How to Recover from CPTSD
CPTSD can be completely cured. What are the most effective methods?
“Trauma comes to all of us. We can use tools of self-awareness and self-care to heal our trauma and become healthier and more whole than we’ve ever been,” says James S. Gordon, MD, psychiatrist who has spent 50 years studying integrative approaches to overcoming psychological trauma and stress.
“The body has been designed to renew itself through continuous self-correction. These same principles also apply to the healing of psyche, spirit, and soul,” asserts Peter A. Levine, PhD, neuroscientist and psychologist who also devoted his life to methods of healing from psychological trauma.
Many people are able to regain their peace, emotional stability, and inner light. However, the brain will keep some of the trauma-related changes. This is because certain systems within the brain are structured to retain portions of past negative experiences to ensure our emotional and physical safety.
The treatment of CPTSD is largely associated with a change in your attitude towards yourself. The realization that there was abuse and that everything that happened is not your fault, that someone else hung negative projections on you like a dirty coat, is already 50% of the way down the road to liberation! You can begin to get to know your True Self by sorting through the qualities that you used to consider yours and subjecting them to a critical assessment: is this really mine? Very often, victims of abuse prohibit themselves from experiencing personal happiness, joy, self-care, self-development (all this was called “selfishness”). However, remember that if the narcissists in your life didn’t destroy you, they left you with the greatest gift: super-resilience. If you didn’t break down in childhood and develop narcissistic personality disorder, like many children of narcissists, that means you’re a very strong person! The vampires tortured you and drank your blood, but you did not become a bloodsucker yourself! And your spiritual wounds are curable.
When the traumatic event happened, your main task was to survive. Therefore, you never experienced your emotions to their full extent, especially since you were forbidden from showing them. “If you had toxic parents and other relatives, you have been taught since childhood to suppress and ignore your emotions because you were forbidden to express them,” says Lisa A. Romano, a life coach for fighting narcissistic abuse, CPTSD and codependency. “You couldn’t afford to be open and vulnerable with those closest to you because it wasn’t safe. You have become accustomed to gaslighting and self-gaslighting, having stopped trusting yourself. It’s important for you to learn to recognize your emotions, because without this you will not be able to correctly express your feelings, adequately contact other people, and, if necessary, ask for help and support.” For example, behind the word “hurt” can hide disappointment, grief, frustration, humiliation, resentment, a feeling of rejection and abandonment by people important to you or/and the feeling that you’ve been betrayed.
Even when repressed, emotions continue to rule over you and your life. And until you learn to define them and work them out, you are not fully in charge of yourself! People with CPTSD can sometimes behave like narcissists: they are irritable, and their moods may fluctuate for no reason. They can even gaslight others, having learned this from previous toxic relationships. As a result, the behavior of their new partners changes — and the former victims get exactly what they were afraid of (as the saying goes, “If you call someone a duck for long enough, he’ll start quacking”). Mindfulness will help you, including mindfulness about your own emotions. Ask yourself: what exactly am I feeling? Where do I feel it in my body? What sensations are there?
It’s important to learn to acknowledge your own emotions and start to really feel them — but the whole secret to mindfulness is doing so without merging with them! As if your emotions are a river in which you’re wading at knee or waist height. Or even up to your chest — but you don’t allow your emotions to flood you! Let them flow past and through you as you watch them. Maintaining this position as an observer is very important! Some distancing from momentary thoughts and feelings weakens their power over you.
Mindfulness will also help you avoid the other extreme — prohibiting feelings that are “wrong” from your point of view or from someone else’s. Many people think, “I shouldn’t be sad” or “I shouldn’t be angry.” Mindfulness allows you to acknowledge all of your emotions without having to repress them. “I shouldn’t be angry” becomes “I’m angry, and in this situation it’s justified.” Don’t be shy and ashamed of your emotions — any of them! They make us human. Helping us identify those who are harmful to us and find those with whom we will be safe and well.
In addition, the better you understand your emotions, the easier it is for you to understand how others are feeling. And make contact with them.
It’s very important to remember that trauma that has not been fully worked through is bound to repeat itself, to attract similar people and similar painful situations! This is an unconscious desire to finally understand how to come out on top — or at least without harm to yourself. Therefore, it is very important to work with a psychotherapist (many people don’t find “their person” right away, so do not be upset if you don’t connect with your first psychologist.)
Healthy mourning, processing and letting go of traumatic events will replace your resentment and anger with self-acceptance, self-support, and the ability to protect your personal boundaries.
However, for people with CPTSD, traditional talk therapy (CBT) is not very effective. Because old traumas cannot be healed only by talking, even with a good professional psychologist: working with the body is also important (in people with CPTSD, the brain and nervous system have learned to function in an unhealthy way, affecting the whole body as a result). With CPTSD, psychotherapy methods such as DBT, EMDR, brainspotting, hypnosis, and body-oriented therapy are very helpful. Tapping, yoga, qigong, tai chi, wushu will also help. But the main thing is that you’re doing self-help work on a regular basis! Healing from mental trauma is built into us like healing from physical trauma. You just need to help yourself heal.
First, you should get into the good habit of taking 15–20 minutes every day to write down everything that is worrying you at the time in freeform, literally like a stream of consciousness. By spilling everything that torments you onto the page, you alleviate your emotional state and calm down (it’s important to write with a pen on paper, not type on a computer, since this involves different parts of the brain). In addition, new stresses will no longer be able to “get stuck” in your psyche and body, since when you write it down, the brain receives the command: “This has been recorded elsewhere, so you can let it go and forget.” And you also involuntarily analyze what was happening (even with the most seemingly chaotic narration of events), as a result, you better understand where to go from there. This is a very effective method for working with new and old traumas, as well as for increasing your awareness. It improves both your mental and physical condition.
If it is difficult for you to express your feelings in words, and your emotions are bursting, try to get out from what is tormenting you through drawings. Such art therapy is successfully used in CPTSD treatment, including in children.
It’s also possible (and useful) to dance your pain away in voluntary movements. Singing is just as helpful: like the above techniques, it frees from the burden of sometimes overwhelming emotions and helps you calm down.
TO BE CONTINUED! There will be even MORE IMPORTANT information in my new posts! Especially for people traumatized by toxic partners and narcissistic parents. Stay tuned to find out how to protect yourself from toxic personalities, how to heal from abuse, and how to get rid of malware of codependency and CPTSD. How to find and keep real love, how to create healthy relationships!
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