A Tending Space

Trauma is any experience that is too much, too fast, or too soon for an individual or community that is not promptly held or grounded in safe connection and belonging afterwards. It is rupture without repair, overwhelm without calm, psychological and physiological pain without expression, so it fragments and gets locked up and away from our consciousness, shaping the architecture of our nervous system. The nervous system is constantly detecting and responding to a felt sense of safety, danger, or threat to life through a process called neuroception. Complex trauma encompasses too much rupture/overwhelm, and it also emphasizes a too little or missing attuned, reparative, soothing/regulating response. Often when we think of trauma, we think about acute trauma. Complex trauma, on the other hand, is continuous/repetitive and it is relational/systemic, encompassing intergenerational trauma, intrauterine and pre-verbal trauma, developmental trauma, attachment trauma, collective trauma, vicarious trauma, and existential-religious trauma (iptrauma.org). Complex trauma can develop as a result of a caregiver’s love that felt conditional, unpredictable, or absent, emotional neglect that left the child feeling unseen, unheard, or unimportant, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, or witnessing familial chaos/dysfunction, addiction, domestic violence, and/or mental health issues. We might implicitly learn to predict and prepare for instability and insecurity in ourselves, our relationships, and the world, which can keep us in a brace or collapsed stance, of mind/body/spirit. 

You may have heard of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a diagnosis in the DSM-5) or CPTSD (a diagnosis in the ICD-11). As a non-pathologizing practitioner who believes language is a container that gets to evolve to expand and deepen meaning-making, I have chosen to leave out “disorder” inspired by the Trauma Rewired Podcast, but each person should use the language that is most supportive to them. CPTS (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress) can be psychologically expressed in sleep disturbances (insomnia, nightmares), difficulty trusting people, negative self-perception, fragmented memory and/or identity, hypervigilance, heightened startle response, dissociation, chronic shame, chronic pain and some chronic illnesses, and addiction. It is neurobiologically associated with baseline dysregulation/autonomic dysfunction, hyperactivity of the amygdala (internal fire alarm), hypoactivity in the prefrontal cortex (emotional regulation, planning, and decision-making), reduced hippocampal (image-based memory) volume, hypocortisolism (excess cortisol pattern) or flattened diurnal cortisol curves (burnout of the stress-response system), neurochemical imbalances (often reduced serotonin and dopamine levels), and alterations in endogenous opioid systems (contributing to emotional numbing and inability to experience joy or pleasure) (iptrauma.org). Physiologically, trauma is expressed in fascia, breathing patterns, heart rate variability, posture, pain (and pain perception).