Complex Trauma: A Step-by-Step Description of How it Develops

Ela was happily married — or so people thought — until the day her husband came home with a DVD he had bought. Not a common practice for him. The name of the movie was Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia Roberts. Ela loved movies and made some popcorn to watch it with her husband. “Who recommended it?” she asked. “Myself,” he responded. “I think it’s time for you to wake up.” That day marked the beginning of Ela’s understanding of her dissociation, her depression, her submissiveness, her lack of enjoyment, and many other symptoms that she had developed through several years of emotional abuse and neglect, manipulation, gaslighting, and objectification at the hands of her husband. Complex Trauma Diagnosis Complex Trauma was first described in 1992 by Judith Herman in her book Trauma & Recovery. Immediately after that, Van Der Kolk (2000) and others began promoting the concept of “Complex PTSD” (C-PTSD), also referred to as “Disorder of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified” (DESNOS). According to Herman, complex trauma occurs after repetitive, prolonged trauma involving sustained abuse or abandonment by a caregiver or other interpersonal relationships with an uneven power dynamic; it distorts a person’s core identity, especially when prolonged trauma occurs during childhood. DESNOS (1998) was formulated as a diagnosis with all the criteria and proposed in 2001 to be added to the DSM-5 as an option for complex trauma focused on chi...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Abuse Psychology PTSD Trauma Treatment C-PTSD complex posttraumatic stress disorder complex trauma Depersonalization Dissociation Emotional Dysregulation Traumatic Experience traumatization Source Type: news