Is Complex Trauma Our Hidden Epidemic?

Since the beginning of time, complex trauma has directly contributed to the prevalence of suicide, addiction, domestic abuse, mental illness and chronic health conditions to name just a few. It’s a little known world-wide epidemic whose eradication could have a transformative effect on humankind.

Complex trauma is the type of trauma experienced beginning in childhood with long-term effects perpetuating throughout a person’s lifetime. It arises from exposure to multiple traumatic events often of an invasive and interpersonal nature. Wide-ranging experiences such as neglect, humiliation, abuse, abandonment, living with a parent’s mental illness or addiction among other things can be contributing factors. Complex trauma is not the experience of a one-off event like a car crash, but can be the effects of the outcome of that crash. The loss of a parent or the compounding effects of struggling family dynamics are good examples of this. Complex trauma is nuanced and subtle. Parents who are too permissive, or are overly harsh, and including inconsistent vacillation from one extreme to the other can create an environment for complex trauma to take root in a child. This environment makes it impossible for the child to successfully follow the parent’s directions. Effective parenting, on the other hand, exists somewhere in the middle.

This is where the humanity of it comes in. It is clear that complex trauma exists in all families to varying degrees. It typically stems from one or more parents or caregivers exhibiting negative patterns of behavior learned in their own childhood. As parents, we do our best given the challenges and hardships life brings our way. When we have children of our own, we are gifted the ultimate responsibility. We are charged with caring for another human being who is looking to us for his survival, e.g. food, shelter, stability, love and attention. We are all subject to moments of weakness and dysfunction during crisis. We unwittingly expose our children to the effects of our dysfunctions by our conditioned and cyclical reactions thereby indoctrinating them into the same negative cycle. Awareness of complex trauma is the key to preventing our children from repeating behaviors that have been passed on from one generation to the next.

The prevalence of complex trauma suggests an epidemic — having been with us since the beginning of time. You may say that it is part of the human condition, but it doesn’t have to be.

Effects of Complex trauma on children:

• Physical (inhibits neurological growth, taxes hormones, spurs chronic disease)
• Emotional (low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, symptoms of PTSD, increase in mental illness & addiction, behavior challenges, perceived lack of internal locus of control)
• Social (development of unhealthy dynamics and boundaries with family that effects friendships, intimate partnerships, future relationships)
• Spiritual (cynicism in the belief of a higher power, pervasive skepticism, irrational fears and feeling unsafe in the world, lack of faith in humanity)

Complex trauma is insidious. The foundation of which conditions the way we react to stress, the basis of our relationships and how we care for ourselves. It plays into whether we unconsciously choose recurring abusive relationships, the prevalence of chronic health conditions including immune disorders and the likelihood we will have mental health and addiction challenges throughout life, just to name a few.

Because it negatively impacts every aspect of our development, complex trauma inhibits the natural growth of a child in every way and the effects are most likely to remain throughout the person’s life unless some kind of conscious action is taken.

Most of us are not even aware that we need help — or that help is available — until the effects of trauma have become overwhelmingly painful and the suffering is almost intolerable. You see, when we are raised in dysfunctional environments, we come to expect it and even feel a certain level of normalcy. It’s what we know and when we do what we know, we get the results we are accustomed to. Fundamentally, we cope by participating in what is familiar, even when it is not in our best interests.

The distinct lack of healthy coping skills and social support, the fear of an unknown future and the apathetic comfort of living with the dysfunction we do know, tends to stop us from seeking help or even believing that there is a life beyond our conditioned experience. Survivors go back to their abuser an average of seven times before making the final decision to move forward and away from an unhealthy relationship. Addicts find themselves in and out of rehab only to be back to the familiar situations, feelings and behaviors that first initiated the substance abuse, out of control shopping, increased sexual encounters or prevalence of self manufactured drama.

Not all is lost, though. There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel but it takes awareness and the willingness to understanding that your lifestyle and choices are no longer working for you. Additionally, the pain, fear and suffering involved in your current life becomes more than the fear and imagined suffering of moving forward into unknown and uncharted waters. Stepping out takes faith, determination, courage, strength, hard work and learning to be okay with a little uncertainty.

If you are ready to move forward and experience the happiness and joy that everyone deserves, reach out to a trusted friend or a licensed clinical therapist. If you are suffering from depression or anxiety, make that appointment with your primary care doctor or a psychiatrist. It is important to understand that what you are feeling is not a reflection on you, but rather what has happened to you. Once you are aware, it is now a choice to seek help.