It’s complicated… a standard line delivered in movies when someone is trying to gently tell someone else why they don’t want to date them.
Dating someone with PTSD for sure isn’t easy. Being married to, or a partner with, someone with PTSD also isn’t easy. Wanting to be able to connect but not knowing how, and feeling the burden of shame that prevents intimacy, can be a difficult road. It isn’t simple loving your family or being connected to your friends when you have PTSD. It can be hard not understanding what is happening when it all used to be so effortless.
Is that complex PTSD? It may seem so, but in fact complex PTSD is what happens when we are exposed to childhood trauma and then again more trauma later in life. We may have figured out how to manage the childhood piece, but under the burden of adult trauma exposure, the face of childhood trauma may rear its ugly head. The adult trauma exposure may not by itself have been enough to undo us, but compounded with the early life experiences, the combined weight might be too much.
As I mentioned earlier, it is indeed complicated. Trauma exposure is not something that happens in discrete units. It’s a cumulative thing.
In order to figure things out, we often need to go upstream, back in time. View ourselves as a whole person, in the totality of our experience. This, by necessity, is a voyage of compassionate enquiry. Something not meant to be done alone.
Any outdoor enthusiasts out there know these journeys are not for the faint of heart, and certainly not meant to be done alone. Please join us on this journey.
