What is complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (c-ptsd) as an adoptee
Complex PTSD is very similar to PTSD. It tends to be caused by exposure to multiple traumas rather than just one for PTSD, although there are often exceptions.
PTSD UK have a great list of causes (and I can’t recommend their website highly enough!)- https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/complex-ptsd/
But the ones that stick out for me as an adoptee are:
Child abuse or neglect (it most definitely feels like neglect to be relinquished)
Regular, long-term feelings of captivation or powerlessness (as adoptees we are totally powerless!)
What really resonated for me though, were the three additional categories of symptoms that make c-ptsd different to ptsd:
difficulties with emotional regulation,
an impaired sense of self-worth,
interpersonal problems.
My whole life I felt different. I didn’t fit, at home, at school, at university. I never really knew what it was, just that I wasn’t the same as other people, I didn’t think about myself or the world the same as they did.
I’m 51 and was adopted at 6 weeks old, and at no point in my life had anyone mentioned trauma to me. Oh I’ve read the Primal Wound (didn’t really get on with it to be honest), and do understand that being adopted has affected me, but at no point had anyone mentioned trauma!
To finally have a diagnosis and to now be working on ways to, where possible, minimise the impact of this trauma is literally changing my view of both myself and the world.
I’ve worked through ‘Coping with Trauma-related dissociation’ – a fantastic if rather thick book by Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele & Onno Van der Hart; I’ve read through ‘The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy’ by Deb Dana and worked through my maps, and had them stuck on my wall. I’ve undergone both EMDR and Tapping, and whilst that hasn’t dealt with being relinquished it has really helped with specific occasions from my childhood that were also traumatic.
But for me, the biggest ‘aha’ moment was reading ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel van der Kolk, how was this book written in 2014 and I have only been told of it now, 8 years later!
In it Bessel talks about how the evidence now is that talking therapies just don’t work for trauma ‘No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.’ Which completely explains why all the years of talking therapies did nothing for me, and in fact just made me feel worse about the fact that nothing changed the way I felt about myself and the world!
You see the thing is, I’m not broken, my brain is just wired differently because of what happened to me (there is a fanastic image of a brain scan from PTSD UK here - https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/the-science-and-biology-of-ptsd/
And what happened to me was not my fault! Being relinquished (thank you Paul Sunderland for using that word), was shit, and it wasn’t my choice. It changed me and the way I see myself and the world. Knowing what has happened to my brain makes all that just a little bit easier to live with. I have strategies for dealing with when I dissociate. My friends and family know that I am hyper vigilant, and will check if they see me jump at sounds etc. I write with curiosity in a journal about how I feel, and I try not to beat myself up about my reactions to situations, they are natural because of what I have experienced.
I told my therapist that whilst there is a part of me that is sad that it took me this long to know what is different about me, I’m glad I now know, as I might live another 30 years with this information and these new strategies, and that has to be a good thing!
Em
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And another adoptee, Debbie, has added some words on her experience of diagnosis with CPTSD:
The experience of being told I was adopted was extremely traumatic and I didn't receive any adult support to regulate my emotions and help me make sense of my relinquishment. Therefore, I was left in a tumultuous internal state with no sense of safety, this plus childhood neglect created the CPTSD and hyper vigilance which - for me - is triggered by people, places and events more than sound.
I would also like to add that the trauma lives inside my body and talking therapy compounded it by having to relive the traumatic experiences. Most of us are unable to afford somatic therapy and therefore trying to access this form of therapy on the NHS is impossible. I was diagnosed with CPTSD in October 2021 and I am still waiting for therapy after being told there is an eight to nine months waiting list. I contacted the team last week to ask when my therapy will start and I was told there is a shortage of therapists and I will now be referred in late spring of 2023!
Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash
