Almost a year ago, I was invited to guest write in this forum, after releasing my book. For almost a year I have had this page bookmarked. I’ve seen it every day, but the intense fear of ridicule, judgment, and frankly feeling of irrelevance has stopped me from writing, until today. Because I feel that this topic is vital, yet easily overlooked.

CPTSD finds its basis in our childhoods. The severity of our symptoms can vary from being considered minimal, to the extreme. Research has shown that CPTSD symptoms can mimic Sociopathy Disorder, Bi-Polar Personality Disorder, just to name a couple. This has led to so many misdiagnoses. However, that’s not actually what I want to talk about. Bare with me on this rabbit trail, it comes to point.

Start in Childhood

Upon speaking with others, combing through my own trauma, and helping others, I’ve noticed a trend that I really want everyone to think about. When we’ve become adults, we’ve come to the conclusion that our lives have been impacted by CPTSD, the automatic response is to dive into our childhoods. Therapists go there, research goes there, everything goes to our childhood. And it is obviously the right place to start. But we tend to overlook our adulthood.

The experiences that were traumatic in our childhoods that brought us to where we are now, didn’t end when we grew up and moved out. For me personally, even after I had processed my childhood to the best of my abilities, accepted it, and moved on, my symptoms got progressively worse, despite there being absolutely no contact with my family of any kind ( which was a relief ). The people we form relationships with on our own, as adults, whether you are 25 or 35, are instinctively based on your childhood, without realizing it. If you are moving forward in your life without having addressed your childhood issues, or you have not yet even realized them, then you start to replace your family with similar personalities that raised you. Your closest friends, your wife, your girlfriend can all replace your abusive family without even realizing it. They may be nice towards you, but the behaviors towards others might be the same as the behaviors that you experienced as a child. Having already lived through these issues, we are hypersensitive to everything that we see. We can genuinely be traumatized further just by witnessing these behaviors as adults, being done unto others. And this circles back to what I said a minute ago. The Trauma started in your childhood, but it does not end there. When you are witnessing these things or surrounding yourself with people that behave in the very ways that rearranged your brain in the first place, your trauma might not just be relived but also worsened. When it’s worsened, your symptoms become even worse, even though there is no direct link to your childhood.

In The End

I’ll end this with an example that I’m sure many have and can relate to. After being kicked out at 16, I was left to make a lot of decisions on my own that I was not ready to make. To sum up my childhood, I was never wanted, I was planned and then regretted, my dad was physically abusive and mentally abusive to us kids, and my mom eventually turned into my dad and became the same way. We never experienced what it felt like to be loved, none of us siblings ever loved each other, we were forcibly separated by our parents over the years, and money mattered more than morals. So over the next 5 years of moving out, I had 4 “long-term ” relationships and many not-so-long-term relationships. Out of these 4 women, each was vastly different. They looked, talked, acted, and presented themselves totally different from one another. Yet they all had one thing in common. They were abusive, physically and mentally. From 16-21 years old, I was degraded, stabbed, walked all over, stolen from, used, and abused by women that I thought was all so different from my parents. When I was 16, I was traumatized with severe anxiety and anti-social personality type issues. By the time I was 21 my first therapist wanted to diagnose me as a sociopath with a dissociative personality disorder. By that time I already knew about CPTSD and had begun my healing, so I found a different more specialized therapist.

So I think my point is, that beyond our childhood, we need to be extremely self-aware of the people we allow into our lives as adults. Because the wrong person can cause someone with CPTSD to have the worst downward spiral that they have yet experienced.

Until Next time,

Benjamin

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 do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Save

Benjamin Holthaus