Trauma is a big word. We tend to associate it with extreme events in people’s lives. War, death, a car accident or a violent attack of some sort. These are, of course, traumatic events and can lead to sufferers being emotionally wounded with outcomes such as PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder. 

However, there is something now recognised in the healing field as being much more difficult to diagnose and treat and that is called CPTSD. This is Complex or childhood post traumatic stress disorder. Rather than being one horrific event that is obvious and therefore relatively easier to treat, CPTSD affects us on a different level and is the result of continuous smaller but regular traumatic events particularly in childhood which are more often than not not even remembered.  

This can play out on a much more subtle level and lead to various issues in adulthood that seem unrelated to any perceived trauma. The child's survival instincts can mask such experiences but also lead to undiagnosed mental and emotional problems which these days are either dismissed completely or dealt with via pharmaceutical routes.

Anxiety, depression, addiction and other diagnoses such as ADHD or bi-polar are now coming to be understood as reactions to CPTSD.

In modern society we are also seeing a huge rise in cases of narcissistic personality disorder which is both a product and cause of CPTSD ironically.

We all have unresolved trauma. Each and every one of us and this explains how we act and the way we find life so difficult at times. Becoming attracted to and by people who actually feed the unresolved trauma.

Find out more on the somatic monkey page about how we can treat it in the body or the karma page to find other solutions to family induced trauma.