By Monique Vitche, The Mighty, October 20, 2019
If you’ve never heard the term “complex trauma” before, you’re not alone. Complex trauma essentially refers to exposure to trauma over long periods of time, often during childhood. In some cases, complex trauma leads to mental health struggles like anxiety, depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD).
Anxiety due to complex trauma is often difficult to shake. This is something Mighty contributor Vicki Peterson wrote about in her piece, “We Can’t Keep Treating Anxiety From Complex Trauma the Same Way We Treat Generalized Anxiety“:
For someone dealing with complex trauma, the anxiety they feel does not come from some mysterious unknown source or obsessing about what could happen… For those who have experienced trauma, anxiety comes from an automatic physiological response to what has actually, already happened. The brain and body have already lived through “worst case scenario” situations, know what it feels like and are hell-bent on never going back there again.
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