Workplace bullying might end up as Complex PTSD

 

Dear Bloggers,

As some of you might know that my wife is suffering from Complex PTSD caused by her managers over a period of three years and then something in her brain just snapped. Since this event she has been in therapy and until today there is no way to cure her fully. This means that there are no opportunities for her to do any kind of job. As there are to many triggers out there and she might be harmful towards other people. Instead of working she is going two mornings in a week to a farm with care for people with mental challenges and she is learning to do some light tasks and learns to ride a horse.

Complex PTSD is a traumatic experience due to workplace bullying or sexual abuse. But as more attention is paid to these kinds of experiences and exactly what they can do to victims, we are beginning to understand more about this condition. And this increased understanding should, in turn, give hope to the hundreds of people who find themselves subjected to workplace bullying every day.

Because the victims of C-PTSD do exhibit some of the same symptoms seen in standard PTSD, it can easily be misdiagnosed. But C-PTSD sufferers also exhibit some other symptoms that are more specific to the condition. These can include difficulties regulating emotions such as prolonged sadness, inability to control your temper or inhibited temper, and even suicidal thoughts. My wife became a victim of workplace bullying by her manager.

Other symptoms of complex PTSD include either forgetting or consistently reliving traumatic events; feeling detached from your own body and thoughts; overwhelming feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt or stigma; a distorted perception of the bully. Workplace bullying is so much more than just making your job more difficult. It is a very real form of abuse that can undermine a person’s entire sense of well-being.

By understanding the realities of C-PTSD, we can begin to break through the wall that surrounds workplace bullying and begin to let victims know that they are not alone and healing is very much possible. It will not work after three years of constant abuse at the certain point you might just snap.

Just an example of what you encounter with a partner with C-PTSD

All of a sudden a loud scream and she is sitting straight up in our bed her heart is pounding, I am fully awake at 2 am. She is totally panic-stricken and consumed with terror in her eyes. And mumbles: “He is throwing me out of a window”.

Our bedroom is quiet. There are no intruders, only our faithful hairy friends Fedde and Heiko are standing on the other side of the bedroom door.

I wonder if her loud screaming has scared any of our children.

After 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes as I lie in a snoozing mode again, I feel her and she is terrified in our darkened room. I try to decide if I should call a doctor to give her something to calm her down… perhaps I’m having it wrong and is it only just a bad dream. I am both afraid and confused. I know that it is safe in our bedroom, that there is no immediate threat, but her body and emotions are hijacked, and without my consent I find her immersed in past horrifying events.

Thankfully I do know now, from more than 8 years of experience, that a panic attack will eventually pass.

It feels like it’s going to kill her, but it won’t. but her body and emotions are hijacked, and without my consent I find her immersed in past horrifying events. I have to wait it out.

PTSD is typically the result of a specific, horrifying event, Complex PTSD is the consequence of numerous traumatic events, over a longer period of time. CPTSD is frequently caused by childhood abuse and neglect or, in my wife’s case, being trapped for many years in a very abusive workplace.

Complex PTSD and PTSD share symptoms, but there are some symptoms unique to CPTSD. If you are interested in a somewhat detailed list of symptoms for both PTSD and CPTSD, you can scroll to end of this post.

When I look objectively at the symptoms of PTSD and Complex PTSD, I can check off 99% of them (anger isn’t a symptom for her and also low self esteem has never been an issue) but still she tries to live in denial that she has CPTSD… until she is triggered and panicking so badly that she is struggling to speak’

Every morning she is waking up and begins her day with limited emotional energy. Our children are priority so she does everything to work around her limitations with PTSD to be available for them. She carefully plans her day tasks and she is trying to avoid crowds when she has to go to the shop.

One crowded, overwhelming event can sideline her for several days afterwards, so she is choosing her activities carefully, mindful of the probable fallout.

Still, 8 1/2 years after escaping her abusive managers, she still has nightmares and panic attacks. She is having huge gaps in her memories of the past years.

CPTSD is basically an emotional injury ~ an invisible illness. Since it isn’t as tangible as a broken bone I frequently have to remind her that living so much of her life being on “high alert” and in “panic mode” is both emotionally and physically exhausting.

According to my wife: “For me, being triggered causes a level of overwhelm that is very difficult to describe. Research done by PTSD patients has shown that when someone with PTSD is triggered and panics, the right half of the brain “takes over” and the logical, thinking left side of the brain is sometimes almost totally “shuts down.” When this happens to me it becomes almost impossible for me to speak and I can’t think. All I am aware of is the panic and a desperate need to hide. If I were walking with someone else, we would have to stop talking until the truck has passed because there would be no way to hear each other over the noise of the truck. For the minutes that the truck is roaring past, there is only the truck. I am totally consumed by the noise and vibrations of the passing truck. 

I’ve been told repeatedly that in many ways my situation was (and continues to be) somewhat extreme and unique. I am still struggling and doing little steps forward.”

There’s no way around it: PTSD sucks. There are ways that she has improved a lot in the past 8 years though. I can now write about it here on my blog. As horrible as CPTSD is, I want you to know this: there is still joy in the midst of the struggle.

I still laugh with my children. We have so much fun together. Our girls love to make us laugh… it’s become a bit of a competition between them to see who can show the funniest memes each day.

I have been blessed with two Shetland Sheepdogs, one of them is being a service dog for me. They bring all of us so much joy. Truthfully, I am not sure that She’ll ever will totally “conquer” her CPTSD but she is slowly but surely learning to manage it.

Instead of actively working she is trying to learn new ways to heal and better manage the symptoms of PTSD while she embraces her weakness and struggles. Many people do recover from PTSD and even CPTSD. There are numerous healing resources to explore. Perhaps you are also in the thick of PTSD or CPTSD.

CPTSD is a more severe form of Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is delineated from this better known trauma syndrome by five of its most common and troublesome features: emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment, a vicious inner critic and social anxiety.

• CPTSD emotional flashbacks do not typically have a visual component. Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feelings of past abuse/abandonment.
• Fatigue with symptoms of or similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Numbness, both physical (toes, fingertips, and lips) and emotional (inability to feel love and joy)
• Clumsiness
• Hyperawareness and an acute sense of time passing, seasons changing, and distances travelled
• Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, a sense of being unwanted, unlikeable and unlovable
• Social isolation, avoidance of relationships
• night terrors, chronic insomnia
• Variations in consciousness, including forgetting traumatic events (i.e. Psychogenic amnesia), reliving experiences (either in the form of intrusive PTSD symptoms or in ruminative preoccupation), or having episodes of dissociation.
• explosive or extremely inhibited anger (may alternate)
• Changes in self-perception, such as a chronic and pervasive sense of helplessness, paralysis of initiative, shame, guilt, self-blame, a sense of defilement or stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings

 

If I could share one thing with you it would be this: please be gentle and take care of  yourself.

The Old Sailor,