Many people think they are familiar with trauma based on depictions in movies and TV shows, but that simplistic view doesn’t accurately portray all the ways it can manifest – many of which are so subtle that they seem like fundamental aspects of your personality.
Prolonged abuse or neglect can change how you relate to other people, regulate your emotions and respond to everyday stress. With time, it may even affect your self-perception. Instead of recognizing these patterns as adaptations to painful experiences, you may develop a harsh inner critic who berates you for perceived flaws – but you don’t have to listen to this internal lecture forever.
September is CPTSD Awareness Month, making it an ideal time to examine how complex trauma can become intertwined with your identity.
What Is Complex Trauma?
Complex trauma typically results from repeated, prolonged or interpersonal traumatic experiences, particularly those that occurred during formative periods in your life. Examples include childhood abuse or neglect, domestic violence, bullying, an unstable home environment, abandonment or other situations where you repeatedly felt unsafe, powerless or unable to escape.
These experiences can be especially difficult to recognize as traumatic if they were a consistent part of your childhood or adolescence. Children and young adults are highly adaptive and often learn to accept the circumstances around them, even when they are unhealthy. If instability, fear or emotional neglect were norms in your environment and you lacked the context to recognize that something was wrong, you might have absorbed them on a subconscious level.
Most people associate the word “trauma” with extremely shocking or frightening events, including natural disasters and serving in combat zones. But when trauma happens repeatedly or over an extended period, its influence can be much subtler – and you may carry your familiar, default responses into adulthood without realizing where they came from.
Personality Traits vs. Survival Strategies
People adapt to difficult environments in whatever ways help them survive. Repeatedly experiencing trauma from a young age will teach you to remain on high alert for potential signs of danger. Responses like shutting down, dissociating, monitoring other people’s moods or reacting strongly to perceived threats can become second nature. Even after you’re in a safer environment, your nervous system may continue behaving as though you need these strategies to protect yourself.
You’ll see these learned behaviors manifesting in several ways. For example, many people with complex trauma subconsciously take a room’s emotional “temperature” the second they walk in because anticipating danger has helped them stay safe. They also tend to be fiercely independent – a response to parental neglect, abuse or inconsistent caregiving.
Complex trauma sometimes contributes to complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD. While CPTSD shares features with PTSD, it may also involve persistent difficulties with emotional regulation, relationships and self-perception. In some cases, these patterns become so familiar that you stop connecting them to your lived experiences and begin seeing them as fundamental facets of your personality.
Complex Trauma and Young Men’s Mental Health
Young men may have an especially difficult time recognizing the effects of trauma if they’ve learned that being strong means remaining stoic, independent and emotionally controlled. These behaviors can create additional problems with friendships, romantic relationships, school, work and family.
When those difficulties accumulate, they can seemingly confirm the negative beliefs you already have about yourself. But struggling with trust, anger, vulnerability or emotional regulation doesn’t mean you’re fundamentally flawed.
What’s the Relationship Between Trauma and Substance Use?
Drugs and alcohol can provide an escape valve from your painful emotions – temporarily making it easier to fall asleep, stop dwelling on painful memories or temporarily silence the critical monologue running through your head.
While self-medication may provide a short-lived escape if you’ve spent years feeling tense or emotionally numb, it can’t resolve trauma. A worsening substance use issue can also create additional consequences that reinforce shame and poor self-esteem, including damaged relationships, academic difficulties, addiction and other mental health concerns.
When trauma and substance use occur together, treating only one piece of the problem may leave these crucial underlying issues unaddressed. With dual-diagnosis treatment, you can begin recognizing automatic beliefs and survival responses that no longer serve you. You can learn how to regulate overwhelming emotions, develop healthier coping strategies and gradually experience relationships differently.
Evidence-Based Trauma Treatment for Young Men
PACE Recovery’s master’s- and doctoral-level trauma therapists provide compassionate treatment for PTSD and related conditions. Since 2012, we have used evidence-based approaches to help young men address trauma and its lasting effects. We also treat co-occurring substance use disorders, mood disorders and other behavioral health concerns, allowing our clients to address interconnected problems all at once rather than treating individual symptoms in isolation.
Our structured, single-gender treatment environment provides valuable opportunities for healing. Through individual therapy, group work and relationships with peers, you can practice vulnerability, trust, communication and accountability in a supportive community.
Complex trauma can leave lasting effects, but it shouldn’t define your identity. Some of the qualities you’ve always considered shortcomings or personality quirks may make more sense when you reexamine them from a fresh perspective. With insight, support and effective treatment, you can begin deciding which patterns you want to carry forward and which ones you’re ready to leave behind. Reach out today to request help.