Everyone experiences stress at one point or another in their lives. Perhaps you face a new boss at work or a medical problem of your own, or a family member. Countless incidents cause stress.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) deals primarily with trauma experienced in early childhood. CPTSD leaves those who have the disorder re-experiencing the horrific events that caused it.
This article will explore stress and how it interacts with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
What is Stress?
Stress is feeling emotional or physical tension because you are in an event or having thoughts that make you feel frustrated, nervous, or angry. Stress is a normal response to events over which we often have little or no control.
Not all stress is negative, as some incidents where humans feel stress are reasonable, such as planning a wedding or expecting a child’s birth. Indeed, stress is your body’s response to any demand or threat you may encounter in your daily life. When you sense danger, the body’s defenses are activated in a rapid automatic reaction.
Everyday stress is temporary and situational plus resolves naturally. However, stress can become toxic, leading to physical and emotional distress. Chronic stress in the absence of proper support is harmful and potentially affects a person’s mental and physical health. The stress response is the body’s natural way of protecting you.
Stressors are events that produce stress and can activate the fight-or-flight response that comprises physiological changes when anyone faces real or perceived danger (Franke, 2014).
Chronic Stress and the Body
Since your nervous system is not good at telling the difference between an emotional and physical threat, your body reacts as intensely as if you are facing a life-or-death situation. The more your emergency stress system is activated, the easier it is to become triggered and the more challenging it is to not react negatively to stress.
When you are stressed frequently, your body will be affected by developing severe health problems or exacerbating those you already have. Some of the conditions may include:
- Depression and anxiety
- Pain of any kind
- Sleep problems
- Autoimmune diseases
- Digestive problems
- Skin conditions, such as eczema
- Heart disease
- Weight problems
- Reproductive issues
- Thinking and memory problems
Chronic stress can also depress your immune system, negatively affect your digestive and reproductive systems, and cause a heart attack or stroke. Chronic stress can also rewire your brain, making you more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges.
What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Complex PTSD is a response to chronic traumatization over months or years and includes emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, domestic violence, being held captive, or living in a war zone (Herman,1992).
While there are incidences where adults form CPTSD, the reaction is most often seen in children who experience a complete lack of control over themselves, with no foreseeable relief. Because the brain is developing and children learn who they are as individuals and build their first relationships, severe and repeated trauma interrupts their psychological and neurological development.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is a developmental trauma disorder different from post-traumatic stress disorder that forms in adulthood. The symptoms of CPTSD may include:
- Losing memories of trauma or reliving them
- Difficulty regulating emotions that often manifest as rage
- Depression
- Suicidal thoughts or actions
- Sudden mood swings
- Feeling detached from oneself
- Feeling different from others
- Feeling ashamed
- Feeling guilty
- Difficulty maintaining relationships
- Difficulty trusting others
- Seeking or becoming a rescuer
- Feeling afraid for no apparent reason
- Having a feeling of being constantly on the alert
- Becoming obsessed with revenge on the perpetrator
- Feeling a loss of spiritual attachment and either ignoring or depending upon religion for self-worth
Coupling CPTSD with stress is a dangerous and even deadly combination.
When Complex Post-Traumatic Disorder and Stress Collide
Neither stress nor CPTSD has symptoms that are easy to escape. Indeed, living with a combination of the two is exceptionally challenging. Reading through the symptoms of both problems shows just how hazardous stress and CPTSD are together.
Because of past trauma that clouds our perceptions, stressful situations turn on the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response, leading to a crippling inability to perform typically. This stress reaction can lead to problems at home and school and make relationships complicated.
There are, however, methods you can employ to help ease the power stress, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder have over your life. Below are outlined just a few well-known ways to defeat stress and ease your pain.
Seek Counseling. CPTSD is a condition that requires the intervention of a mental health professional. The mixture of stress and complex post-traumatic stress disorder needs critical reinforcement in the form of therapy and will help ease some of the symptoms. Therapy is crucial if you are hypervigilant or feeling overwhelmed and trapped. Therapy can also help you cope with the problems you might have at home and at work. There are a variety of therapies available to help.
Get Enough Good Sleep. Stress and CPTSD can cause you to have difficulty falling and staying asleep. Your brain and body must have time to recharge, so finding a solution to sleeping problems is vital. There are ways to help yourself get a good night’s sleep.
- Make sure you have a quiet room to sleep in
- Lower the temperature of the room
- Make sure your bed is comfortable
- Use a comforter that has some weight to it
- Form a relaxing bedtime routine
- Listen to soothing music before bedtime
- Put away the electronics (phones, televisions, pads, etc.)
- Put clocks away in another room
Sometimes medication is necessary to help you sleep, but try all the above first to sleep healthily.
Get Creative. Listening to or playing music is a fantastic stress reliever, and it can reduce muscle tension plus decrease stress hormones. Turn up the volume and allow yourself to drift away with the music. If you aren’t into music, choose another hobby, such as sewing or gardening. Do anything that requires a focus on what you’re doing instead of ruminating on what you should be doing.
Practice Laughter. Having a good sense of humor can cure all problems or make them tolerable. Even if you have to fake it, laugh at how grumpy you are. Laughter fires up and then suppresses the stress response in your body, allowing you to relax.
Ending Our Time Together
May is mental health awareness month, and we here at CPTSD Foundation endeavor to pass on to you our readers information about how to live with and defeat the symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
We hope you will remember that you are valuable and that we care deeply for you through our work. You are worthwhile, loved, and cherished.
“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”–Maya Angelou.
“It’s about waking up in the morning and saying: No matter what gets done and how much is done and how it’s done, I’m enough, and I’m worthy of belonging and love and joy.” – Brené Brown.
“Don’t dilute yourself for any person or any reason. You are enough! Be unapologetically you.” – Steve Maraboli.
References
Franke, H. A. (2014). Toxic stress: effects, prevention, and treatment. Children, 1(3), 390-402.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Complex PTSD: A syndrome in survivors of prolonged and repeated trauma. Journal of traumatic stress, 5(3), 377-391.
Are you a therapist who treats CPTSD? Please consider dropping us a line to add you to our growing list of providers. You would get aid in finding clients and help someone find the peace they deserve. Go to the contact us page and send us a note, and our staff will respond quickly.
Shortly, CPTSD Foundation will have compiled a long list of providers who treat complex post-traumatic stress disorder. When it becomes available, we will put it on our website www.CPTSDFoundation.org.
Visit us and sign up for our weekly newsletter to help keep you informed on treatment options and much more for complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Healing Book Club
The Healing Book Club, led by Sabra Cain, meets weekly to discuss a book about mental health issues. The current book that the club is reading is called Daring Greatly, written by Brene’ Brown, Ph.D. MSW.
Below is a brief look at the book.
Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown, Ph.D., MSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
Brown explains how vulnerability is the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity. She writes: “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Daring Greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage.
If you or a loved one live in the despair and isolation of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, please come to us for help. CPTSD Foundation offers a wide range of services, including:
- Daily Calls
- The Healing Book Club
- Support Groups
- Our Blog
- The Trauma-Informed Newsletter
- Daily Encouragement Texts
All our services are reasonably priced, and some are even free. So, to gain more insight into how complex post-traumatic stress disorder is altering your life and how you can overcome it, sign-up; we will be glad to help you. If you cannot afford to pay, go to www.cptsdfoundation.org/scholarship to apply for aid. We only wish to serve you.
Mindfulness, Prayer, and Meditation Circle
Meditation can be an integral part of healing from trauma. Our 9-week self-study video course helps you integrate this fantastic method of grounding, centering, and focus. Join the Mindfulness, Prayer, and Meditation Circle today!
A new Trauma-Informed Yoga program is coming in Summer 2022! Check out our information page about this highly requested new program! #yoga #traumainformed #cptsd #mentalhealth #recovery #wellness https://cptsdfoundation.org/traumainformedyoga/
My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.
Dealing with difficult emotions can be challenging. It is important to take the time to take care of yourself and to seek support from family, friends, or other professionals. I suggest reading 10 Coping Skills and Strategies to Help You Cope With Difficult Emotions https://us.calmerry.com/blog/therapy/10-coping-skills-and-strategies-to-help-you-cope-with-difficult-emotions/ which can be very helpful. Also, practicing mindfulness through meditation, journaling about your feelings, being physically active, and setting boundaries with yourself and others can help you cope with an emotional crisis.
It’s easy for medics to say get more sleep but when you can’t & the the more fatigued you get the harder it is to sleep after years of gaslighting around rUTI’s/cUTI’s, ME/CFS/FMS like symptoms the two definitive diagnosis I have got so far are Endometriosis stage IV & Hypercalcemia/Primary-Hyperparathyroidism both conditions known to impact the immune nervous systems & cause chronic fatigue. The delayed diagnosis have led to infertility & DDD/DJD leaving me needing multiple joint replacements when & if I’m strong enough.