptomatic of my trauma. The second layer is recognizing how the pattern of trauma responses played a role in your parenting. 

This realization is the function of the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM®which I created and addressed in an earlier article. For example, yelling at my children became a daily occurrence, multiple times a day.  I believe my adult son and daughter would say they constantly walked on eggshells around me and my moods.  Another trauma response was my hypervigilance about who my children hung out with and where.  I recently made the following connection: My hypervigilant behavior is the result of being assaulted by a nonfamily member as a child, a traumatic event that recently emerged. It is evident that this layer requires one to let down their guard and crawl deep inside their nervous system to find all the ways in which trauma showed up in your parenting. 

The third layer requires seeking a diagnosis from a licensed therapist or clinician.  Receiving the diagnosis of PTSD and C-PTSD as an estranged parent provided me with a tremendous sense of relief on the one hand and a tremendous sense of remorse on the other hand.  Finally, my entire life made sense: my parenting, my relationships, my temperament, my moods, and other hiding places for trauma.  For my adult son and daughter, I feel tremendous sadness.  Though there were many good times, the times they may remember most are my unpredictability that left them feeling insignificant, unloved, and unsafe.

The fourth layer for me, which I cannot call the final layer at this time, is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which I am currently undergoing.  The purpose of EMDR is to lessen the intensity of intrusive memories.  For a clinical explanation of EMDR, I refer to you other clinicians and psychologists who have written about it.  What I can share is my experience with EMDR, which should not be misconstrued as a recommendation. 

Over the period of several weeks, I shared in detail the various traumas with my clinician, which, at times, felt like reliving the incidents. My clinician selected one trauma to begin the actual eye movement, and she chose to begin with the most painful event, which was the assault. I am now approaching the end of the reprocessing phase for the most traumatic event.  I will continue EMDR focusing on both developmental trauma and other traumatic events one at a time.

I can say already that EMDR has helped me with the painful triggers, images and memories.  Before EMDR, my whole body would cringe with shame whenever the thoughts appeared.  At times, the thoughts were inescapable.  Now, I can think about the assault without holding onto the thought and while bringing self-compassion to it and to me.  I may address, in more detail,  my entire experience with EMDR in a future article. And I repeat, my discussion on EMDR is to share my experience.  It is not a recommendation.

As an estrangement clinician, I am not qualified to make diagnoses.  However, I am trained to see patterns and make connections for my clients, and several clients displayed symptoms that may be related to C-PTSD and/or PTSD.  A client’s trauma and estrangement journey are captured by the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM®

To summarize, after my clients share their childhood wounds or traumas, they are asked to reflect on any related unhealthy dynamics when raising their children. These connections become the ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM® The parent then has priceless information which can inform their decision on whether they reach out to their adult son and/or daughter.  Just as significant is seeing and knowing these connections that can bring understanding to the client, and self-understanding helps to promote self-compassion. Both ingredients are essential for healing from the excruciating pain of being cut off by your son or daughter.

The Estrangement Algorithm® is ultimately a tool to bring estranged parents greater peace of mind and to answer the question: Is there a causal relationship between a parent’s PTSD/C-PTSD diagnosis and parental estrangement?

Still, through it all, I know I am exactly where God wants me to be.

WORD OF CAUTION:

The ESTRANGEMENT ALGORITHM® is solely based on educated assumptions about why an adult son or daughter chooses to estrange. 

Only the estranged son or daughter holds this reliable information.

Life, Positive. “The Link between Trauma and Emotional Numbness: Causes, Symptoms, and               Recovery.” Positive Life Asia, 6 Sept. 2025, www.positivelifeasia.com/post/the-link-       between-trauma-and-emotional-numbness-causes-symptoms-and-recovery.                   Accessed 9 Apr. 2026.

“Undoing Emotional Numbing May Be Key to Trauma Recovery.” Psychology Today, 2024,                   www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202405/undoing-emotional-   numbing-may-be-key-to-trauma-     recovery?msockid=0ab16c569c8a680527087ae09d486983. Accessed 9 Apr. 2026.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer