Living with Complex-PTSD (C-PTSD) is exactly how it sounds - complex. In 2024, I was diagnosed with C-PTSD due to a series of repeated traumatic experiences across different parts of my life. While many resources explain C-PTSD at a high level, they often reduce it to a list of feelings or behaviours. The reality is far less surface-level.
Before diving deeper, it helps to understand the difference between PTSD and Complex-PTSD.
PTSD often develops after a single or time-limited traumatic event, such as combat, assault, or a serious accident. Triggers can include sensory reminders, situations, or internal states, and symptoms may present as hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, anger, panic, or shutdown.
Complex PTSD develops from repeated or prolonged trauma, often in situations where the person had little control or ability to escape, such as ongoing abuse or neglect. In addition to PTSD symptoms, C-PTSD impacts emotional regulation, self-identity, relationships, and long-term thinking patterns. These effects are pervasive and ongoing, not situational.
C-PTSD is frequently misdiagnosed as multiple separate mental health conditions due to the breadth and overlap of its symptoms. In my case, the diagnosis stemmed from prolonged relational trauma - trauma that occurred within relationships rather than isolated events.
For someone with relational trauma, new or emotionally significant relationships can feel inherently unsafe. While most people experience anxiety or uncertainty in relationships at times, C-PTSD amplifies this to a disproportionate and often debilitating level. The nervous system responds as though threat is imminent, catastrophising situations beyond what is happening in reality. This can lead to panic attacks, emotional collapse, or withdrawal — even when the person is logically aware that the feared outcome is unlikely.
Someone with C-TSD can also experience extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms, like their brain subconsciously trying to relive the trauma in a ‘safe space’ to create a new memory (this mainly occurs through dissociation), intrusions such as hallucinations, or flashbacks, severe dissociation which in some cases can lead to DID, panic attacks, severe mood swings, and identity crisis’.
What’s often overlooked in conversations about trauma is how deeply it lives in the body. Trauma isn’t just something we think about — it’s something the nervous system learns. Even when we’re not consciously remembering what happened, the brain has stored how it felt: the fear, the helplessness, the physical sensations. Because the brain is connected to every system in the body, those memories can be reactivated without warning.
This is most visible during flashbacks and trauma-related hallucinations. When something in the present reminds the brain of a past threat, the nervous system can override logic and context. The brain struggles to distinguish between then and now, and the body responds as if the traumatic event is happening again. This isn’t a failure of understanding - it’s the brain doing what it learned to do to survive.
Dissociation plays a major role in this process. During overwhelming stress, the brain may partially shut down awareness as a protective response. This can look like zoning out, feeling unreal or detached, losing time, or feeling disconnected from your body. In more severe cases, the mind may compartmentalise experiences so strongly that different parts take on different roles in order to cope.
Because dissociation dulls awareness, people often don’t realise how much it’s affecting them. Yet dissociation is one of the core features of C-PTSD. It underpins many of the symptoms people struggle with — flashbacks, panic attacks, emotional numbness, or even revisiting traumatic material in an attempt to regain control in a safer environment.
There’s so much more to C-PTSD than can be captured in a single article. It shapes how you interpret the world, how safe your body feels in everyday moments, how you relate to other people, and how you relate to yourself. Its effects are often invisible from the outside, but constant on the inside.
C-PTSD isn’t defined by occasional distress or difficult memories — it’s defined by a nervous system that has learned to expect danger, even in moments that should feel neutral or safe. Healing isn’t about “moving on” or forgetting what happened; it’s about slowly teaching the body that the threat is no longer present.
This is not a linear process, and it’s not something willpower can fix. Understanding C-PTSD means recognising that these responses aren’t flaws or overreactions — they are learned survival strategies. And with the right support, safety, and time, those strategies can be gently unlearned.