TRAUMA and COMPLEX TRAUMA

Trauma and complex trauma create difficult challenges for individuals and can have a significant effect on relationships, affected by conscious – or unconscious – associations with past abuse.

People may be “triggered” – this describes becoming emotionally and behaviorally activated by events that seem unrelated to current experiences – or may seem uncomfortably familiar. Interactions between couples or family members quickly become overwhelmed with emotional reactivity.

TRAUMA: You may have experienced one traumatic event or many, recurring incidents – whether due to acts of nature, deployment, a criminal offense, an accident or interpersonal abuse. These may have been of short duration or prolonged, over weeks, months or years.

The effects of trauma can be long-term, affecting you and your relationships with partner, children, extended family, work colleagues, or the driver that just cut you off in traffic.

At times, people deal with trauma by “numbing out” – alcohol or drug use, or emotional withdrawal. Others may “act out” – with anger or other extreme behaviors – causing trouble with family, neighbors, colleagues – and consequences in relationships or even involvement with the legal system.

COMPLEX TRAUMA: This syndrome develops when multiple traumatic events – often starting in childhood – occurring simultaneously or at different points in life, affect the conscious or unconscious memory.

Subsequent traumas become easier to “lay down” in the brain – a history of early trauma can create vulnerabilities that worsen the effects of later traumatic events.

Numbness and strong reactivity alternate as protective processes that help you, your partner or family survive the moment or the day, but negatively affect you and your relationships in the long term.

Often, survivors or past trauma – or their partners, notice:

  • Frequent feelings of depression or anxiety
  • Feeling sudden anger or rage at a person or situation
  • Frequent, strong arguments in a close relationship that seem unresolvable
  • Emotionally “numbing out” – withdrawing or “self-medicating” with substance overuse or addiction
  • Problems with boundaries in relationships – trouble saying “no” or overly-focusing on others to your own detriment
  • Unexplainable discomfort or uneasiness with a situation or event

Remember that feeling one or even some of these does not mean you were traumatized – but trauma survivors often report these occurring frequently. These feelings can make you wonder if you seem “crazy” – but working in therapy, toward insight, self-compassion and processing, you learn that these behaviors are “survival skills” that made sense in the context of living through abuse, though they no longer serve you in your current life or relationships.

INDIVIDUAL AND COUPLES THERAPY: I encourage you to contact me, so that we can discuss your history or your partner’s, consider the effects on you and your relationship, and the possibility of moving toward greater understanding, empathy and respect for yourself and your partner.

There is hope for moving toward post-traumatic growth. We can work together to help you respond to challenges rather than becoming reactive about them-moving toward a new way of managing your past experiences and engaging positively in your present life and relationships.

Please contact me: We can discuss how things are now and how you’d like them to be, envision and plan for change, growth and thriving.

Telephone: 843-271-4771 or Email: [email protected]

I respond to inquiries no later than the next business day!