Can I heal from CPTSD? Does it get better?
*this can also apply to Social Anxiety, Anxiety, and other diagnoses in which previous trauma plays a role.

The short answer is that our symptoms may or may not go away, but we can get learn to navigate them easier, hopefully recover quicker when triggered, and more important, the more we understand what’s going on and work towards healing, we end up navigating things with less shame.

Most of us have had the experience of walking into a room and experiencing an unexpected jump scare. A sudden noise, a figure in the corner of our eye, a shadow that shifts in the wrong moment, or maybe it’s an extension cord, or a piece of rope, and it looks, just for a second, like a snake. Our heart races and our body into alert mode. This is a natural response—our brain’s way of protecting us from danger. Our body floods with adrenaline, our muscles tense. It’s an automatic response that’s been hardwired into us over millennia of evolution. Protect ourselves from harm.

Typically, when this happens, we take a moment, breathe in deep, maybe even grab our chests, and remind ourselves we’re safe. We work, instinctively, to regulate our bodies. We tell ourselves, ‘What I thought I saw was not really what was there. This was an extension cord, not a snake’. We know how to do this for small, simple situations

Complex trauma/CPTSD is much more complicated. Our startle response can be triggered by much more than a sudden scare. It may be evoked by situations, people, or memories that feel emotionally or psychologically unsafe. The body reacts in much the same way as it does in a true emergency—anxiety can cause physical symptoms like racing heart, shallow breathing, or muscle tension—fight, flight, freeze, fawn, even when no immediate threat is present.  

Sometimes we know this is happening; a lot of times, we don’t. This is why telling your story in a safe place is so important. In examining and breaking down what happened, we understand ‘Oh, that did affect me, and this is how’. ‘These are the things that happened that made me feel unsafe’.  In telling our story, we understand our triggers and our reactions. So, it becomes ‘I know why I act this way’ instead of ‘what’s wrong with me?’

That’s the first step, recognizing this is an extension cord, not a snake. For me that looks like freezing and realizing ‘okay, this feels like panic, this feels like rejection, or sometimes I even feel like I will die if I don’t get out of or fix this situation, but this actually not a dangerous’. At the beginning, I could only identify what was happening. ‘Oh, look, I’m doing the thing/I’m having the response I don’t want to have’. I couldn’t stop the argument I was engaged in, the panic attack in progress, or the other dysfunctional patterns that were going on. But recognition is progress. And then, it ends up, getting easier to interrupt and change our patterns.

With practice and insight, again, the more we tell our stories, the more we understand, we can next start to take that breath and remind ourselves it’s okay. Together, we reinforce, ‘of course you jumped and got ready to fight. Or flee, or shut down. That cord DID look like a snake’. We come to understand that, the argument with your spouse, the rejection or pressure from your boss, looked, out of the corner of your eye, very, very much, like a time in life where you WERE in danger, either physical or emotional. And then we start to breath easier, recover faster, and have less shame.

So yes, healing is possible. It can get better. And this is why we believe talking about it helps.