There's been much discussion about complex PTSD on the forum lately, and quite frankly I don't relate as I have PTSD from a single incident only. My life was happy beforehand. I had a loving family and an ordinary life. So, I'm curious about how many traumas everyone has experienced.

Umm.. over 15 major, god only knows how many as secondary or minor. Spanning 32 years.

bec

The short list? About 7, but quite a few of those 'categories' contain several trauma's within - haven't even got around to fully listing those yet so can't give the long list! Lasting from birth to now at the age of nearly 22. this will be interesting...I reckon there will be a lot of mixed answers. Yet all of us wind up with PTSD and similar affects.

Interesting Poll.

I did a bit of a count in my diary. I can remember about 26 separate incidents which could be considered traumatic. There are also a lot more that I can't fix to dates/events/places.

I had to actually select "many incidents throughout my lifetime" because my trauma even though operational related, is not from just one operation, instead many operations based over a period of a seven year period, in which each year I basically deployed somewhere in the world, and came back nuttier than when I went. I actually think each deployment kept me sane to a degree, in that with PTSD what better place is their than the battlefield basically....

When it all stopped, is when I stopped....

I think PTSD is complex whether a person has had one trauma or a thousand traumas. Intensity of the trauma can make a single trauma as complex as one having had several traumas over a lifetime. Myself, I am almost 40 and for about 30 years of my life I lived with trauma in the form of abuse of one sort or another. Perhaps the difference lies in the type of damage done to the brain and the area of the brain in which the damage occurs. Those such as myself learn adaptive skills in childhood to survive that as adults become maladaptive because they are taken to extreme and they are not in line developmentally with a person's chronological age. For example, hypervigelence and mind reading. This kept me alive as a child but as an adult it has caused me many struggles with being overly self conscious, and egocentric in my thought processes. I am very slowly and arduously learning different skills to combat these learned responces, which in effect are brain damage due to trauma.

Marilyn, complex PTSD is a label given to those only who have endured generally a type of trauma as childhood abuse which spanned nearly the entire childhood, or say someone who was in an abusive relationship for 5 years, and suffered beatings, etc for that entire time.

PTSD itself is not really complex though, and I must disagree in that aspect. Physicians often complicate something that is actually quite easy to fix for the most part, they just don't understand it to fix it, or heal it for a better word. Why? Because they don't suffer it, they only take guesses at what actually occurs from what people tell them, which isn't a great deal if you read this place and the amount of people who DO NOT tell their therapists or physicians the full story of what they endure.

Two fold effect IMHO though...

I'm still the only one with a single incident?? Ugh I feel like such a freak...

Enough bullshit! You know better. You're using this "I'm different" nonsense as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself.

Uncle Jim.

I only had one too Evie. You're not alone. I was quite happy before my car crash. Normal upbringing, normal, settled family background then abnormal car crash experience.