What is Complex Trauma

Unresolved trauma can leave people feeling hopeless and ashamed. Sometimes for years. Often for decades. Occasionally, and tragically, for a lifetime.

When the assigned diagnoses, treatments or medications keep failing to work, most people cannot help but begin to suspect that they may be incurable, that something is really wrong with them.

Many take matters into their own hands, seeking desperate measures to feel alive, to quiet the pain, the self-loathing, and the terror, or simply to disappear.

Desperate measures often bring additional complications and unwanted consequences, and are recognized by the outside world solely for the risk they entail, the irresponsibility they convey, and the destruction they bring.

In time, many come to believe that they must be to blame for how much they hurt, for how messed up their lives have become. They come to understand that the monster is real, and that it is inside of them. That it is them.

Symptoms of Complex Trauma:

...Emotional dysregulation: difficulty managing emotions, mood swings

...Dissociation: feeling detached from body or surroundings

...Negative self-concept: chronic shame, guilt, feeling worthless

...Interpersonal difficulties: trouble forming or maintaining relationships

...Somatic symptoms: unexplained pain, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues

...Cognitive impairments: memory problems, attention deficits