I just started reading “Complicated PTSD: From Enduring to Flourishing” by Pete Walker. I can already inform I will not be able to put it down (I will compose a book review when I’m completed, which shouldn’t take long). I’m also going to bring this book to my next therapy session because I desire my therapist to see it.
Walker, who is a therapist and also a survivor of narcissistic abuse and sufferer of C-PTSD, is an interesting author and definitely understands his subject matter. In one of the first chapters, he discusses the “Four F’s”– which are 4 different “designs” of coping that people with C-PTSD establish to handle their violent caretakers and prevent the abandonment depression. Whatever style one adopts might be based on a number of factors– natural temperament, the role in the family the child was provided (scapegoat, golden kid, “lost” or ignored kid), birth order, and other aspects.
Offered on Amazon
The 4 F’s are:1.
Fight (the egotistical defense): often “golden children,” such kids find out to project embarassment onto others; might go on to develop NPD
2. Flight (the obsessive-compulsive/anxiety defense): these kids will grow up to become extremely anxious, obsessive-compulsive, and avoidant.3.
Freeze (the dissociative defense): these kids “protect” themselves by dissociating from others, themselves, and their environment.4.
Fawn (the codependent defense): the child discovers to avoid damage by people-pleasing or siding with their abusers.
Walker hypothesizes that if C-PTSD were acknowledged in the psychiatric literature, the DSM could probably be minimized to the size of a pamphlet, for many individuals detected with other disorders actually have C-PTSD, which incorporates symptoms of many other conditions and have typical roots.What you might
have been misdiagnosed with (or detected yourself with) if you have C-PTSD (these are the most typical):
Personality Disorders:
Borderline Personality Disorder
Narcissistic Character Condition
Dissociative disorders
Anxiety Conditions:
Generalized Anxiety Condition
Panic Condition
Social Anxiety
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Mood Disorders:
Anxiety
Bipolar illness
Developmental Disorders:
Autism Spectrum Conditions
ADHD
ADD
Codependency
Addictive Disorders
While any or all of these diagnoses can be co-morbid with C-PTSD, they miss the mark or do not inform the entire story. Character disorders such as BPD can develop from severe, unrelieved C-PTSD and they do share many resemblances, but character condition labels are stigmatizing and not really practical for someone who has actually suffered extended youth injury and abuse. Labels like “panic disorder” or “anxiety” aren’t handy due to the fact that they just deal with one or two signs of C-PTSD and therefore can’t even begin to deal with the roots of the depression or anxiety. You can treat stress and anxiety or depression with drugs or short-term therapy, but you can’t treat the individual of the C-PTSD that’s triggering their chronic anxiety or anxiety. The exact same chooses labels such as alcoholism or codependency. These are merely signs. Individuals with C-PTSD are also often incorrectly detected with developmental disorders such as ADHD or autism, which not only do not attend to the trauma that caused the ADHD- or Aspergers-like behaviors, however likewise have entirely different causes.
