Complex PTSD Treatment
If you’ve landed on this page, I first want you to know this: your mental health matters. You should have to be this resilient in life, but I’m grateful that you are, and that you’re here. Your nervous system is capable of not only recovering, but thriving. With a holistic, integrative approach to healing, and with the key ingredient of time, you’ll begin to feel more and more yourself.
PTSD affects approximately 7-8% of the U.S. population at some point in their lives, with rates higher among certain groups such as military veterans and survivors of abuse.
But to be “traumatized” doesn’t necessarily mean that you have witnessed or gone through an overtly scary or life-threatening event. Trauma has very little to do with what happened to you, and almost everything to do with how your nervous system responded and the support you didn’t have in order to cope with the experience. Trauma happens when the stress energy (which is mobilized to help you survive) gets stuck in the body coupled with fear. This is completely unique to you. This is why two people can endure the same events, but one emerges traumatized while the other is relatively unaffected.
What causes PTSD, and how is it diagnosed?
A single traumatic event can result in PTSD. But individuals who suffer from multiple or ongoing traumatic experiences may develop what’s called Complex PTSD (C-PTSD).
PTSD is characterized by symptoms of flashbacks or other intrusive thoughts, avoidance behaviors, and negative mental-emotional changes in response to a traumatic experience.
C-PTSD includes the above list of symptoms, but also involves negative self-concept (thinking poorly or ashamed of yourself), emotional dysregulation, and problems in relationships.
Your survival depends on your connection to other people. You can’t survive very long without food, water and shelter; but you also can’t survive or thrive without loving, supportive humans surrounding you. When these social and emotional needs go unmet, C-PTSD is the result.
C-PTSD can happen at any age but often develops when children are living in a home environment where their physical, emotional, or social needs aren’t being met adequately. Children who experience emotional or physical neglect or abuse often develop C-PTSD. Complex trauma can even happen in response to something we might perceive as a “mild” stressor, such as emotional misattunement—where your caregiver doesn’t have the ability to be present, open, and supportive on an emotional level. Children who experience this lack of support end up veryadaptively developing coping strategies such as empathy, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and a long list of other behaviors and personality traits to help keep themselves safe.
The caregivers of these children may have been doing their very best, but they didn’t have the skills or resources to fully attune to the children. This may be because they themselves also experienced trauma. Without this life-giving attunement, children develop survival strategies which shape their personality and nervous system wiring. Later in life they may struggle with connection, self-compassion, self-confidence, and many other aspects of human connection to self and other that weren’t nurtured in their early years.
How do you treat PTSD and C-PTSD?
The stuck trauma of PTSD is best treated with somatic experiencing along with other Naturopathic approaches to supporting the nervous system and the health of the body. C-PTSD is best addressed with an integrative approach to talk therapy called NARM (Neuroaffective Relational Model) to help you meet the needs your younger self never received, in conjunction with the support of a Naturopathic medical treatment plan.
A naturopathic treatment plan for PTSD and C-PTSD may include specific nutrition recommendations, herbal medicine for supporting the nervous system, movement practices for releasing tension and building physical resilience, and addressing the downstream physical impact of the trauma. Chronic, unresolved stress is a known risk factor for heart disease, dementia, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Naturopathic medicine can help your body heal from the impact of this stress to reduce your risk of disease as you get older.
By addressing underlying imbalances in the body and mind through both therapy and Naturopathic medicine, we can support your body’s natural healing process, and you can begin to find relief from your PTSD symptoms.
Healing is possible for you.
Your body is capable of profound healing when it has the right support. As a human being, you are wired to heal in connection and community. This is profoundly important in cases of PTSD and C-PTSD. I encourage you to surround yourself with a community of support, both personally and professionally, to help you heal nad feel like yourself again. If you’re curious about a holistic, integrative way of supporting your nervous system beyond the regular talk therapy and medications you’ve already been recommended, click the button below to inquire about working together.