When Yesterday Feels Like Today

The Silent Struggles of CPTSD:

It occurs out of the blue. You could be in the grocery, at a social gathering or just doing an everyday task. Then something happens, a sound or a whiff of a certain smell. It can take many forms. No matter the trigger, in an instant, everything changes. Your heart races, your hands grow damp, and suddenly, you are no longer in the present moment. Your awareness consumed, throwing you into the depths of an emotional flashback. You are back in the past, reliving a moment of long past trauma, feeling the emotions, experiencing every painful detail, stuck in an emotional loop. This is what life looks like when you are living with CPTSD. Emotional flashback like this are a common occurrence in CPTSD.

Have you ever felt trapped in a memory, unable to escape the grip of that intense moment? A memory that transcends space and time and cuts deep into your heart with its shattering reminders. As if you are a traumatic time traveler, except you don’t go back to the past, instead the past is comes thrusting forward at the speed of light to your present moment.

If this sounds familiar, know that you are not alone. Living with CPTSD is like carrying a weight that no one else can see or fully understand. The pain, the fear, the overwhelming emotions—they can all feel unbearable. Before my diagnosis, it was crippling. I’m not suggesting being diagnosed cured me, instead it gave me an understanding. From this darkness, I found hope. Understanding CPTSD is the first step in the healing process. Together, we will dive deeper into CPTSD, and how it affects us. I will share some actionable steps, such as grounding techniques, and other coping strategies that can help us get on the path to gain control back in our lives.

My Journey with CPTSD: From Diagnosis to Understanding

For years, I thought my anxiety and emotional overwhelm were just a part of who I was, partly because of my ADHD diagnosis. It wasn’t until I turned 50 that everything in life felt like it was spiraling out of control. I finally reached a breaking point and took the step to reach out for help. The diagnoses (yes, there was more than one) were not surprising. If you would like to learn more about my personal journey, check out the “My Story” section of the blog, and a good starting point is this post. The root cause of all my life struggles had been Complex PTSD (CPTSD). Finally, I had a name for the chaos that often ruled my mind, body, and life.

Some days, CPTSD feels like dissociation—watching life through a foggy window, disconnected from everything and everyone. Other days, it’s the hyper-vigilance symptoms that get the best of me. The constant feeling of being unsafe, as if danger is just around the corner. A feeling of everyone is aware of my internal thoughts, feelings, and struggles. I hear myself whisper words of negativity in the depth of my mind in every social interaction.

Now, with the knowledge of my CPTSD diagnosis, came an understanding and clarity. In hindsight, my life and struggles were finally making some sense. The how and why I struggled had an answer. The daily occurrence of emotional flashbacks had an explanation and a name. Emotional flashbacks for me could happen at any moment, often occurring as I went to bed. My mind would just start spawning spontaneous memories and there I was, back in the past, as if it was the here and now. Sleep never came easy. I felt like I had no identity, nor have I ever really felt like I did. I could never seem to answer that question, “Who am I?”. Having a new label for the beast didn’t tame it, but it gave me a map of the process to this place of healing, knowledge that it is possible and techniques to get me there.

What Is CPTSD, and how is it different from PTSD?

Complex PTSD, or CPTSD, is a condition that emerges from long-term exposure to trauma, particularly during childhood or over significant stretches of time. Unlike PTSD, which can result from a single traumatic event, CPTSD stems from repeated experiences of abuse, neglect, or other forms of sustained trauma. For a more in-depth dive into CPTSD and the differences with PTSD, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is a great source to check out.

Key Symptoms of CPTSD:

• Emotional: Difficulty in regulating emotions, being easily wounded, feeling irritable or angry, and experiencing strong emotional reactions.
• Interpersonal: Struggles with keeping relationships, a tendency to shy away from connections, or becoming entangled in toxic relationships.
• Physical: Chronic pain, fatigue, digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome, frequent headaches, dizziness, chest discomfort, and stomach issues.
• Dissociative: Feeling like you're in a dream or not in your own body or surroundings.
• Self-perception: Feelings of helplessness, guilt, shame, worthlessness, or a sense of being permanently broken.
• Hypervigilance: Living in a state of constant alertness or feeling unsafe.
• Suicidal: Encountering thoughts of self-harm or regularly feeling suicidal.
• Other: Emotional flashbacks, nightmares, memory issues, a distorted self-image, sleep disturbances, substance use, and diminished self-worth.

Imagine CPTSD as carrying an invisible backpack, filled with the heavy burden of past experiences. Often, we are even unaware we are carrying it. If not addressed, and as time passes, the backpack's load gets heavier and our ability to carry it becomes weaker. Eventually, we can't handle its weight any longer and fall down, no longer able to move forward. This stresses the importance of digging into this backpack and slowly unpacking it. It's not an easy task, but as you begin this process and feel this invisible weight getting lighter, the light at the end of the tunnel brightens.

Coping with CPTSD: Grounding Techniques and Daily Strategies

Living with CPTSD doesn't mean striving for perfection; it's about uncovering the resources that help you restore your sense of calm. Also, we must remember we are all unique. What works for me may not work for you. The important point is to find something that resonates with you. If you try a technique and are not seeing results...move on. There are many thoughts and ideas out there. Don’t get discouraged, keep trying. Sometime the simplest of techniques that you would never imagine could help, end up giving the best results. It is surprising how effective some of these can be. Here are some popular grounding techniques for CPTSD and tools for emotional regulation that have worked well for many facing similar challenges:

1. Grounding Exercises to Anchor Yourself

• The 5-4-3-2-1 Method: When an emotional flashback hits, ground yourself by identifying five things you see, four you touch, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste.
• Box Breathing: Inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, and hold for four again.
• Muscle tension and relaxation: Tense and then relax different muscle groups in your body, starting with your toes and working your way up.
• Repeating a mantra: Choose a calming phrase and repeat it silently to yourself

2. Therapeutic Support

• Therapy approaches like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and somatic experiencing are effective in tackling deep-seated trauma. EMDR can help in revealing memories you may be unaware of that are impacting your life, processing these memories and removing their negative impacts.

3. Apps and Tools

• Now there are a multitude of apps out there to help cope. Two that come to mind are the mindfulness apps Calm and Insight Timer, they can guide you through meditations designed to help ground you. If you like to write, journaling also helps, giving you a safe space to lay out your emotions and process them.

4. Self-Compassion Practices

• Afirmations: This is one I am a big fan of, especially when I get into my head too much. That inner voice that will not shut up! I love affirmations, positive “I” statements, with my preference being “I am” phrases: I am happy; I am healthy; I am successful; I am talented; I am courageous; I am strong; I am healing., to name a few. Whatever you put after “I Am” you are. That works both directions as well, so when that inner voice gets negative, it's just as real. It feels small and insignificant, but give it a try, it is incredibly powerful.
• Meditation: It can help you focus, relax, reduce stress. It can also help you accept painful memories and experiences, improve your ability to control your attention and shift it to coping strategies,and even help you approach distressing thoughts and feelings instead of avoiding them.The benifits of meditaion are endless

Hope and Healing: Progress Is Possible

The journey of healing from CPTSD is not a straight path, but every small step forward matters. Whether it’s finding a grounding technique that resonates with you, attending therapy, using affirmations, finding the strength to make it through a tough day or all of the above!—you’re making progress. Remember, we have to crawl before we learn to walk. Even if it's just baby steps, that's progress in the right direction. I got this, and you got this!

My first personal victory was having the courage to reach out and admit that I could not handle it on my own. Sometimes admitting defeat is the beginning to a win. It is now a reminder that healing is real. It is just a process, even if it unfolds gradually.

What small steps have you taken in your healing process? I would love to hear your stories in the comments.

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