When people hear the word trauma, they often imagine a single, overwhelming event — a car accident, an assault, a natural disaster, or combat exposure. Those experiences are real, serious, and absolutely deserve care and attention.
But in my work as a trauma therapist, I meet many people whose suffering doesn’t come from one identifiable moment. Instead, it comes from what happened over time — or just as importantly, what didn’t happen.
This is where Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) becomes an important and often validating framework.
Complex PTSD typically develops in the context of chronic or repeated stress, often during childhood or other key developmental periods. This might include emotional neglect, inconsistent or unpredictable caregiving, chronic criticism, exposure to ongoing conflict, or growing up in an environment where safety — emotional or physical — was unreliable.
What’s important to understand is that complex trauma isn’t always about overt abuse or clearly identifiable “bad” events. Often, it’s about the absence of what was needed: emotional attunement, validation, protection, or support. Children need help making sense of their emotions and experiences. When that support isn’t available consistently, the nervous system adapts in order to survive.
Because of this, many people with C-PTSD struggle to recognize their experiences as trauma at all. They may tell me, “Nothing that bad really happened,” or “Other people had it worse.” These responses make sense — especially when trauma has been subtle, relational, or normalized.
One way I often explain the difference between single-incident trauma and complex trauma is through metaphor.
Some trauma is like a tornado — sudden, intense, and clearly destructive. Complex trauma is more like the climate you grew up in. It’s the constant emotional weather: tension, unpredictability, emotional loneliness, or the feeling that you had to manage things on your own long before you were ready.
When trauma is environmental rather than episodic, it can be much harder to identify. And because it feels familiar, people often minimize its impact or believe they should have “moved on” by now. But the nervous system doesn’t operate on logic or timelines — it operates based on lived experience.
At its core, Complex PTSD is a nervous system adaptation.
We are all wired for survival. When we perceive threat — whether physical or emotional — our nervous system automatically activates protective responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These responses are not conscious choices; they are reflexive and designed to keep us safe.
For children, whose brains and regulatory systems are still developing, chronic stress can mean that the nervous system spends a lot of time in survival mode. Without consistent co-regulation from a caregiver — someone who helps them feel safe, soothed, and understood — the system doesn’t learn how to return to calm efficiently.
Over time, this can lead to chronic dysregulation, which in adulthood might show up as:
These are not signs of weakness or pathology. They are signs of a nervous system that learned how to survive under difficult conditions.
One pattern I see again and again in complex trauma is self-minimization.
People compare their experiences to others, downplay their pain, or question whether they’re “allowed” to feel affected. While comparison can sometimes help people feel less alone, it often becomes a way of dismissing their own reality.
Trauma isn’t defined by how dramatic it looks from the outside. It’s defined by how overwhelming it was for that person’s nervous system at that moment in time.
Complex trauma is also frequently stored non-verbally — in the body, in emotional reactions, and in relational expectations rather than in clear, linear memories. This can make it even harder to name or validate.
Dissociation, emotional numbing, people-pleasing, perfectionism, hyper-independence, or avoidance often helped someone get through an environment that felt unsafe or overwhelming. As children, we work with what we have available to us. Those strategies made sense at the time.
The difficulty arises when those same strategies become automatic in adulthood — used in every situation, even when they’re no longer helpful. What was once protective can start to feel limiting, disconnecting, or painful.
Trauma-informed work is not about getting rid of these parts of ourselves. Instead, it’s about understanding their purpose, honoring their intention, and gently expanding the range of responses available now.
I often hear people say they feel like they should be over their trauma by now. I gently challenge that idea.
People don’t really “get over” traumatic experiences. What can happen is that they make sense of them, process them, and store them in a way that no longer hijacks the present. When someone feels stuck, there is always a reason — and that reason always makes sense.
Healing is not a single moment or a finish line. It’s a human process that involves developing greater awareness, self-compassion, and flexibility in how we relate to ourselves and the world.
In approaches like EMDR, we work with the understanding that the body has a natural capacity to heal. Trauma is not a failure to cope — it’s what happens when experiences overwhelm that natural processing system. When those experiences are safely and thoughtfully reprocessed, people often feel less reactive, more grounded, and more connected to themselves.
If there is one thing I wish every trauma survivor could hear on repeat, it’s this:
You are more than what happened to you.
Your symptoms are not evidence that you are broken. They are evidence that your system adapted in the best way it could. With understanding, support, and trauma-informed care, those adaptations can soften — not by force, but through safety and integration.
Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about reconnecting with who you’ve always been beneath the survival strategies.