CPTSD is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's typically what one "catches" from having been traumatized in various ways over time rather than by any single "overwhelming" event. (This is an update of an article written many months ago with substantial added material on causes, conditions and treatments.)
IME (which is plenty since hitting the wall in August of 1994, and finding my way further and further out of the maze since 2003), most of us appear to have been so deeply conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, normalized and neurally “hard-wired” into a default mode network of Martin Seligman's "learned helplessness and victim identity" since childhood that we continue to struggle with life in pretty obvious ways.
We drive ourselves mercilessly -- and mindlessly -- to solve problems in a chronic fight-flight-freeze response, which can lead over time to allostatic overload and breakdown of our immune systems. Experts on stress like Hans Selye, Joseph Wolpe, Herbert Benson, Bruce McEwen, Sonya Lupien, Robert Sapolsky, Stephen Porges and Pat Ogden have known for decades that "stressaholics" tend considerably toward greater incidence and severity of viral infections, as well as susceptibility to both elective and accidental self-harm. (See the list of books at the end here.)
In my empirical-observation-based opinion, as well as my own personal experience, the conditioned, habituated and normalized tendency to struggle leads to agitation of the autonomic nervous system in the manner described below:
Chronic amygdalar stimulation > relentless triggering of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis > secretion of cortiocotropin releasing factor > secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone > secretion of adrenaline > increased intensity of the general adaptation (fight / flight / freeze) response of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system > imbalanced polyvagal stimulation > rebounding levels of cortisol in the brain > allostatic loading throughout all striated muscle tissue > increased STRESS on the immune system > a continuous feedback loop between stress and the experience of AGITATION.
One of the most damaging types of struggle & agitation I see so often in a certain category of patient with CPTSD is what I will call "righteous victimhood." Believe me, I understand that "rage is a stage." And moreover, that Kubler-Ross was 100% correct in asserting that it is a stage one must go through and not around. But if one lingers there too long because they have developed an attachment to it -- even an identity with it as a primary defense mechanism, as some people definitely do -- it can become extremely costly in terms of repeated, allostatic overload.
The cure for stressaholism is often, IME & IMO, the cure for Complex PTSD. The cognitive-behavioral therapies -- especially including Albert Ellis's Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy and Stanley Block's Mind-Body Bridging Therapy -- and the new, mindfulness-based cognitive therapies like Jon Kabat-Zin's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing and Pat Ogden's polyvagal-theory-driven Sensorimotor Processing for Trauma appear to be the most effective and research-verified at this time. (All of these are easily found online.) I have developed a combination of Ellis's REBT and Ogden's SP4T; others have also developed combinations of the CBTs and MBCTs.
In my own first-hand experience, as well as experienced derived for working with and learning from many other CPTSD sufferers and mental health professionals (including all of those listed in the first paragraph of this article), the development of self-awareness via mindfulness meditation -- or Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing --is the foundation of this cure.
Books on Stress and treatment thereof (in the order of publication): Joseph Wolpe's Life Without Fear: Anxiety and it's Cure, Hans Selye's Stress Without Distress, Herbert Benson's The Relaxation Response, Bruce McEwen's The End of Stress as We Know It, Robert Sapolsky's Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Stephen Porges's The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory, and Pat Ogden's Trauma and the Body.
Related articles:
Dis-I-dentifying with Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity (in not-moses's reply to the original poster on that Reddit thread)
Very interesting, and insightful. Thank you ...
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