Book Review: Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

Pete Walker’s book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving isn’t something most people will finish in one sitting. It’s also not a book many readers will be able to spend hours deeply involved in, but that’s not because it’s complicated or difficult to read.

It’s because this book is a guidebook for those struggling with multiple mental health diagnoses or those who haven’t really ever received the correct diagnosis. While CPTSD isn’t currently is the DSM-5, a diagnosis and better understanding can help tremendously those struggling who haven’t found the right help yet.

Walker’s book offers hope to those still struggling to manage their mental illnesses. It offers insight into trauma responses beyond the well-known fight or flight reactions, by adding both fawn and freeze — two descriptions many, like this author, have found particularly helpful and immensely freeing in our struggle to improve our mental health.

Personally, I can’t read for more than 20–30 minutes at a time, as each new section brings back a flood of tough memories that I didn’t yet understand were mostly maladaptive trauma responses were still hurting me.

Walker also explains the three kinds of flashbacks, visual, somatic, and emotional, in a way that gave me brilliant understanding of why I sometimes feel so small and vulnerable while at the same time lashing out in powerful anger. It helped me understand the fear that sets in on top of many poorly treated mental illnesses, and how that fear leads to further problems later in life that many people won’t understand as connected.

For those without a firm diagnosis, for those with multiple diagnosis, for those with long-term, repeated or childhood trauma, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving is the handbook we need to help better understand what our minds are going through…and how to find our true selves underneath the fear too often subconsciously controlling our lives.