How Is Complex PTSD Treated?
If you’re living with complex PTSD, healing might feel impossible. But just because your trauma is complex doesn’t mean treatment has to be. Healing is possible through proven treatment methods that take place in a supportive setting. A holistic trauma treatment program can reduce your symptoms and resolve your trauma without making you feel unsafe.
What Is Complex PTSD?
Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD, is a psychological disorder that arises from prolonged or repeated trauma. Long-term trauma can stem from many different sources, such as ongoing physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, captivity or war.
Symptoms of C-PTSD
If you have C-PTSD, you might experience a range of symptoms that go beyond those associated with PTSD. These include:
- Emotional dysregulation: You might find yourself overwhelmed by intense and unpredictable emotions like anger, sadness or anxiety and struggle to calm down after emotional outbursts.
- Negative self-perception: Feelings of worthlessness, guilt or shame can dominate your self-view, accompanied by a persistent belief that you’re flawed or unlovable.
- Interpersonal difficulties: You might have challenges forming or maintaining healthy relationships, chronic distrust of others or a tendency to isolate yourself.
- Physical symptoms: You might experience unexplained chronic pain, fatigue or insomnia, along with a heightened state of hypervigilance and an exaggerated startle response.
- Dissociation: Feeling detached from your emotions, body or surroundings can occur, along with memory gaps or difficulty recalling important details of your life.
- Flashbacks: Traumatic events may be relived as if they are happening in the present. These memories can be vivid and distressing and intrude on your daily life.
Causes of C-PTSD
C-PTSD results from long-term exposure to trauma, especially when the traumatic events occurred during formative years or in situations when you felt trapped. Common causes include:
- Childhood abuse or neglect: This includes emotional, physical or sexual abuse by caregivers or others, as well as chronic neglect or lack of emotional support during childhood.
- Domestic violence: Long-term exposure to intimate partner violence or coercive control can lead to C-PTSD. You might have also felt trapped in an abusive relationship with no safe way to escape.
- Captivity or torture: Experiences of being held captive, like in human trafficking, can turn into complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Prolonged exposure to war or combat: Experiencing continuous threats to your life and safety, like in war zones, as well as witnessing or being involved in acts of extreme violence, can cause C-PTSD.
Difference Between C-PTSD and PTSD
Both PTSD and C-PTSD are trauma-related disorders. They also have similar symptoms and treatments but at varying degrees. The main differences between the two conditions are:
- Nature of trauma: PTSD usually develops after a single traumatic event, like a car accident or natural disaster. C-PTSD generally results from prolonged trauma, like childhood abuse or long-term domestic violence.
- Symptoms: These conditions have similar symptoms. Both may lead to flashbacks, avoidance and hyperarousal. When it comes to C-PTSD, you could face difficulties with emotional regulation, a negative self-perception and challenges in relationships.
The Four Components of Holistic C-PTSD Treatment
At The Sanctuary, we follow a four-step healing journey to treat your complex PTSD. Other treatment centers may just focus on symptom management. But we designed an integrated holistic treatment program to treat your issues at their core, so you can fully heal.
Shed Old Belief Systems
The first step in healing from complex trauma is releasing yourself from the beliefs that are holding you back.
A defining characteristic of C-PTSD is a negative self-view. Many people blame themselves or feel intense shame about what happened to them. But you are never to blame for your trauma. And moving past it requires working through feelings like guilt, embarrassment and in a safe, supported way.
Since another core symptom of complex PTSD is having difficulty forming healthy relationships, you might find it hard to trust others, especially if someone you trusted is the cause of your trauma. But social support is crucial for healing from PTSD. So it’s important to free yourself of fear-based beliefs about the world around you if they’re holding you back from healthy connections.
Identify Shadow Aspects of Yourself
Shadow work, the second step of our holistic trauma treatment program, is the practice of reclaiming your darker parts. The purpose of this step is to identify and bring to light those hidden parts of you, so you can change the way you relate to them.
For example, C-PTSD can make it hard to control your emotions. Some people feel apathetic about everything, even things they used to be passionate about. Others may experience the opposite, blowing up over a minor issue. And if you’re not sure of where these feelings are coming from, it can be exhausting and confusing. By identifying the underlying reasons for feeling the way you do, you can change your own narrative.
If you have C-PTSD, turning inward or diving into your subconscious might sound intimidating. Maybe you’re afraid of what you’ll find there. Or you’ve been running away from those feelings since you can remember. But as long as your shadows remain hidden, they’re in control. By bringing your darkness to the light, you can examine and change how it influences you. You can gain control of your life again.
Envision a New Life
Next, you’ll work on imagining a life where you’re connecting with your true purpose, without your trauma holding you back. You get to ask yourself:
What would life look like if you healed your unresolved trauma?
What could you do for yourself and for the world?
How could you move beyond the hurt and into a life free of fear?
Sometimes, when you’re living with complex PTSD, survival is the goal. As one of our past clients explained, just getting to work every day took everything she had. She had nothing left to give beyond that. If that sounds familiar, envisioning a life where you serve your purpose can seem out of reach. But at this point in your healing, you’ve already done the hard work of shedding old beliefs. You’ve unearthed the hidden parts of yourself and changed how they control you. Now all you have to do is define what life after healing means for you.
We use creative visualization with emotion to help you envision and create your desired future. This modality helps you recognize opportunities that align with the ideal life when they present themselves.
Implement the Changes You’ve Made
The last step of our holistic C-PTSD treatment plan is to apply all the lessons you’ve learned. In this step, you get to start living the life you envisioned, healed and ready to connect with your life’s purpose. You’ve done hard work, know what you’re capable of and are equipped to make choices that align with your new beliefs and goals. If you’ve visualized a healthy lifestyle, implementing changes might include adopting a nutritious diet, establishing a regular exercise routine or setting boundaries to protect your mental health.
C-PTSD is overwhelming, and may make recovery feel out of reach. And while it certainly doesn’t happen overnight, with these four holistic steps as our guide, there’s a wealth of therapies that can treat your C-PTSD.
What Types of Treatments Exist for C-PTSD?
There are many ways to heal your trauma. And while some treatment centers focus on one or two, at The Sanctuary, we use an integrated, holistic approach that touches on all aspects of a whole person: mind, body, soul and spirit.
How To Heal From Complex PTSD
Treatments for complex PTSD can include somatic experiencing, nutrition therapy, and movement and bodywork.
We hold our traumas in our bodies. It’s as if they physically imprint on us. For example, many people with PTSD live in a state of hypervigilance, where you’re constantly focused on potential threats. This can make a simple car backfiring trigger a physical response almost immediately. You might feel your heart rate increase, or you might drop to the ground without even knowing what you’re doing.
Because of this, it’s important that C-PTSD treatment includes therapies that work to physically release your trauma and heal your body. These include:
- Somatic experiencing: Allows you to feel and then learn how to manage the physical sensations resulting from your trauma
- Nutrition therapy: Where we use a balanced diet and supplements to heal your gut-brain connection and encourage natural serotonin production
- Movement and bodywork: Involves therapy techniques, like yoga, tai chai or Pilates, designed to help you let go of the trauma your body is holding onto
How To Recover From Complex PTSD
Recovering from complex PTSD can include treatments like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, medication management and ketamine-assisted treatment.
Many symptoms of C-PTSD are mental, including a negative self-view and difficulty handling emotions. Plus, the same trauma that can cause complex PTSD can also lead to other mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.
For these reasons, treatment must include therapies that heal your mind, including:
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): A therapist guides your eye movements to help you move your trauma into a less intense part of your memory.
- Medication management, which can make your symptoms more manageable as you work to resolve your trauma or reduce the amount of medications you’re taking.
- Ketamine-assisted treatment, in which you can reduce your symptoms and open yourself to further healing with an IV infusion in a therapeutic setting.
- Inner child therapy: Uses approaches like meditation to help you reconnect with and nurture your inner child, leading to profound emotional healing.
Reconnect With Your Soul After Trauma
Trauma affects your soul. If you’ve lived through chronic trauma, you might’ve learned it’s not okay to be yourself. And the only way to get back to your truest self and live your life’s purpose is by repairing the traumatic damage on your soul.
At The Sanctuary, we do this by speaking the languages of your soul: creativity and ritual. With creative therapies, you’ll learn to express your most genuine desires and purpose through music, art, poetry or even time in nature. And we use both ancient and modern ceremonies like guided meditation and fire and drum journeys to help you build rituals of your own so you can access all parts of your soul again.
Repair Your Spirit From Complex PTSD
Each of us is made up of energy, which connects to the larger energetic field. And trauma can block or unbalance your energy flow. These disruptions can lead to a host of physical and emotional issues, like C-PTSD.
It’s essential to heal your energy body to fully resolve your trauma. To do that, we use energy medicine and psychology to bring balance back to your body.
Our holistic, integrated approach to healing trauma means you have access to a range of therapies to try as part of your journey. Because everyone’s trauma is unique, your reaction to trauma is unique as well. That’s why it’s important to have options for treatment, especially if you’re struggling with co-occurring addiction.
Co-Occurring Treatment for C-PTSD and Addiction
Complex PTSD is associated with addiction because of how it affects your emotions, so it’s vital that your treatment program is trauma-informed for the safest, most effective healing possible.
The good news is that in holistic recovery, the process of healing from trauma and addiction is one and the same. For example, nutrition supports both addiction and trauma recovery because “there is no mental health issue without an underlying and predisposed gut issue.” We also use ecotherapy, which involves spending time in nature to help you feel grounded and connected to the natural world, providing a soothing counterbalance to feelings of disconnection that trauma can cause.
If you’re struggling with substance use as a result of your C-PTSD, you may not know where to start. But our immersive healing process offers total transformation, addressing all of your healing needs while providing hands-on comfort and care.
Where You Heal Matters
When looking for C-PTSD treatment, it’s not just the how that is important, but also the where. Exposure to trauma can make it very hard to feel safe.
One former C-PTSD client explained how she spent her entire life before treatment looking for ways to feel secure after her childhood trauma. She had held her breath for years, unable to let go. If you feel the same, residential treatment may seem intimidating. But that same client explained when she entered The Sanctuary, she was finally able to exhale for the first time.
Here, you’ll be able to heal in the tranquility of the Sedona desert, surrounded by beautiful nature. In our small community of equals, we function as a tight-knit family, with everyone supporting each other’s journey. Through proven holistic treatment methods, a deep understanding of what you’ve been through, and a welcoming support system, you too can exhale. Contact The Sanctuary to start your healing journey today.
Kelley Alexander JD. is the co-director of The Sanctuary at Sedona and has worked over the last decade to develop its innovative Integrative Addiction Recovery Program that has helped hundreds of clients to be recovered from addiction and co-occurring disorders. Through her pioneering work, Kelley and her team at The Sanctuary also work with clients to overcome issues related to codependency, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. A JD and former practicing attorney, Kelley holds a BA in World Religions and has done graduate work in psychology. She is an ordained minister, certified shamanic breathwork facilitator, and a graduate of the Four Winds Healing The Light Body School, the premier energy medicine program founded by Alberto Villoldo. Kelley has also been a student of Dr. Joe Dispenza since 2009. She is a member of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology and the Institute for Holistic Addiction Studies. She is a frequent lecturer at seminars and conferences throughout the United States.
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