Complex Trauma / c-PTSD / Structural Dissociation / Parts Work (Anxiety, Shame, Humiliation, Anger)

Complex Trauma

When early or chronic trauma affects your self-concept and is more interpersonal of nature it is called Complex Trauma or c-PTSD, this classification is recognized in the IDC Diagnostic System, an alternative to the more known DSM. Complex Trauma often comes with emotion dysregulation which is tied to traumatic emotional experiences in the past that caused these emotional parts to develop.

There is a lot of overlap between Complex Trauma and Personality Disorders because it is believed that early traumatic life experiences, some as early as infancy, are what cause disorders like Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Anti-Social Pathology is even hypothesized by some to arise prenatally.

Chronic experiences of abuse or neglect, often in early childhood are what cause us to suppress these wounded parts with protections and defenses because we see no way out, these protective parts come in the form of things like eating disorders, addictions, avoidance, clinging, numbing/detaching or self-harm. Also it is possible that we start to idealize and cling to others because of our own low self-esteem or we can avoid/dismiss others because we devalue dependency (attachment theory).

These parts develop unconsciously because traumatized emotional parts are re-lived not remembered, they warp our view of reality and make our bodies experience intense emotions, flashbacks or even hallucinations. Because our younger traumatic experiences were never repaired, our protections have become rigid and maladaptive making things worse not better.

By becoming aware and noticing our protective and emotional parts and exploring how they got stuck in these roles is the first step to transforming them, protective parts try to manage your life and prevent wounds from being triggered or overwhelming, emotional parts are our younger selves stuck in an traumatic experience and have to be met with compassion and explored to find the unmet need in the past.

Moden trauma-informed therapies are based in experiential- and body- psychotherapies where different parts are explored and given the corrective experience it needed at the time, these experiences are then reflected and metacognitively processed to strengthen the internalization of any positive adaptive emotions that arise. These techniques are backed by emotional and interpersonal neurobiology research and developed for over 40 years. Examples of these kind of therapies are IFS, EFIT, TIST, Sensorimotor, AEDP.