There’s power in having a word that can accurately reflect a nebulous, multifaceted human experience.

It’s a kind of power that helps us feel more seen, more mirrored, less alone, more clear.

And so today, believing that there is power in giving something its proper name, I wanted to share a psychoeducational essay with you on the phrase and term Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, otherwise known as C-PTSD.

I want to spend this essay explaining what C-PTSD is. (With illustrative examples in symptomatology and also a narrative experience of it.) How it develops. And what the pathway to healing and treatment looks like if you identify as having C-PTSD.

The whole goal in today’s essay is to do what the word schadenfreude does. Give form and name and clarity to what can often feel like a complex and hard-to-understand inner feeling state.

What is C-PTSD?

“You start with a darkness to move through, but sometimes the darkness moves through you.” ― Dean Young

I want to start this essay by explaining that C-PTSD is not a term in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM – the clinical bedrock textbook of the mental health field).

The reasons why it’s not included in the Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders section of the DSM are beyond the scope of this essay to explain, but I bring this up as folks who experience C-PTSD and who have diagnoses on their charts may be more likely to see Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Other Specified Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders appear on their charts.

I bring this up, too, because I professionally do believe that C-PTSD is a long overdue diagnosis. It should be in the DSM. And I don’t want anyone to feel delegitimized by its current absence in that textbook.

So what is C-PTSD and how does it differ from the other diagnoses that are included in the DSM?

C-PTSD does indeed borrow the majority of the defining symptoms from PTSD. But it expands upon that experience in one primary way. PTSD usually occurs after a single traumatic incident. Whereas C-PTSD usually develops as a result of repeated trauma.

So what does this mean?

It means that the following symptoms – classically associated with PTSD – will likely be experienced with greater intensity, frequency, and duration than with “more straightforward” PTSD and may take a different and more nuanced treatment approach (more on that later in the essay).

Common symptoms of C-PTSD may include:

• Reliving the event(s), involuntarily, intrusively, and recurrently. This can show up as distressing dreams and nightmares, Flashbacks. And strong, adverse physiological and psychological reactions when implicit or explicit triggers happen or are perceived.