Angel Sumka RCC, MACP, Empowered-Hearts Counselling

Angel is a queer, neurodivergent and learning disabled counsellor. Please forgive the typos! Printable file is downloadable at the bottom of the page

When people experience trauma over and over again, particularly through childhood they can develop a wide variety of mental health and relationship challenges. When a person experiences harm at a young age, particularly when it’s from a person they should have been able to trust such as a parent or caretaker, it can dramatically impact their ability to regulate their emotions, to navigate healthy boundaries, or to deal with the many life stressors they will face over their lifetime.

Symptoms of complex trauma are many; and each of those symptoms are diverse in the way that they might present. To complicate diagnosing complex ptsd, these symptoms aren’t always present and there aren’t any that need to be present in order for a person to have negative, lingering impacts.

There’s a growing body of research examining the overlap between things like borderline personality and complex PTSD, Because of the wide diversity of symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. there are some fantastic books for those who are into researching on how trauma impacts us physically ( The Body Keeps the Score by Van der Kolk; The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke; PolyVagal Theory by Dr. Porges) That highlight how trauma can impact us physically, from depression to autoimmune disorders.

Thankfully there is hope. and thanks to modalities such as EMDR, you don’t even have to retell your story reliving every excruciating memory in order to heal.