Bi Women Support Network

Zoe is one of many survivors who only remember an experience of sexual assault years after it happened, in what might be referred to as delayed recall (the term “repressed memories” is controversial among psychologists). It’s a form of dissociative amnesia, a disorder in which a patient doesn’t actively remember something traumatic that happened to them, usually because they detached mentally during the event as a coping mechanism. “Extreme, violent trauma, particularly repeated trauma, can produce markedly altered states of consciousness,” says Richard J. Loewenstein, MD, medical director of The Trauma Disorders Program at Sheppard Pratt Health System. “These include fight and flight, but also a ‘freeze’ state. People shut down, space out, their heart rate drops”—kind of like when a small animal plays dead around a large predator.

Because this state is similar to a dissociative state, things that happen when the brain is in it may not be readily accessible once the person returns to normal, says Dr. Loewenstein. (Research shows that if you get people drunk in a lab setting and teach them something, for example, they may not remember it when they’re sober. But when they’re drunk again, they do remember.) “This, along with other factors, may help explain lack of conscious recall of traumatic experiences.”

In Zoe’s case, her fear of the police officer, coupled with his direct questions about her attacker, may have put her brain back into the freeze state—and helped her remember her assault. Memory experts emphasize that these traumatic memories aren’t technically lost—they just haven’t been retrieved in a while. “Our brains encode and store things that have significance to us,” says Jim Hopper, PhD, a teaching associate in psychology at Harvard Medical School and an expert in recovered memories from trauma. “If we’re in a traumatized state, that amplifies the effect: Certain pieces get strongly encoded and strongly stored. But how well things get stored is entirely different from whether or not they get retrieved.” This is why Zoe remembers nothing else that happened on the day of her attack, but her memory of the attack itself is vivid; she just hadn’t accessed it until her police interrogation.

-The Accountability Was Never Yours, Darling

When my therapist told me that he believed I was struggling with C-PTSD, countless pieces of the puzzle rapidly clicked into place for me. The flashbacks, the fear of abandonment, the hypervigilance, the distrust, the dissociation, the deep and abiding emotional pain that I could swear I was born with – with one diagnosis, all of it seemed to make so much more sense.

Complex trauma, while not officially listed in the DSM-5, is still widely recognized by clinicians and survivors alike as a form of PTSD that occurs due to prolonged exposure to trauma – particularly interpersonal trauma, in which there was abuse and/or neglect that led to a significant imbalance of power.

Many culturally competent clinicians and survivors alike extend this framework to include the oppression that marginalized folks face, which can so often be traumatic.

My understanding of C-PTSD is largely influenced by the work of Pete Walker, a psychotherapist and survivor of complex trauma, whose words and affirmations helped bolster my own recovery (his book on complex trauma in childhood is a must-read).

While I am in a much better place with my trauma history, my loved ones – especially close partners who don’t share this kind of history – sometimes struggle to know how best to support me. I’ve had time to read, engage in trauma-informed therapy, and connect with community around these issues, but my loved ones haven’t necessarily done that work.

Friends and family of folks with C-PTSD don’t always have the same level of education and understanding that survivors do. That’s why I wanted to create this quick resource – to serve as a jumping off point to how to better support trauma survivors.

When you just can’t practice self care, aim for basic hygiene and keeping yourself alive.

When you just can’t have positive thoughts, focus on ignoring the negative ones.

When you just can’t quit those bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms, be sure to take care of yourself afterwards.

When you just can’t make yourself eat enough, aim for something three times a day, even if it’s something small.

When you just can’t stop binge eating, just do your best to forgive yourself and focus on something else instead of dwelling on it for any longer.

‘Perfect’ is the enemy of ‘good’. ‘Good ‘is often the enemy of ‘done’. Best practices are almost always the enemy of better practices.

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memory shifts. you build barriers to protect yourself and depending on the frequency of your exposure to something, those barriers can break down or change

understanding something better can make it feel worse sometimes. look, when you were younger you probably couldnt understand that something was hurting you. now that you know it was bad??? yeah its gonna trigger you worse than it used to because you KNOW now.

recovering from some things can unlock deeper struggles. so you dealt with the issues that were on the surface? well your brain is going to let you access the next level of problems that need to be dealt with now.

life has different phases that expose you to different triggers. stuff that triggers a teen with school responsibilities is going to be different than the stuff that triggers a new parent with a new baby or an adult with a social job or a blogger with constant exposure to daily news.

triggers can be shaped by the trauma of people you know. you can gain new triggers from knowing something related to that happened to someone you care about. once you know how awful a thing can be, even if it wasnt awful for you personally, you can still be sensitive to it.

and most importantly

YOU DONT NEED A REASON FOR SOMETHING TO BE A TRIGGER. yes, there IS a reason, but it’s not your responsibility to immediately understand why your brain does what it does. forcing yourself to analyze too soon is skipping the stage where you learn to cope with it first. learn to cope, then analyze. knowing why is difficult if you cant handle the emotions that come with knowing