That fear before going out for an evening, falling for the same sort of toxic relationship again, or getting wound up by family every time we’re together, this is a repeating reaction rather than a choice and is a good example of how learned emotional responses can show up in life. For a great many people our reactions get in the way of living our life with happiness.
I've had a lot of questions lately about C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is the medical jargon often over-used to describe this type of automatic emotional reaction.
In my own case when I still suffered anxiety I would always worry when I saw a police checkpoint, even though I had everything up to date, I’d still get the fear as if I was doing something wrong.
Lots of people have this sort of reaction around different things and obviously they are not choices, no one decides to panic when they don’t need to be afraid, it’s just a reaction that happens.
So why does it happen?
The fear system is pretty simple. The mind recognised something unconsciously as a potential danger and puts us on alert to deal with it.
That could be a real or imagined danger but as long as we have fear associated with it, it fires off the system.
An easy example of imagined danger is the car backfires and that loud bang makes the ex-soldier jump because it’s a similar sound to an experience in the past in a different country. The fact that they’re home and safe doesn’t matter, the mind over-reacts to make sure we’re safe.
That’s the simple version but it can be more complex. The person who was always made to feel not good enough, that they were always wrong, or who had to be on edge because of problems in the home in childhood can end up with that fear system always activated trying to keep them safe even decades after they left the real danger.
We’ve known for decades that constant emotional pressure pushes our emotions in a negative way and the highest end of this is what is now referred to as C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That’s a label for a very high level of negative impact in life coming from upsetting experiences in the past.
It’s interesting how we ignore that constant pressure in life and discount it as nothing special, not a big deal, just life etc.
However, when I ask people would they rather experience a broken arm or having to re-live two years of their childhood when things were though, most people who grew up in tough situations would take the broken arm, even though they’ll admit that would be traumatic and deny the two years were traumatic. It’s se easy to ignore the horrible past when it’s all we knew and where it was ongoing misery rather than something sudden and dramatic. But which is likely to have a bigger impact: a really bad moment with a short recovery period, or years of upset and fear?
I think of this as a “Pressure-Trauma”. A period of constant anxiety where we had to be on alert to see if something would kick-off.
I’d say about 80% of people coming to me for help have had a period in childhood where one of the following occurred:
Living with an alcoholic parent – experiences like lying in bed waiting to hear if the footsteps were drunken, or if the door slams regularly.
Living with violence in the home – where a parent, sibling, or both parents were aggressive and the fear of a confrontation was always present.
Living with anxious parent or parents where everything was nit-picked on, where the good was missed but every fault was made into a big deal, and where people were irritable the whole time.
These sort of constant walking-on-eggshells or constantly alert for a ‘will it - won’t it’ type of experience seem to program in unhelpful anxious responses that simply pop-up in life and keep us avoiding things and holding back a lot.
That may or may not be C-PTSD depending on the level of severity, but it’s likely the same system at work. Happily for most people (myself included thankfully) this is de-programmable too.
The dread of going out, the fear around driving, flying, the panic in classrooms and much more that I suffered for decades all disappeared when the old developmental stuff was deal with – even though I’d have said that was old-stuff and unimportant.
Even though I was really lucky and had no alcoholism in the house, no violence etc, I still had accumulated enough bad experiences in early life that things were much harder than needed.
It often sails by without being noticed as just regular experience, but whether we call it trauma or not, it just leaves a mark. The important thing is whether it’s causing reactions that hold us back or not?
There are thankfully a number of effective treatments for this sort of thing.
I am booked up for a few months ahead in clinic but I can recommend someone if anyone does need help. I do have a few online therapy places available if anyone needs my help, but there are lots of therapists out here who can genuinely help with this.
My advice is look for someone who has reducing the problems as the goal. Much as understanding it is helpful I needed less panic, fear, anxiety and depression in my life when I was suffering, not just greater understanding of the problem.
Living better with the problem is the 2nd port of call. First, I’d recommend trying to live better without the problem or with less of it!
If interested in the high-point of this type of reaction more info can be found on CPTSD by Googling “ICD11 CPTSD” That’s the international Classification of Disease manual that the World Health Organization publishes to classify health issues.
I think ‘Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’ has become a broad popularly used label for the past influencing our lives today. It’s entered the pop-psychology language and that that’s an OK way to view it in my opinion. I wouldn’t be as hung up on does it fit the diagnostic criteria as much as is there room for improvement in my life? That’s the most important way to view it.
Hope this helps.
Change is easier than you think!
Have a great week.
Feel free to get in touch if anyone needs a recommendation! Having lived decades in anxiety and panic before it all changed for the better, I’m always happy to help people find help.
All the best,
John