Complex PTSD: Assessment and Treatment PTSD: National Center for PTSD

At present, there is encouraging evidence that people ptsd blackouts with CPTSD can benefit from existing PTSD treatments. Both utilized variations of STAIR and found no advantage of phase-based over standard PTSD treatment. Both studies compared Prolonged Exposure (PE) alone to STAIR followed by exposure therapy (14-16). Those who had CPTSD (versus PTSD) started and ended treatment with higher symptoms, but they improved by a similar amount (15). Improvements in CPTSD symptoms were comparable whether treated with PE, STAIR alone, or STAIR plus exposure therapy (16). The three additional clusters of symptoms beyond core PTSD symptoms refer to emotional regulation, negative self-concept and interpersonal relational dysfunction24.

What are the symptoms of CPTSD?

Therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) have shown promise in helping individuals process traumatic memories and reduce the frequency of blackouts. In the end, the best way to prevent flashbacks and dissociation is to seek out treatment for your PTSD. Experiencing flashbacks and dissociation may be a sign that you are struggling to confront or cope with the traumatic event you experienced. In addition, dissociation severity correlated positively with left medial prefrontal cortex and right superior temporal cortex activation and correlated negatively with left superior temporal cortex activation.

• Those who had CPTSD (versus PTSD) started and ended treatment with higher symptoms, but they improved by a similar amount (15).
• This is because many of those who live with the effects of CPTSD swing one of two ways; they cling onto their potential mate for dear life, or they push people who care for them away.
• In excessive amounts though, this stress response can lead to inflammation.
• Therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) have shown promise in helping individuals process traumatic memories and reduce the frequency of blackouts.
• The average duration of a PTSD blackout is difficult to quantify due to the highly individual nature of these experiences and the challenges in accurately measuring lost time.

Treatment

Forgetting crucial portions of personal history or life experiences can contribute to a fractured sense of identity and a loss of consistency in your life narrative. Complex PTSD includes most of the core symptoms of PTSD, specifically flashbacks (i.e., re-experiencing the traumatic event), numbness and blunt emotion, avoidance and detachment from people, events and environmental triggers of the predisposing trauma as well as autonomic hyperarousal. Its distinct characteristics added upon PTSD symptomatology, often interfere to separate it from BPD (i.e., affective dysregulation) and PTSD alone, which in cases with a chronic course will eventually transit to a lasting personality change14. The long-term stress response mechanism activation, mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, due to chronic stress exposure, can predispose to multiple stress-related psychiatric entities, including PTSD34. Stress early in life due to childhood trauma has been reported to result in an adjustment dysfunction of the HPA axis responsiveness upon stress states encountered, with patients with BPD.

Conditions

The activations we found in the superior and middle temporal cortices during dissociative states in PTSD are consistent with the temporal lobe hypothesis of dissociation. The epilepsy literature has described dissociative symptoms with seizures of various foci, including both right and left hemispheres.28,29 Penfield and Rasmussen30 have also reported depersonalizationlike symptoms in response to stimulation of the superior and middle temporal cortices during neurosurgery. Changes in memory, especially memory loss, are not uncommon in people living with PTSD. In fact, working memory ― the type of memory that allows us to store and recall short-term information ― seems to be one of the most affected types of memory in people with the condition. Therapy has many forms, and there are multiple types of approaches ― such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and prolonged exposure therapy ― that have been shown to be effective in managing PTSD. For some people, that response is recurring or continuous, even after the traumatic event is over.

Symptoms of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)

Generally, dissociative amnesia is “losing” a disturbing event or painful blocks of time. In a flashback, you may feel or act as though a traumatic event is happening again. But there are several treatment options to help support your mental health and memory.

Then together with your therapist, you can work to understand the reasons you chose each figurine and the positions you have placed to understand better the truth behind how you feel about the people represented and any emotions you have attached to them. Survivors are victims of severe and repeated trauma, not monsters who came from nowhere. Their bodies were used or damaged by people who didn’t care about their well-being and the helpless they felt then often translates into shame now.