- What is the difference between PTSD and CPTSD?
It's complicated.
Hahahaha, Mended Light.
(soft music)
Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan Decker,
licensed therapist from Mended Light.
Today, we're gonna talk about
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
versus Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
What's the difference and how do you treat each one?
How do you know if you've got one or the other
and how do you get the help that you need?
So, first of all, what is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Everyone's got kind of a working knowledge of this
but let's go into the specifics.
As defined by the DSM-5, Post Traumatic, which is, you know,
basically the big book in mental disorders.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder comes when you
have experienced something where your life was threatened
or where somebody else's life was threatened,
where you experienced abuse or violence or extreme terror
and you witness someone die, or you witness someone
on the receiving end of an act of violence,
or that person was you and all these terrible things.
We frequently associate it with war, with fighting fires,
with police work, but also living in violent circumstances
whether it's your neighborhood, whether it's your home.
But it's there in the title, it's post.
It happened in the past, it's not ongoing.
And now you're dealing with it.
After a trauma, you may experience hyper vigilance, right?
You thought that your world was safe,
now you realize that it's not so you're always on edge,
always looking for where the new threat could come from,
where the new danger could come from
'cause you don't wanna be blindsided.
But what that means is you never really relax, right?
That you perceive threats when there aren't threats there.
You may find yourself very avoidant
of reminders of the trauma.
It could be music, it could be colors,
it could be places, it could be people,
it could be sight or sounds or anything that takes you back.
Why, because when you get taken back here
you experience anxiety, sometimes even panic
from full blown panic attacks where your heart's pounding
and where you feel trapped and crushed
to your mind racing, right,
from the stress and the fear of it all
and you can't focus on what needs to be done.
You may get nightmares, you may get waking memories
where you're having a flashback
and you think you're back in that time.
More frequently people know when and where they are,
but they have intense emotional response
where they feel as if they were
back in the abusive or dangerous situation.
Now, for some of you I'm describing
your daily lived reality.
Now that's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
is recognized internationally,
it's not recognized here in the DSM-5
but it's recognized internationally as
it's a lot of the same symptoms, but the cause is different.
With Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
instead of a single event or a series of events
during a short period of time
it's an extended period of trauma
that can be ongoing, in which case it's just CTSD, right?
Complex Traumatic Disorder where the trauma is ongoing
or if it happened in the past
but it happened over an extended period of time
to where you just got pounded over and over
and over and over again with these terrifying things.
In some cases, CPTSD manifests as more extreme than PTSD.
It manifests as more severe and more painful.
In other cases, it's not a competition
and PTSD can be just as devastating.
But that's the difference is where it came from.
So what do you do
if you are experiencing CPTSD?
First of all, get qualified help.
Recognize that you may have loved ones in your life,
you may have support.
If you don't have support, then get support.
That's the second thing,
but you may have people in your life who care about you
and who are there for you, but that doesn't mean
they're the ones qualified to help you.
If I'm walking across the street
and a car hits me and knocks my leg off
my family can hold my hand and tell me that they love me
and tell me that they believe for me
and tell me that they believe in me
and that they're so sorry this is happening to me.
And that's all great and that's all comforting.
But what I really need is a surgeon to reattach the leg.
And it's not fair to ask my family,
"Hey, can you put the leg back on and stop the bleeding?"
I need somebody who knows how to do it.
Similarly, your loved ones can provide you with support
and they play a role, but they're not the ones to heal you.
They're not the ones to fix you, you need qualified help.
That's what we do here at Mended Light.
Every member of our team is trained to help you with trauma.
And so I wanna invite you to take a look
at the description here, where you will find a link
for a complimentary 15-minute consultation
with a member of my team.
So get qualified support.
If it's not with us, get support from somebody
because you're going to need a professional
to guide you through this.
What does that look like?
It might look like EMDR therapy, which has to do with
rapid eye movement and rewiring the brain.
It could have to do with Narrative therapy,
which is your story and the details of your story
don't change but the meaning does,
the purpose of it does, what it means to you,
I'm no longer a victim, I have an advocate.
I'm no longer a victim, I'm a survivor.
I am no longer somebody who's unprepared,
I am prepared to face the world
and I'm not defined by this trauma
I can rewrite my story to have
a different meaning for my life.
The second thing is to have a healthy support network.
Now, sometimes your family, your friends are the source
of the trauma and you can't turn to them
so you have to build a new family of chosen people.
Support groups are especially helpful for this.
In some cases, church organizations
and the community that you build there
can be incredibly helpful for this.
Wherever you find community, wherever you find support
and help and love and understanding that is so crucial.
And in some cases it's important to have
a support network that doesn't know anything about
your trauma so that you have a sense of normalcy.
I experienced a traumatic loss in my life.
As you know, my mother died suddenly
from medical malpractice.
And that was a horrible shock for our entire family.
Everybody knew, the people at my church knew,
the people at my circle of friends knew,
obviously my family knew.
But I was in a comedy club and I chose not to tell
any of my cast members that my mom had died.
And you might think, "Well they couldn't be there for you
"if you didn't tell them."
But the fact is I wanted some place that was just normal,
some place that there were no looks of pity,
where it wasn't awkward, where people
or people were trying to be there for me.
I appreciated people being there for me in other places
but I just wanted a sense of normalcy.
So it can definitely help for you to have people
in your life who don't know what you've been to through
just so you can have that safe space.
It's also important that there are people
who do know, who empathize, who understand,
and even if they aren't qualified
to guide you through the process of healing,
they could be a shoulder to cry on,
someone to hold you, someone to wipe away your tears,
someone to tell you that it's okay.
Healing from CPTSD, it took time to create it,
it's gonna take time to undo it.
But the idea that time heals all wounds isn't true.
If you're not doing it the right way,
giving it time may just mean that you're suffering longer.
But having the support that you need,
having the guidance that you need,
using the techniques that will help you,
and giving it time will.
But the fact is you have to be patient with the process.
You're still gonna have nightmares.
You're still gonna have triggers.
You're still gonna have things that are reminders
that you wish you could avoid.
There is strength in something called Exposure therapy.
Exposure therapy doesn't mean you throw yourself
in the deep end with what you're afraid of.
It does mean that you learn to manage your arousal,
that fear, that panic, that you to soothe yourself
through it and gradually expose yourself
more and more to triggers and to reminders
and then you soothe yourself and assess for safety, right?
You soothe yourself and assess for safety.
If I'm safe, then I can feel safe.
And if I'm not safe, okay, what steps
am I gonna take so that I can be safe?
These are steps to healing from CPTSD.
There's more to cover here
than we could cover in a single video.
A lot of it would go into
the healing process in your therapy sessions.
But if you've been through a trauma,
especially a prolonged trauma,
we've got a free resource for you in the description,
a link for you to click on
so that your healing journey
can start right here, right now.
The fact is, you've been through hell
and I'm so sorry for that.
It is not something that you deserved,
it is not something that you chose,
but it is here and we have to deal.
I do know that things can get better for you.
Your life doesn't have to be stuck in this gear anymore.
Now, how do you deal with trauma?
What have you found to be helpful?
Let us know in the comments below.
What questions do you have on object or any other subject
that you'd like for me to address in a future video?
Let me know in the comments below.
Like, subscribe, click the bell and share with your friends.
If you enjoy this I wanna invite you
to check out this other video,
Is Addiction A Mental Illness Or Is It A Way Of Coping?
I'm Jonathan Decker here with Mended Light.
This has been Ask A Therapist.
keep shining because we need your light.
And if you feel like you're light is going out, get help.
We are here for you and so are others.
I'll see you next time.
And look just, as I said,
I told you it would come and here it is
because it's important to me to keep my promises.