There is a piece of writing entitled Complex Trauma and the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) on Eggshell Therapy and Coaching. This site is for the intense, highly sensitive and gifted people. So, if you are one of them, you can visit the site as you will be able to find some interesting things.
Every content on the site is written by Imi Lo, a consultant for emotionally intense and highly sensitive people. She is also known as the writer of Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity and The Gift of Intensity. The woman focuses on working with emotional intensity, high sensitivity, as well as giftedness. She is a professional that has trained in mental health, psychotherapy, art therapy, philosophical counselling, and modalities that are based on mindfulness. She has worked in a lot of places, including hospitals, schools, and community mental health teams.
A Split In Your Being – Understanding Complex Trauma (CPTSD)
A thing known as Highly Sensitive People or HSP tends to respond to Complex Trauma or CPTSD more intensely. There is a possibility for it to create a split in your psyche that can cause a myriad of confusing symptoms. Trauma can make people who are already sensitive more intent.
As a Highly Sensitive Person or HSP, your trauma reactions are also more intense compared to the other ones, just like any other of your reactions to stimuli. It can happen due to your receptivity. Basically, you see, hear, and know things that others do not. It is said that your empathy means you take in more and feel more. There is no other option but to be affected by the toxic family dynamics, overt or covert abuse and manipulation.
As a kid who is different by default, you are craving for extra love and extra support to get rid of isolation, alienation and despair. Your perceptivity and intolerance of injustice show that you are susceptible to existential depression. As for your need for emotional attunement, it means you are wounded by the emotional neglect of imagining if your parents do not care about you and leave you alone. Everything that does not affect your brothers and or sisters or your friends makes you traumatized. It basically means that your sensitivity and overexcitabilities make you fragile to the stronger and more lasting trauma responses. The sad news is that there is only a limited mental health professional that has an ability to understand the emotional intensity and chronic trauma that you have experienced since childhood or Complex Trauma/CPTSD. Rather than getting the understanding that you need, there is a high chance of you being over-diagnosed and said to have mood disorders or personality disorders. In this opportunity, the mechanism of dissociation, which is the common reaction to the complex trauma, will be discussed.
Structural Dissociation – A Split in Your Psyche
The common reaction when getting hurt is to stay away from the community. When you were younger, there were only a few options. Even when you had abusive parents, there was no way for you to leave. That’s why, instead of physically exiting, you psychologically withdrew. This kind of thing is known as dissociation. Dissociation is in our body to protect us, just like the circuit breaker in an electrical system. The sad news is that you only stay away from getting psychic injuries but also from yourself during the process of dissociation.
When your highly sensitive psyche is controlled by Complex Trauma/CPTSD, it is possible for you to suffer from a form of dissociation called structural dissociation. Apparently, it is an important part of a mental disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD.
According to the site, structural dissociation is a split in your personality. The statement does not mean you have psychosis or suffer from schizophrenia. In this team, you are actually aware of who you are, it is just you feel totally different from time to time on the inside.
The split began as a strategy to manage the extraordinary experience. There is no other option than to cut off when facing some events that can cause stress such as parent’s fights, physical violence, verbal abuse or prolonged neglect. Due to the fact that you are highly sensitive, it is possible for you to not externalize your wound and choose to withdraw and internalize your anger instead. When you are in this dark time, you might choose to make yourself a scapegoat and blame yourself.
It is common knowledge that the things named Complex Trauma/CPTSD are two different things as PTSD is the result from a single incident. When the circumstances are normal, you would love to stay away from your abuser and never return to them. However, the case is different if they are your parents or some other family members. In this case, there is no other way than to stay. As you could not deal with the trauma in a healthy way, you created a separate self in your mind instead in order to survive the mess.
When you take this split into adulthood, an internal conflict could always appear like every day. For example, sometimes you might feel like a child who is easily hurt and acts impulsively and some other times you feel like the strongest one and can compete with the adults. A side of yourself may dominate your life at home and another one may control your career life. When you are triggered, you can change from one side to another and this kind of extreme change can confuse you and also people around you.
Having different personas is actually normal as long as it is not extreme. For example, it is fine to be different at work and at home. However, when your sensitive psyche strikes, it can make yourself and everything around you worse and cannot be controlled. You have no idea the reason why you are triggered, but you have reacted in ways that you usually regret later even before you know it.
