Trauma Truths

[Kizzie]

This one resonates deeply because it captures the essence of relational trauma for me.

[paul72]

Thanks Kizzie
Yeah this is a tough one for me... I am going to reflect on being hurt instead of broken.. needing healing instead of fixing.
I like it though and am grateful that you shared it

[woodsgnome]

Thanks, Kizzie ... and much of that outlook unfortunately gets passed down the line in the definitions that now highlight the notion of 'disorder' to add yet another layer of self-doubt to the process which, as you point out here and elsewhere, is really more of an outcome of external injury.

This was discussed long ago on this forum -- about considering a name change which would incorporate a different model than 'disorder' suggests.

I was playing around with the common use of cPTSD the other day, and thinking along the lines you suggest here, and came up with my own definition (too late for all the 'official' stuff but I find it better suits my current view.

My own new description converts this way: cPTSD = OTRI = Ongoing  Traumatic Resonance Injury ... for me, this speaks more to the steadily recurring effects which arose more from injury than some grand disorder. Using 'disorder' to describe any of this mess creates an immediate feeling of failure -- "oh, if only I'd have done this, that, of the other all would be fine." It takes the onus off the perpetrators and pins it on the victims (us!).

Albeit it's all just words, but we need those new sorts of pointers to find ways of thinking that don't start from suggestive words like 'disorder' and/or 'abnormal'. It's taken me years to build a new realization about this.

For me, if for no one else, if I need a name for all this, it's OTRI, Ongoing Traumatic Resonance Injury. This also reflects the work I'm doing with my T about re-orienting my vantage point.

Thanks again for posting that illustrated quotation, it says it all, and as your headline notes, is a more viable Truth for you.

[Kizzie]

I so agree about the term CPTSD, especially the word "disorder" as it does imply we are broken. We have been hurt, injured, traumatized on an ongoing basis and we have responded in ways that helped us survive that led to certain common symptoms, period full stop. It really isn't us, it's what happened to us.   

I recently wrote another article for the newsletter of the Complex Trauma Special Interest Group I chair at the ISTSS about this (among other issues with the term chosen to describe our symptoms):

The wording of the diagnosis itself is problematic, starting with the word "disorder". For survivors and professionals alike, it is stigmatizing and pathologizing:

"The effects of trauma are indeed just that—effects of an event—and as such are causally related to the trauma and not to the harmed individual. .... when psychology and mental health professionals draw that causal path incorrectly, when the field fails to place the dysfunction solidly on the shoulders of individual and societal wrongdoing, survivors of trauma .... end up shouldering the burden. This, in essence, is pathologizing—the assumption that because individuals exhibit certain sets of symptoms, they are themselves disordered." (Rosenthal et al, 2015, pp. 131-137)

It is crucial that the wording of the diagnosis reflects the fact that survivors' symptoms are normal/natural responses to trauma versus due to a character defect, lack of resilience and/or weakness. Far too often survivors face a "blame the victim' attitude much like veterans before PTSD became more widely understood. This change will impact how survivors are viewed by medicine, mental health, social work, courts, and the public. 

It really is crucial that we ourselves and the professionals and others we deal with see us in terms of being injured, hurt by trauma through no fault of our own and that our symptoms are normal responses to an abnormal situation.  The newsletter goes out to a lot of professionals so hopefully this will have an impact on them. 

I don't know if it will but I do believe the more of us (survivors) who speak up the more it will become acknowledged that we are injured and in need of treatment, services and support like anyone else in need of health care. 

I also included some thoughts on this on the OOTS web page a while ago hoping that readers would take the message about how/why a lot of us disagree with the "Complex PTSD" on board - https://www.outofthestorm.website/cptsd-description. 

[natureluvr]

Yes!!!  I've shifted to thinking of myself this way, and it has helped my self esteem a lot.  It has taken away the shame of the abuse.  The abuser is the one who has behaved very shamefully, not the victim.