- If you were abused or neglected as a kid
and you're struggling with your life today,
I wanna give you some information
that could completely change your life.
And it's about the true nature of the symptoms
that show up in adults who had trauma as kids.
There is a common and consistent pattern
of symptoms that go with that, and here's a spoiler alert,
they are way broader than anyone used to think.
Now, the name for this pattern of symptoms
is Complex PTSD or CPTSD.
And I'll tell you what that is,
I'll tell you the signs that you might have it,
and if you do, what you can do about it.
Now, it is a very recent development that CPTSD
has been defined and understood at all.
And if you were affected by abuse and neglect
when you were little,
you very likely have some of the symptoms,
and you've probably been blamed
and judged and criticized for these symptoms,
which, of course, you had no control over.
And because there were no answers,
you probably blamed yourself more than anyone did.
So, if you're like me, you're going to find this news
to be hopeful and vindicating.
When I learned about CPTSD,
it freed me from blame and self-attack
for having what we now know
are very normal signs and symptoms,
when something not normal happened to you as a kid.
Here's the thing to remember.
It is not your fault
that you were hurt when you were little.
You probably thought it was just you, right?
But keep listening.
See if you identify and then let it in, you're normal,
you're having a normal response to trauma.
You're not stuck like this,
and I'll show you how to start healing starting today.
Okay, so what is Complex PTSD?
Everyone knows that bad things like being poor or bullied
or abused or neglected,
or seeing violence in the home, getting abandoned,
or being raised by someone who's mentally ill
or addicted or an alcoholic,
those are all things that damage kids.
And when those kids grow up, that's me,
and maybe it's you too,
there are usually some telltale signs.
If you came to this channel,
you may already have a pretty good idea that harsh events
in your childhood made certain things a lot harder for you
than for other people.
Maybe you struggle with your emotions
or you've been in poverty all your life,
or you're flat out depressed,
and the usual solutions don't seem to work for you.
They work for other people, but not you.
That happened to me.
Maybe you keep finding yourself
in crappy jobs and high drama relationships,
or you fear you'll pass these problems onto your kids,
or maybe you smoke or you drink a bit too much,
or you use drugs
in a way that you wouldn't want everybody to know.
They are not only caused by these,
but they are all common side effects of a crappy childhood.
So maybe your weight has been creeping up
to an unhealthy number,
or you've had more than your share of medical problems,
but no one knows why.
Maybe you attract hurtful people
or you suspect that you're the hurtful person,
and you live constantly in fear
that you're going to ruin everything with your partner.
These are also classic symptoms of Complex PTSD.
And an important thing to know is that,
it's a little different than regular PTSD
or post-traumatic stress disorder.
So let's talk about that.
PTSD is a real diagnosis and it's usually used
for cases where people had a traumatic event happen
in adulthood, like taking part in a violent battle, right?
For a combat veteran or having a car accident.
And the symptoms include flashbacks, anxiety, depression,
insomnia, withdrawing socially,
and emotions that come out explosively.
Those are the symptoms too.
This is the kind of PTSD we're used to seeing in war movies
that were made after, I don't know, 1980 or so,
when PTSD started to be understood.
Well, the signs of it anyway, because effective treatments
for PTSD we're still a long way off back then.
Okay, so there's a second kind of PTSD
called Complex PTSD or CPTSD,
which is caused by chronic exposure to emotional
or physical trauma such as, living through a war,
being in an abusive relationship,
or growing up in traumatic conditions
that went on and on and on and on.
That's the kind of CPTSD that I call childhood PTSD,
when it starts in childhood.
It doesn't always, but most cases of PTSD
are believed to be originated in childhood.
So this CPTSD from childhood,
which is where my work is mostly focused,
has some features that are unique from standard,
adult-onset PTSD.
And of course, the science is still very much in progress,
and we're gonna learn more.
But based on what we know now,
exposure to trauma in childhood causes brain changes.
And this can bring about a set of symptoms
that are quite different
than what you would see in standard PTSD.
CPTSD, in fact, isn't even formally recognized
in the DSM manual here in the United States,
it's recognized in other countries,
but the way that it's diagnosed is very uneven
or non-existent or not quite right,
and the way it's treated is literally all over the map.
There's no consistent pattern of treatment,
but there's a general agreement it exists.
And if you think you have it,
I'm going to encourage you to focus,
not so much on the nuances of definition or diagnosis,
but on the symptoms that are classic, common,
and that can and do ruin people's lives.
So why do I want you to focus on this?
Because,
we may not have diagnostic answers in our lifetimes,
but these symptoms, they're happening right now,
they can be named, they can be observed, and experienced,
and best of all, they can be healed.
Now, maybe they can't be healed perfectly,
but you can make progress,
and the means for healing them
is largely something that you can learn and manage yourself.
But, if you're going to heal your symptoms,
it's important to understand what trauma does,
and the effects are a lot more broad
and diverse than we used to think.
We always knew that trauma hurt people,
but we learned about this huge new realm of trauma symptoms,
initially because of something called the ACE study.
So there is a lot of research going on
in the area of childhood trauma,
and what happens because of that,
but the ACE study has kinda become the standard index
for measuring the long-term impact of childhood trauma.
So the ACE study began in the mid 1990s
when two physician researchers,
Vincent Felitti of Kaiser Permanente
and Robert Anda of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control,
they interviewed hundreds of study participants
about their history,
of what they called Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE.
You get it?
The ACE study.
So Felitti and Anda created a survey
that asks about each of these experiences.
Respondents gave themselves one point
for each experience on the list they checked as a yes.
So a person's A score is somewhere between zero and 10.
All right, here we go.
The 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences on the survey,
I'm gonna tell you what they are,
and you can just count them off on your fingers,
how many are yes, okay?
It includes, physical abuse,
sexual abuse,
emotional abuse,
physical neglect,
emotional neglect,
mother treated violently,
household substance abuse,
household mental illness, parental separation or divorce,
or incarceration of a household member.
And you probably notice this,
there are many other experiences
that could and should have been included in the list like,
how about the death of a parent?
I lost my dad when I was 15.
It was definitely a trauma for me.
Or being targeted with racist attacks,
or being desperately poor, or being a refugee?
You can take this into consideration when you take the test.
What the ACE survey measures, it's very general.
For example, when they say,
did a parent have mental illness?
There's a big difference in a parent who say
had a significant depression for a few months,
or having a parent who suffered from schizophrenia
all their lives, right?
Plus, not everyone reacts in the same way
or has the same problems as a result of childhood events.
But as a rough measurement, the higher your ACE score,
the more likely you'll experience
certain problems in your life.
Not certainly, but your risk goes up, for example,
all right?
Risk goes up for being depressed
and anxious more than most people,
to overreact to things, and sometimes have anger problems.
Your risk goes up to have difficulty connecting
with other people,
and you might have either shallow relationships
or no relationships.
You have a higher risk of being a violent person
or becoming a victim of violence.
You are more likely to be incarcerated.
You could more easily become overweight,
especially if there was sexual abuse in your past.
Oh, boy, a lot of us,
we're not so great at the whole like,
first get married and then have kids thing.
I had kids first.
We have sex younger.
We're more likely to have an unintended pregnancy
or abortion.
We get stuck in unfulfilling relationships
or even abusive ones,
and we have trouble detecting when potential partners
are dangerous or don't care about us, or are unavailable.
You have a higher risk
that you'll have more than your share of addictions,
including smoking, higher risk of diabetes,
auto-immune diseases, migraines,
chronic pain, reproductive disorders,
and lots of health problems where no origin is found.
Higher risk to have more than your share of problems
with your focus, attention, memory, and learning,
and we're more likely to have money problems or to be poor.
And because all these symptoms
can so easily overwhelm our lives,
were at high risk for playing it small in life.
Just avoiding the kinds of risks that are required
to get an education, start a family, have a relationship,
start a business, or to get out of the oppressive conditions
that gave you CPTSD in the first place.
That fear of not being able to deal,
that's what keeps us stuck.
So ACEs are very big right now
in healthcare and social services.
Professionals are really excited to have a better way
to understand what the heck is going on with people like us.
Why we seem to have a harder time
than other patients of theirs, why we get sicker,
why we don't seem to be able
to consistently follow through with healthy behaviors
that we know will help us,
that we said we would do that we really believe we would do,
and then we don't?
Or why we make some of the same mistakes
over and over again?
Do you do that?
Oh, my gosh.
A lot of agencies are changing around their services
to try to do a better job of hearing us and helping us,
and this, in my opinion, is a miraculous development.
This is so welcome and needed.
So, if you've never taken the survey, there's a link to it
in the description section below the video,
along with one of my quizzes,
where you can read through 20 common childhood PTSD symptoms
and see if you think that early trauma
might be affecting you now.
So if you sign up, I can send that to your email.
And in the meantime, I have lined up this video right here
so you can keep learning about CPTSD.
Totally important.
Enjoy.
(soft music)