This can create a sense of captivity and an inability to escape the brutality of your adverse life circumstances.
Here are six behaviors people dont realize you may be engaging in because youre a complex trauma survivor.
(1 & 2) Socially isolating yourself yet searching for a rescuer.
Vizerskaya
Being hyper-attuned to signals of harm and danger in social interactions and your environment.
People who have experienced complex trauma or have Complex PTSD can have very sensitized nervous systems.
They are primed from childhood to see danger and hyper-attuned at times hypervigilant to the micro-signals of harm.
However, simultaneously, people with CPTSD may search throughout their lives for a rescuer.
This creates a trauma repetition cycle that can be difficult to halt without intensive treatment and healing.
(3)Dissociating on a daily basis.
This can mitigate the impact that trauma has on you through altered states of consciousness that provide temporary protection.
You may also experience fatigue, mental fog, spaciness, and losing track of time.
(4)Feeling like you have multiple disparate identities or multiple self-states.
There is usually a discontinuity in your sense of self if you have experienced complex trauma.
Complex trauma survivors often struggle with an uncertain, even fragmented sense of identity.
As a result, you have likely developed different facets of your identity that feel disparate or even contradictory.
These different self-states or versions of self can present themselves in more extreme ways in various circumstances.
(5)Feeling emotionally dysregulated.
Intense anxiety, fear, anger, and despair can be chronic emotions for complex trauma survivors.
These emotions can occur without warning as triggers from multiple traumas can be pervasive in everyday life.
(6)Self-harming tendencies.
Complex trauma survivors usually cannot identify a prolonged time of peace and safety in their lives.
You are not alone andhelpis out there.
