C-PTSD

So, I have a private blog, in which I talk about the realities of Having Complex PTSD, but it's worth knowing that it's something that I deal with.

It's often discounted, and people with it, are most often written off as odd, cold, or otherwise bizzarre, because of the coping mechanisms that they develop to.  Complex PTSD comes as a result of trauma that is ongoing and long-term, to the point where the victim feels that they will never escape, be safe, or otherwise be free of it.

There's basically 4 main mechanisms that people develop as a response to this trauma:
Fight - where you try to exert control over everything in your environment
Flight - where you try to keep moving/busy constantly
Freeze - where you escape into fantasy or addiction
Fawn - where you bend over backwards to accommodate everyone else

Most people use a normal combination of all 4 of these in crisis situations, knowing when to fight, when to capitulate, when to negotiate, and when to keep busy and just get through things.  A C-PTSD survivor has become fixated on one or two of these coping strategies, and so can't move fluidly between them.  Additionally, a C-PTSD survivor perceives any sort of negative feeling as having the potential to turn into that original nightmare over again, so it re-activates the defence mechanism.

Here's some reading:
http://www.pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php
http://www.nctsnet.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/edu_materials/ComplexTrauma_All.pdf