This is lecture 1 of a 10 week Lecture series for Level 6 students Introducing them to Complex Trauma. This module is based on Courtis & Ford (2013) Treatment of Complex Trauma : A sequenced relationship based approach.London. Guildford Press.
4. 1. To define complex trauma and responses.
2. Differentiate complex trauma from PTSD
3. Explore their own reactions to acute trauma, abuse and
violence.
4. Introduction of case studies
1. LEARNING OUTCOMES
5. 1.
2.
3.
4.
Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma
introductory stories of Doris and Hector
Safety and self disclosure
Trauma: DSM
2. TRAUMA
7. 2.2.Introductory stories of Doris
and Hector
Doris: 40-year-old woman sought therapy because has been gave
her an ultimatum.Doris has long been unable to trust anyone close
to her, yet is terrified of being abandoned.
She switches between being highly dependent on a husband
wanting emotional and physical closeness, and then distancing and
pushing him away. This resulted in confusion for him leading him
to withdraw confirming her belief that you will never find anyone
trustworthy
Doris’s mother suffered from schizophrenia resulting in repeated
hospitalisations. Doris was placed with relatives during these
hospitalisations. When her mother was at home she was
inconsistent in her emotional state and parenting behaviour.
Doris’s father was sexually and physically abusive. Doris’s father
blamed Doris for all her mother’s problems. Doris Kemp to believe
she ruined every relationship and harmed every person she cared
about
8. Hector
Hector is a 21-year-old admitted to an inpatient unit
for being suicidal. He is the son of refugee parents who
fled the country following torture of the Father by the
authorities. Hector’s father PTSD behaviour resulted in
violence abuse and drinking within the family.
At school Hector was bullied for being the teacher’s pet
and working hard at school. The parish priest
befriended him which later lead to sexual abuse.
Whilst in the military he was sexually gang raped by
group of soldiers who assumed him to be gay.
Following his military discharge he started drinking
heavily as it believed he was a monster and disgusting
resulting in frequent suicide attempts
9. 2.3.Safety and self disclosure
This module may well trigger traumatic memories and students
who have experienced trauma.
This may become a distressing and unsettling. Please ensure you
gain the appropriate support should this occur.
If you should choose to share and disclose information regarding
personal trauma please do so with care and caution. This is a
teaching environment not a therapeutic environment.
All students are to treat disclosures with respect and
confidentiality throughout this module
10. 2.4.Trauma: DSM
2.4.1 PTSD criteria
2.4.2 Definition
2.4.3.Original Trauma definition
2.4.4.Type1 & Type 2 trauma
2.4.5.Complex trauma not included in the DSM
11. 2.4.1.PTSD criteria
Intrusive symptoms
Avoidance symptoms
Alterations in
cognitions and mood
Alteration and
arousal and reactivity
12. 2.4.2.Definition of trauma
Multiple meanings: referring to medical, physical
or psychological injury
Difficult to find a clear definition of
psychological trauma
Trauma is used interchangeably with the event
itself, or the individual's experience to the
event, or their response to the event
Consistency in definition: stressor event:
psychological or psychic trauma/stressor
Response to trauma: post-traumatic reactions or
complex traumatic stress disorders
13. 2.4.3. Original trauma definition
Trauma was originally considered to be
abnormal experience: "outside the range
of normal experience"
Evidence demonstrates that the majority
of adults and substantial minority of
children are exposed to traumatic events
14. 2.4.4. Type1 & Type 2 trauma
Type 1: single incident trauma "out of the
blue": natural disaster, terrorist attack,
dramatic accident
Type 2: complex or repetitive trauma:
ongoing abuse, domestic violence, community
violence, war or genocide. Usually involved
fundamental betrayal of trust in primary
relationships and compromises bio psycho
social and emotional development
15. 2.4.5.Type 2: sub-categories
Type 2A: multiple traumas experienced by
individuals from relatively stable backgrounds
who have sufficient resources to manage
traumatic events better
Type 2B: multiple traumas which so
overwhelming that individual cannot separate
one from the other, resilience is impaired.
Type 2 B(R) those who had resilience in the
beginning and type 2B(nR) those who never had
any resileince.
17. 3.1.Complex psychological
trauma
Exposure to severe stresses that repetitive or prolonged,
Involves harm or abandonment by caregivers or other
responsible adults
Occur at developmentally vulnerable times in the
victim's life such as early childhood or adolescence
In addition to being life-threatening or terrifying, these
experiences chronic and compromise development and
primary relationships
18. Complex trauma is defined
as traumatic attachment that is life or
self threatening, sexually violating,
emotionally overwhelming,
abandoning or personally negating
and involves events and experiences
that alter the development of the self,
by requiring survival take precedence
over normal psychobiological
development.
19. 3.2.Complex traumatic stress
disorders
Changes in the mind, emotions, body and
relationships experienced following complex
trauma include
Severe problems with the dissociation, emotional
dysregulation, somatic distress, and alienation
Complex stress disorders go well beyond the
classic definition of what is traumatic in terms of
DSM and ICD 10
20. 3.3.Proposed DSM criteria
Alterations in the regulation of affective impulses
Alterations in attention and consciousness
Alterations in self perception
Alterations in perception of the perpetrator
Alterations in relationship to others
Somatisation and medical problems
Alterations in systems of meaning
Read: Understanding Complex Trauma, Complex
Reactions, and Treatment Approaches:
http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/cptsdunderstanding-treatment.html
21. 1. Anxiety reactions
2. Depressive reactions
3. Anger and rage reactions
4. Self enstrangment and emotional deadness
5. Diffuse physical symptoms and depersonalisation
4. COMPLEX TRAUMA: COMMON
EMOTIONS AND REACTIONS
22.
23. 4.1.Anxiety reactions
These include fear, terror, apprehension,
hypervigilance, panic attacks, sleep
disturbance and nightmares
Various phobias
full range of anxiety disorders
Physiological hyper-arousal alternating with
hypo-arousal
24. 4.2.Depressive reactions
Show up in a variety of ways: ongoing diffuse
sadness and hopelessness with despair
the inability to feel interest in and the
enjoyment of most life activities
social detachment: not feeling close to other
people
Not feeling any emotion other than vague sense
of flatness frustration or irritability (alexithymia)
A feeling of an internal void or sense of emptiness
self harm behaviour, chronic suicidal ideation
and sporadic suicide attempts
25. 4.3.Anger and rage reactions
They struggle with intense feelings of anger and
rage ranging from an ongoing sense of irritability,
annoyance, disappointment, discussed, contempt
and frustration with themselves and others
alternating with episodes of uncontrollable rage,
impulsive acts of protest and aggression
self-directed in the form of self defeating
behaviour, self harm substance abuse and acting
out
or by directing it at others through passive
aggressive, aggressive and violent behaviour
26. 4.4. Self enstrangment and emotional
deadness
A common denominator linking these emotions is
a sense of self estrangement and emotional
deadness
Anxiety is also based on the fear that if feelings
were allowed to emerge, they would be so
intense that they would result in the
victimisation of others, going crazy, causing
others to abandon them, or committing
suicide/homicide
Depressive feelings tend to be based on the
experience of “black hole” or a “yearning void”
of emptiness, badness and despair
27. 4.5.Diffuse physical symptoms
and depersonalisation
When emotions have been internalised as personally
intolerable it is not surprising these reactions develop
into a range of physical reactions
somatoform disorders are manifestations of distress:
stomach problems, breathing problems, muscular
tension problems, high blood pressure, tinnitus, eating
disorders, headaches.
These often defiant or muddle medical diagnosis but
are debilitating and real illnesses and health
impairment
Trauma survivors experienced physical sensations as
dangerous and toxic; being interpreted as signs of
painful, frightening, confusing, rather than illnesses
28. 1. Emotion dysregulation
2. Loss of self integrity and self integration (dissociation)
3. Compromised relationship with others
5.THREE PRIMARY DOMAINS IN
COMPLEX TRAUMA DISORDERS
29. 5.1.Emotion dysregulation
trauma survivors have difficulty coping with emotional
responses in reaction to everyday life events. Emotions
typically exceed the ability to regulate them because
the skills for such modulation were not learnt.
That emotional reactions tend to manifest in an all or
nothing way
"therapeutic window" or "window of tolerance" is the
capacity to tolerate and modulate various emotional
states
Emotion regulation deficit results in little or no
conceptualisation of physical and emotional boundaries
between self and others.
Techniques for skill building in emotional regulation
boundary development essential in treatment
31. 5.2.Loss of self integrity and self
integration (dissociation)
Persistent emotional and somatic dysregulation tends to
elicit and intensify dissociative reactions
The associative processes can become automatic and
involuntary over time and with recurrent use
Post-traumatic dissociation leads to a typical
amplification of emotions, physical sensations,
knowledge/memory, and associated behavioural impulses
Structural theory of the dissociation this to splitting of
personal experience into divisions. Often confused with
dissociative identity disorder
Self perception tends to be profoundly negative and
fragmented
Negative schemas develop which become dominating
organisational beliefs.
33. 5.3..Compromised relationship
with others
Complex trauma survivors have ample reason to
mistrust other people
insecure and disorganised attachments make children
and later adults targets for additional victimisation as
their very isolation and neediness with compromised
emotional regulation make them very vulnerable
Learned patterns of helplessness and expectations of
being treated badly confirms expectations regarding
not fighting back
Five roles in dysfunctional systems: superhero,
caretaker, clown, rebel, lost child
Dysfunctional sexual relationships range from sexual
compulsivity to sexual aversion
35. 1. Sanderson (2013) Part I: Complex
Trauma. 1. Understanding Trauma and
Complex Trauma. 2. Understanding
Trauma Symptoms.
2. Courtois & Ford (2009) chap 1. Defining
and Understanding Complex Trauma and
Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders,
Julian D. Ford and Christine A. Courtois
3. Courtois & Ford (2013) chapter 1
complex trauma and traumatic stress
reactions. Chapter 2 complex
traumatic stress reactions and disorders
6. READINGS
36. Seminar Homework
Summarise the effects of complex trauma
developmentally. Describe how the impact of
trauma has different effects depending on the
developmental stage that trauma occurs in the
lifespan of an individual
Read Courtis & Ford (2013) chap 1 pages 11- 22.