Complex PTSD & the Monster Under the Bed
Despite a hypervigilant limbic system, which seems to take us to the verge of the abyss regularly, we were told, for many years, that those of us with post childhood trauma symptoms don’t fit into the PTSD or Complex PTSD diagnoses. Thankfully the perspective on that is slowly changing. As it most certainly should. Our level of dread and unresolved fears continues to play out in our adult lives to such a degree that they wreak havoc with our very sense of reality. I don’t mean that we’re crazy, just crazed. How is that different? It’s different because we still have our adult self, which exhausts itself daily holding us together. Some of us function like clockwork, due to the impossible expectations we set for ourselves. Expectations that dangle before us, always just out of reach. There are those of us with post childhood trauma symptoms who choose to wear the excruciating mask of false perfection, a type of addiction itself. Others choose to numb themselves via drugs, alcohol, food, etc. At least they are giving clues out to those who care to observe and respond. The ones who pretend that nothing is amiss are playing a special kind of Russian Roulette.
Throughout adulthood I suppressed and denied the throbbing fear of IT, which fomented deep in mental lockdown. My body, mind, heart and soul yearned to heal. It would stage a rebellion if necessary. Yet, I ignored its call as I dashed through each day with an unexplainable and unrelenting sense of looming urgency. In a single day my meticulously constructed false-scaffolding collapsed.
After nearly twenty years of marriage, I experienced a surprise divorce. I was left tending my rampant traumatized child parts, which were all simultaneously crying out in pain, urgently demanding that their needs be met. My traumatized inner children were freaking out over the loss of the last person in the world I ever thought would abandon me. The intensity of my attempts at dissociation increased in proportion to their unrelenting demands. It was like running a marathon every day as I struggled to distract myself through working, exercising, attending college and caring for my three children as a single parent. The more I had to juggle the safer I felt.
“Know thyself,” is the last thing someone with post childhood trauma symptoms wants to do. We expend an enormous amount of energy running from the monster under the bed . . . which is, we believe, ourselves. The tools and techniques we employ for distraction are multitudinous. We are experts at not knowing ourselves, something we have perfected to the point of near obliteration of our True Self. This is heartbreaking because the only path to healing is through our True Self, which has all the answers we need to lead us to a liberated state where we love and accept ourselves because we discover we are love and we are enough.
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Copyright ©2018 Josephine Faulk, MPH. Excerpt from WORTHY A Personal Guide For Healing Your Childhood Trauma by Josephine Faulk,MPH.
