circling

Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning.

"Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves."

“Complex trauma is also known as developmental trauma in that it is trauma that is chronic, pervasive, and it happens early in development from, say, birth to teens. Many people who have what we call complex trauma have had many years of trauma; mostly we’re talking about child abuse. I think complex trauma also covers other issues like war and political torture … but mostly we use it to think about people who’ve been abused and neglected as children… . Emotional neglect can lead to a pretty profound disconnection from yourself; depersonalization, depression, a sense of purposelessness. It can be pretty severe.”

“Childhood trauma can affect a person so greatly because of its prescence in the time of developmemt. Events that would normally change a person become embedded in every fiber of one’s identity. It is this time of life which is so crucial to your entire future. This is the unique nature of C-PTSD, which doesn’t merely change a person, it creates them. It builds every trait, interest, and understanding of the world with this toxin. Nothing is unaffected or unaltered because all there is to alter was created by the trauma. Moving forward is not moving back to before the trauma, it is in every essence a rebirth and reeducation of life itself. To move on we can not erase, because to erase trauma’s effect we in theory erase ourselves.”

“Many survivors say, “I don’t remember anything,” without realizing that they are remembering when they suddenly startle, feel afraid, tighten up, pull back, feel shame or self-hatred, or start to tremble.”