Complex PTSD Symptoms:

Emotional Dysregulation

One of the hallmarks of PTSD, and especially CPTSD, is having trouble controlling your emotions, which is known as emotional dysregulation.

COMPLEX PTSD - SHAME - AVOIDANCE - HYPERVIGILANCE - INTERPERSONAL DIFFICULTIES - DISSOCIATION - IMPULSIVITY - DEPRESSION -TRIGGERS - OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR - PHYSICAL - TREATMENT

Flashbacks & Emotional Hijacking

High arousal symptoms of C-PTSD often manifest in what is known as emotional dysregulation, or sweeping emotions of sadness, rage, or fear.

These can feel intrusive or even hijack your relationship to yourself, your family, and your world, and can result in feeling stuck in patterns of disconnection, resentment, or abandonment.

The term emotional hijacking refers to the ways strong emotions such as fear or anger can overpower your thoughts and behaviors.

There is a key structure within the limbic system of the brain called the amygdala, which functions like a smoke detector-it is wired to determine if you are in danger.

If the answer is yes, your amygdala can temporarily inhibit your neocortex, the upper brain center responsible for rational and reflective thought. From an evolutionary perspective, it is better to immediately run from a tiger than to pause and think about it first.

Emotional hijacking initiates the instinctual fight-or-flight response. Unfortunately, individuals with a history of C-PTSD are more prone to false alarms.

Intrusive symptoms such as flashbacks or extreme reactivity may be in reaction to perceived rather than actual threats.

For instance, you might overreact to hearing your partner's annoyed tone of voice, getting interrupted during a conversation, or seeing your teenager roll their eyes when you ask them to clean their room.

When you feel grounded and calm, these relatively minor events might have very little impact on you. However, when you feel more vulnerable, you're more likely to resort to impulsive behaviors.

Emotional flashbacks are accompanied by intense arousals of the fight/flight instinct, along with hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system, the half of the nervous system that controls arousal and activation. 

When fear is the dominant emotion in a flashback the person feels extremely anxious, panicky or even suicidal. When despair predominates, a sense of profound numbness, paralysis and desperation to hide may occur.

A sense of feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also commonly experienced in an emotional flashback, and all symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame.

Emotional hijacking is a common issue that benefits from the development of emotion regulation. 

 Dysregulation Is 

Emotional dysregulation is the inability to manage the intensity or duration of emotional responses, specifically vulnerable emotions like anger, fear, sadness, or even love. 

It is a brain-related symptom that's often a sign of conditions that affect your brain or differences in how your brain developed and works today.

This inability to regulate involves trouble controlling your emotions and how you act on those feelings. To those around you, your emotions and reactions will seem out of proportion compared to what you're reacting to. It's similar and closely linked to executive dysfunction.

When you manage or regulate your emotions, you can steer and direct how you feel and react. Most people learn how to do this as children and develop it as they get older. It's also a key part of being adaptable or resilient to challenges, learning and more.

You can think about emotional regulation like volume control for your feelings. When you use the volume control for a device, you can keep it from being too loud. With emotional dysregulation, your brain can't regulate emotion signals. In effect, your volume control doesn't work like it should, making your emotions "louder" and harder to manage.

Emotional dysregulation can happen with damage to or disruptions in brain activity. Trauma can have a long-term impact on your ability to regulate your emotions. Many who struggle with emotional dysregulation have histories of emotional invalidation in childhood, which may or may not include other forms of abuse.

While there is no one single cause of emotional dysregulation, psychological trauma is often a key factor.
 

Emotional Dysregulation & Complex PTSD

Humans are not born with the innate ability to control their emotions. Learning how to regulate emotions appropriately is a major part of a child's development.
 
But experiencing trauma during childhood or adolescence can disrupt this process, ultimately impairing your ability to process and regulate your emotions.

Trauma can change the brain in complex ways. The brain doesn't finish developing until around the age of 25, so trauma can have a significant impact on your emotional development.

For example, young people with a history of trauma showed heightened activity in the amygdala, which is the brain region responsible for processing emotions.

If you experienced trauma in childhood or your caregivers were emotionally dysregulated, you may find yourself less able to control your emotions as an adult. You might even feel like you are emotionally stuck at the age of trauma. 

"Arrested development" is when trauma impairs your ability to develop full emotional maturity. When this happens, you may use child-like emotional responses to get your needs met as an adult, such as tears, tantrums, and shutting down emotionally — as opposed to communicating your needs through words.

However, trauma exposure at any age can impact emotional regulation. CPTSD arises when you experience an ongoing source of trauma that you feel powerless to escape. Even as an adult, experiencing trauma can cause emotional dysregulation and emotional regression.

Symptoms & Consequences

Symptoms of emotional dysregulation:

• feeling easily overwhelmed by your emotions
   
• difficulty coping with stress
   
• intense or disproportionate reactions that are hard to control
   
• Impulsive behaviors
   
• Increased risk for other compulsive behaviors such as video gaming, shopping, sex/porn, exercise, or eating disorders
   
• Self-sabotaging behavior
   
• abrupt mood shifts
   
• "Toxic positivity" used to avoid more vulnerable emotions such as anger or sadness
   
• crying for seemingly no reason
   
• Increased perfectionism (overcompensating for feelings of inadequacy or vulnerability)
   
• being unable to calm down or finding it very difficult to soothe yourself
   
• Difficulty with interpersonal relationships
   
• Poor conflict resolution skills
   
• Increased risks for substance abuse and addiction
   

When we talk about the aftermath of trauma and the possible effects that can result from abuse, we may gravitate to symptoms and patterns such as depression, anxiety, toxic adult relationships, or narcissistic adaptations.

We may be less aware of how our emotions are influenced by having experienced trauma or the effects of emotional dysregulation on our relationships, including the relationship we have with ourselves.

Emotional dysregulation can show up differently from one person to another. Some may become extremely angry, lash out, or become verbally abusive. Some may shut down, "freeze," and go silent.

Others may engage in impulsive or compulsive behaviors such as binge eating, self-starvation, or compulsive exercise routines to numb themselves emotionally and as a way of momentarily escaping vulnerable feelings. 

Many times, when a person experiences emotional dysregulation, they struggle in labeling and identifying their emotions and may feel confused or feel deep shame.

One of the biggest ways emotional dysregulation can hurt a person is the impact it can have on their intimate relationships. If a person cannot control their anger, or is out of touch with their own feelings (i.e., avoidance, escapism, or "numbing" behaviors), they can say or do things that push others away, which can affect the stability of their relationships.

How to Develop Emotion Regulation

You can buffer yourself from emotional hijacking by developing your emotional intelligence, or the ability to identify and respond effectively to emotions-both yours and those of the people around you.

The goal is not to ignore your emotions; rather to harness the information that emotions provide as guidance for your life choices. If you find yourself emotionally hijacked, you can learn to intervene.

Train yourself to interrupt the emotional flooding long enough to regain a sense of equanimity.

• Try taking several slow, deep breaths to calm down your autonomic nervous system.
   
• Give yourself a timeout, and walk away from the triggering situation. Take some time to regroup and ground yourself.
   
• Observe your mind. Explore what you are telling yourself about the situation, and ask yourself if this is really true. Often there is a need to be right. Can you let go of the urge to prove anything for the time being?
   
• Create a short phrase you can say to yourself when you sense that you are losing your cool. You can try saying, "It's okay," "Calm down," or "Let it go."
   
• Increase your awareness of the emotional impact you have on others. Think of the image of a boat's wake on calm waters. What is the wake that you want to leave behind?
   

Treatments options for helping increase a person's ability to recognize, label, and manage their emotions include working with a therapist who specializes in combining strategies such as mindfulness, meditation, building skills that support mind/body/emotion connection such as somatic experiencing, helping improve communication skills, supporting healthy boundaries such as promoting personal space when one is emotionally escalated, and creating behavioral goals that help with tracking distress tolerance.

SOURCES:
 
CPTSD Workbook, Arielle Schwartz PhD/ CPTSD Treatment Manual__CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker__www.verywellmind.com/what-is-complex-ptsd__psychcentral.com/ptsd/complex-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-symptoms#common-triggers__goodtherapy.org/dissociation-c-ptsd-role-of-detachment-in-complex-trauma___crappychilhoodfairy.com/cptsd-behaviors-like-narcissism__Crittenden, P. M., Heller, M. B. (2017). The roots of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder: Childhood trauma, information processing, and self-protective strategies. Chronic Stress, 1, 1-13 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2470547016682965__Kessler, R. C., & Bromet, E. J. (2013). The epidemiology of depression across cultures. Annual Review of Public Health, 34, 119–138. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031912-114409__Lawson, D. M. Treating adults with complex trauma: An evidence-based case study. Journal of Counseling and Development, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jcad.12143 Sar, V. (2011, March 7)__Developmental trauma, complex PTSD, and the current proposal of DSM-5__European Journal of Psychotraumatology, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/ejpt.v2i0.5622__Tarocchi, A., Aschieri, F., Fantini, F., & Smith, J. D. Therapeutic assessment of complex trauma: A single-case time-series study. Clinical Case Studies, 12, 228–245. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1534650113479442__https://www.verywellmind.com/agoraphobia-101-2584235__Avoidance Behavior, Written by Silvi Saxena MBA, MSW, LSW, CCTP, OSW-C/Reviewed by Raiy Abulhosn MD__ https://psychcentral.com/pro/complex-ptsd-and-the-realm-of-dissociation

COMPLEX PTSD 

SHAME

AVOIDANCE

HYPERVIGILANCE

INTERPERSONAL DIFFICULTIES

DISSOCIATION

IMPULSIVITY

DEPRESSION

TRIGGERS

OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR

PHYSICAL

*TREATMENT*

PERSONAL EXAMPLES