THE 60 CHARACTERISTICS OF COMPLEX TRAUMA

Safety becomes our highest priority. We are afraid of things that may hurt us. This leads to excess caution around others, little or no “love”, and poor relationships.

We avoid pain at any cost. In the past, there has been much pain, and no solution to stop the pain.

We like our routines and don’t like change for fear of getting hurt. The thought paralyzes us and stops us from taking action.

We would rather stay in an unhealthy, abusive situation than leave and go into the unknown. “At least I know what to expect in this situation. It could be worse…”

In an unhealthy home, we are punished for not doing things perfectly. To avoid pain and humiliation, we won’t try anything new.

When things are going well, we feel scared because we’re not used to it. We believe it will not last, and the outcome will be worse than before.

We’ve had our hope crushed so many times! We are afraid to hope because of broken promises - Dad promises not to drink, but does anyway.

We look for negative things in people and situations and plan for the worst-case scenario to protect ourselves from disappointment.

Unknown situations are confusing, bring opposition, and make it harder to deal with all these changes. We believe it is easier to return to the old comfortable way of living.

If we live in an environment that isn’t safe, we live in a constant state of fear or panic. Anxiety is important - it tells us when we are in danger. It becomes a problem when it doesn’t "turn off" when we are safe.

Stress is normal when we’re overloaded or pressed for time. If we don’t learn to deal with stress, we act out, cry, and numb our emotions.

We learn early on that conflict means danger. We don’t know what healthy conflict looks like and we are afraid of it. Healthy conflict involves communication and resolution.

Feeling sad for a day or two is normal. Anything longer than that means you may need to talk to someone. Extreme depression makes us feel like we don’t want to be here anymore.

We don’t accurately see what is going on. We reinvent and distort events to fit how we want to see them, are black and white in our judgments, and jump to the worst case.

In our family, our parents did not have to respect us. We felt unimportant, ashamed, humiliated, bullied, put down, and laughed at, and now read disrespect in everything.

When children are criticized constantly by their parents, they think something is wrong with them. Children develop a negative view of their own abilities.

Our experience with failure is punishment. We learn to get it right the first time or not try at all. We beat ourselves up for not doing a new thing right the first time.

When we are given a position of authority we abuse the power. We act like the people we swore we’d never be. Our only example of how authority is handled is misguided.

Two sets of rules, one for the stronger or older person and one for everyone else.

We thrive on other people's praise and validation. We do anything and everything for other people to gain their love and make them dependent on us.

True guilt is feeling remorse over something we’ve done. False guilt is feeling remorse over someone else’s behaviour - “Look at what you made me do!”

We spend so much time hiding behind walls and wearing masks. We have no idea who we really are.

Growing up, chaos was our normal. Living a quiet, normal life can seem boring. We need risky behaviours to give us the drama we are used to - crime, extreme sports or violence.

No matter what the goal is, something goes wrong with the plan, and it’s almost always someone else’s fault. We stick to the goal for about 2 weeks.

We want something that makes us feel good right now. Nothing is of interest unless it provides instant gratification. It is our only way of dealing with pain.

We act in the moment with little or no regard for the long term effects.

We feel motivated and sign up to do way too many things. Then we become overwhelmed with the new commitments - we shut down and can’t do what we promised.

Some of us refuse to become angry and stuff it down, setting ourselves up for a big explosion. We turn anger into a weapon, and it becomes something we can’t control and are scared of.

We won’t allow any uncomfortable emotions. We use distractions/addictions to escape our emotions when the only way to get rid of these bad feelings is to experience them fully.

We lie even when it’s just as easy to tell the truth. We learn to lie in order to survive and protect what is really inside of us. The guilt of lying feeds our shame.

Three rules: don’t talk, don’t feel, don’t trust. We have learned to hide our pain to keep ourselves safe. We stuff down things that make us feel vulnerable or weak.

Some people create an imaginary world where they ‘check out’ of this life and go into one where they have control and feel safe.

We throw a wrench into our success when things are going well as it may seem too good to be true. We believe we don’t deserve good things and we better destroy it before something or someone else does.

How people see us is more important than who we really are. We believe our only value is in having others validate our looks or abilities.

In a dysfunctional family, our every action was controlled and/or abused by an authority figure. Our sole purpose was to help them get their needs met with little or no regard about how it made us feel.

Many of us get stuck here. We feel powerless. We can't move on from our past or move forward to our future. The world owes us because of what we've been through.

When we experience Trauma as a child, we stop growing emotionally at that age. We develop unhealthy ways of coping since we’re still in survival mode.

We are going to do everything perfectly so that others see how awesome we are or we already think we can’t do anything right so we’ll be noticed for "making bad look good."

There are two types: Process and Chemical. Anything that serves as an escape from our pain or we believe is the answer to our problems qualifies.

Our brain blocks memories it thinks we can’t handle so there may be spaces of time we don’t remember.

We long for validation but become overly needy. They stop validating us and leave.

We don’t want to take the risk that someone will be mad at us or that they won’t like us anymore, so we agree to whatever they ask.

Abandonment is the ultimate rejection. If we have been abandoned, we assume there must be something wrong and we are unwanted. We are sure anyone who gets close will abandon us as well.

We pretend to look and act how we think others want us to - and we’ve got it all together! The longer we wear masks, the more disconnected from ourselves we become.

Physically - move often to reinvent ourselves. Emotionally - shut down and try to become invisible. We can also isolate by being a relationship junkie, taking our minds off things for a while.

We learn to manipulate others to get our needs met and read our caregiver’s emotions to see if it is safe to ask for something. Asking for what we need feels risky because the answer might be no.

In a dysfunctional family, the work revolves around the authority figure. Asking for something is met with annoyance, and so we conclude we are a burden.

Parents are supposed to keep us safe, keep promises, and love us unconditionally. When these needs aren’t met, we can’t trust them, and if we can’t trust them, we can’t trust anybody.

We continually compare ourselves to others and don’t feel valuable, lovable, or good enough. We want people to like us but believe if they get close enough to know the "real me" they would reject us.

Someone in a position of authority has abused their power over us. This can lead to Oppositional Defiant Disorder and us rebelling against and challenging authority.

Most of us were never taught to set a healthy boundary or that we are entitled to have boundaries. We can be easily manipulated to change a boundary.

If we gain our value from the wrong source, we will always be fearful of losing it. We should be accepting of our internal self, instead of our externals.

When we bond, we tune out and ignore our needs, remain insecure, become disorganized, angry, or aggressive, develop slowly, and don’t know what to expect from day to day.

Hero gets praise and adoration, the needy gets attention and care from the hero. The problem is that both parties are trying to solve their shame, and this solution requires one person to be in a place of need.

This comes from the relationships we experience in our home growing up. Absent parents - someone who was never hugged, cuddled, or loved in a healthy way will have trouble forming an emotional relationship.

We tend to have more insecurity and worries about who we are than the average person does (our physical features, personality, or ideals).

We all have a deep need to know we are good people and worth something. We didn’t receive positive validation while growing up and believed the lies we were told.

We gain our value by comparing ourselves to others and judge by external criteria - beauty, physical appearance, intellect, personality, a nice car, shoes, or money.

We don’t want “our people” to spend time with anyone but us and we are angry when they interact with others.

We are taught to be loyal to the family no matter what the cost.