Complex PTSD

by Pete Walker

  With enough healthy inner self-defense, the survivor gradually learns to reject her unconscious acceptance of self-abuse and self-abandonment. Her sense of healthy self-protection begins to emerge and over time grows into a fierce willingness to stop unfair criticism - internal or external.

  Psychologically speaking, this is part of the process of working through repetition compulsion. Deconstructing repetition compulsion has both an internal and external dimension. On the internal dimension, we decrease the habit of repetitively perpetrating our parents’ abuse against ourselves by staunchly confronting the inner critic. This then allows us to become more mindful on the external dimension when others reenact our parents’ mistreatment. We can then confront them to stop, or banish them from our lives. With enough practice, we can repudiate our parents’ awful legacy of teaching us that love means numbly accepting abuse and neglect.

  Further encouragement and guidance for therapeutically angering at the critic can be found in Soul Without Shame, by Byron Brown, and Healing Your Emotional Self by Beverly Engel.

  Embracing The Critic

  In my experience, until the fight response is substantially restored, the Cptsd client benefits little from CBT, psychodynamic or mindfulness techniques that encourage us to accept the critic. In later recovery, when the survivor has removed the venomous stinger from the critic, these techniques can be quite valuable. Then, and only then, are we able to reconnect with the helpful side of healthy self-criticism [see Stone and Stone’s book Embracing Your Inner Critic].

  A typical indication that the critic has mellowed into being functional is that it speaks to us in a kind and helpful voice. It reminds us dispassionately to adjust our behavior when we can and ought to be doing something better. If, however, it blasts us for imperfection, it is giving itself away as the toxic critic that was installed by our parents.

  A left-brained, objective approach of embracing the critic is rarely helpful unless it is balanced with a subjective, right-brained capacity for assertive self-protection. Perhaps this is because the inner critic appears to operate simultaneously with hyper-emotional right-brain flashback dynamics. Perhaps toxic inner critic processes are so emotionally overwhelming that efforts to resist them rationally and dispassionately are too weak to be effective.

  THOUGHT-SUBSTITUTION AND THOUGHT-CORRECTION

  Thought-substitution, especially in the form of thought-correction, is another essential tool for empowering the work of thought-stopping the critic. Many years ago, I sensed that my critic became as tough as a body-builder’s bicep through myriad repetitions. I guessed that similarly exercising self-protective responses to the critic would build my thought-correction muscles. It did in fact, and my instinct to protect myself almost always arises automatically now when I am triggered into a flashback. I believe I am not exaggerating when I say that tens of thousands of positive thought-substitutions have rewarded me with a psyche that is fairly consistently user-friendly.

  Accordingly, I encourage you to immediately confront the critic’s negative messages with positive ones like those in the list at the beginning of the chapter. This is essential in Cptsd recovery, because a single unconfronted toxic thought can act like a virus and rage infectiously out of control into a flu-like mélange of shame, fear and helplessness.

  Moving quickly into thought-stopping and thought correction often obviates a headlong tumble into the downward spiral of a flashback. This is essential in critic-work, as the critic typically attacks us more viciously once it has gotten up a head of steam. At such times, the critic can hypocritically scorn us for falling back into self-criticism when we “should” know better. This is the time then, more than ever, to “thought-correct and not self-berate,” as my last intern liked to say to her clients.

  Additionally, I encourage you to write out a list of your positive qualities and accomplishments to read it to yourself if you get lost in self-hate. Toolbox 5 in chapter 16 is a practical exercise to help you elaborate this list in a multidimensional way.

  Making a written record of your positive attributes is especially helpful as flashbacks often create a temporary amnesia about your essential worthiness and goodness. Flashbacks seem to involve a temporary loss of access to more current left-brain learning. MRI’s show greatly reduced left-brain activity in hyper-aroused Cptsd survivors. In my experience, memorizing your list enhances your capacity to dissolve that amnesia.

  Reciting part or all of your list over and over like a mantra can also help you during those times when the critic is particularly severe and relentless. If you have trouble making the list or filling out Toolbox 5, ask a friend or a therapist for their input. Additionally, please let me remind you that qualities do not have to be perfect or ever-present to qualify as qualities. If it is true of you most of the time then, it is a quality.

  Finally, positive visualization can be a powerful adjunct to thought-substitution. Some survivors gradually learn to short-circuit the fear-mongering processes of the critic by invoking images of past successes and accomplishments, as well as picturing safe places, loving friends or comforting memories. There are also a variety of CD’s available at places like Amazon.com that contain guided meditations that use positive language and imagery in a way that enhances deactivation and relaxation.

  Perspective-Substitution And Correction

  The most important thought correction of all is a switch in the perspective of our thinking.

  Perspective-substitution is a broadening of our overall perspective. It moves our viewpoint from the critic’s narrow, negative focus to the more balanced and accurate focus of the observing ego – the mindful self.

  Perspective-substitution helps us to dethrone the critic from its life-negating point of view. This resembles the firing of a bad manager or inept coach – one with a distorted view who dwells so much on what is wrong that he cannot see anything that is right.

  As stated in chapter 1, perspective-substitution can be enhanced with the spiritual practice of gratitude. In this vein, gratitude is a type of mindfulness that looks for empirical proof that life is essentially good even though it is also quite difficult at times.

  Perspective-Substitution And Gratitude

  Gratitude is a delicate subject to write about because many survivors have been abused by shaming advice to “just be grateful for what you have”. Consequently many survivors totally reject the concept of gratitude and throw the baby out with the scorn-sodden bathwater. Once again, this is quite understandable when you legitimately had little to be grateful for in your childhood.

  Moreover, the concept of gratitude is damagingly used by some psychologists to support the psychological defense of denial. They tout gratitude as a fast track that can bypass traumatic pain. This is worse than absurd when applied to Cptsd survivors. It is in fact shamefully abusive to survivors because profound, extended trauma cannot be resolved until it is fully understood and worked through.

  Gratitude is nevertheless a wonderful natural experience that can recurrently enhance the quality of your life. You can cultivate a perspective that is open to noticing what there is to be grateful about as long as you do not do it with the intention of creating a permanent feeling of gratitude. Over time an attitude of gratitude can gradually increase authentic gratefulness.

  This can best be illustrated with the example of love. While it is of course healthy to adopt a cognitive attitude of love toward our friends and chosen family, it is impossible to feel loving all the time. If I expect that of myself, I give my inner critic endless fodder to attack me for not feeling loving enough. Similarly if I expect myself to feel grateful all the time, I keep the critic’s prodigious program of self-disappointment hale and hearty.

  Nonetheless, aligning with attitudes like love and gratitude is generally therapeutic. When I am temporarily stuck in a flashback feeling alienated from life, remembering what I am usually grateful for in life can sometimes pull me out of the polarized negative thinking that helps keep the flashback ali
ve.

  Invoking gratitude is particularly difficult, and often impossible at first, because flashbacks typically strand us in an emotional overwhelm that cancels out our ability to feel anything good about life. Reminding ourselves of what is worthwhile in our lives does not seem to help much in the early phases of using this tool. However, with enough practice of positive-noticing, we can sometimes relax out of a flashback by invoking our memories of gratitude.

  When I experience this at the end of an especially long flashback, positive-noticing sometimes arises spontaneously and brings with it sweet tears of gratitude. These are also typically tears of relief, and tears of an achieved sense of belonging.

  These tears typically arise unbidden, seemingly out of the blue. Typically they are positively triggered by experiences of beauty or connection, such as when flowers authentically strike me as beautiful once again, or when my appreciation of music returns and deeply moves my soul, or when I suddenly fully feel how much I love my wife, my son, my friend or my client.

  After a painful lapse in being able to emotionally enjoy these experiences, this return brings these gratitude-laden tears which on really momentous occasions can vacillate between crying and laughing as I resurface into authentically being grateful to be alive.

  Once again, my experience is that the more I practice the thought substitution of focusing on what I am grateful for, the sooner genuine gratitude returns to me on the occasions that I lose touch with it.

  A powerful way to practice perspective-correction is as follows. After you go to bed at night, list at least ten positive happenings of the day. More often than not these will not be peak experiences, but rather basic and simple pleasures and appreciations. They may be as simple as a catchy tune, an engaging color, a sweet scent, an enjoyable food serving of the day, a new flower in a local garden, a satisfying TV show, a neighbor’s hello, a feeling of fitness climbing the stairs, soothing words from a favorite author, or a pleasant encounter with a pet.

  Decades of this practice have helped me immeasurably to upgrade the sour perspective I inherited from my parents. Alignment with this function of the healthy observing ego provides us with a more balanced and accurate perception of life and other people.

  The Neuroplasticity Of The Brain

  I am repeatedly heartened to read the accumulating evidence from neuroscience research that proves the neuroplasticity of the brain. Neuroplasticity means that the brain can grow and change throughout our life. Old self-destructive neural pathways can be diminished and new healthier ones can replace them. A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis inspiringly explicates this fact. This fact helps me to remember that the critic can indeed literally be shrunk via longterm, frequent and dedicated use of the thought-stopping, thought-substitution and thought-correction practices.

  As recovery progresses, you notice the critic sooner before its attack becomes multidimensional. This then allows you to take more immediate self-protective action. Moreover, Cptsd flashbacks can be utilized as evidence of, and in later stages of recovery, proof of your childhood traumatization. Flashbacks point irrefutably to the fact that your parent’s abandonment forced you to habituate to hypervigilance and negative noticing.

  SHRINKING THE OUTER CRITIC

  THE OUTER CRITIC: THE ENEMY OF RELATIONSHIP

  In Cptsd, the critic can have two aspects: inner critic and outer critic. The inner critic is the part of your mind that views you as flawed and unworthy. The outer critic is the part that views everyone else as flawed and unworthy. When the outer critic is running your mind, people appear to be too awful and too dangerous to trust.

  When she was stuck in an outer critic attack, one of my clients would often rant like this: “Everybody s*cks. People are so selfish and scary. They either f*ck you over or they let you down.” She eventually named this an “I’m-moving-to-another-planet flashback.”

  The outer critic is the counterpart of the self-esteem-destroying inner critic. It uses the same programs of perfectionism and endangerment against others that your inner critic uses against yourself. Via its all-or-none programming, the outer critic rejects others because they are never perfect and cannot be guaranteed to be safe.

  As with the inner critic, outer critic attacks are usually internal and silent, unless you are a fight type as we will see below.

  When we regress into the outer critic, we obsess about the unworthiness [imperfection] and treacherousness [dangerousness] of others. Unconsciously, we do this to avoid emotional investment in relationships.

  The outer critic developed in reaction to parents who were too dangerous to trust. The outer critic helped us to be hyperaware of the subtlest signal that our parents were deteriorating into their most dangerous behaviors. Over time the outer critic grew to believe that anyone and everyone would inevitably turn out to be as untrustworthy as our parents.

  Now, in situations where we no longer need it, the outer critic alienates us from others. It attacks others and scares them away, or it builds fortresses of isolation whose walls are laundry lists of their exaggerated shortcomings. In an awful irony, the critic attempts to protect us from abandonment by scaring us further into it.

  If we are ever to discover the comfort of soothing connection with others, the critic’s dictatorship of the mind must be broken. The outer critic’s arsenal of intimacy-spoiling dynamics must be consciously identified and gradually deactivated.

  4F TYPES AND OUTER CRITIC/INNER CRITIC RATIOS

  Depending on your 4F type, you may gravitate to either the inner or the outer critic. Different 4F types generally have different ratios of outer and inner critic dynamics, and some polarize extremely to one or the other.

  Freeze and Fight types are often polarized to the outer critic. Fawn types tend to be dominated by the inner critic. Flight types can have the most variance in inner and outer critic ratio. Your subtype can also have a big influence on this.

  The Freeze type can judgmentally denounce the entire outside world to justify her all-or-none belief that people are dangerous. The Flight type can use his own perfectionistic striving to excel so that his outer critic can judge everyone else as inferior. The Fawn type uses inner critic self-hate to self-censor and avoid the fear of being authentic and vulnerable in relationship. The Fight type, in a paradoxical twist, controls others through the outer critic to prevent them from abandoning him while at the same time using prickliness to not let them get too close.

  Fight types can also leave at the first sign that the other cannot be controlled. One flight-fight type, who I worked with briefly, told me with great upset about a recent betrayal. His new partner “insisted” on replacing the empty toilet paper roll so that the new roll unwound from the bottom instead of the top. He asked her once to do it his way and felt so betrayed when she did not comply, that he broke up with her. I could not help feeling that she was fortunate that she got away.

  Unfortunately, this client was not able to take in that the lion’s share of his upset was a flashback. He had flashed back to his rigidly controlling mother frightening him into believing that the toilet paper must unwind from the top. She had punished him into believing that this was a universal truth. Perfectionism, in the hands of the outer critic, can be paranoiacally picayune.

  Finally it is not unusual for survivors, who have significantly shrunk their dominant critic mode, to experience a reciprocal increase in the virulence of its opposite counterpart. This came as a disappointing shock to me at a time when I was congratulating myself that my inner critic was a mere shadow of its former self. Soon thereafter, I noticed that I was plagued by a new judgmentalness that seemed out of character. Curiosity and a growing mindfulness about this development lead me to a lot of the insights that I share in this chapter. With enough mindfulness, this shift in critic mode can then become an opportunity to further shrink the overall combined agency of the outer and inner critic.

  PASSSIVE-AGGRESSIVENESS AND THE OUTER CRITIC

  Children are initially wired to
respond angrily to parental abuse or neglect. Outside of the fight types, most traumatized children learn early that protesting parental unfairness is an unpardonable offense. They are generally forced to repress their protests and complaints. This then renders their anger silent and subliminal. This anger however, does not disappear. It percolates as an ever accumulating sea of resentment that can fuel the outer critic’s obsession for finding fault and seeing danger in everyone.

  Viewing all relationships through the lens of parental abandonment, the outer critic never lets down its guard. It continuously transfers unexpressed childhood anger onto others, and silently scapegoats them by blowing current disappointments out of proportion. Citing insignificant transgressions as justification, the survivor flashes back into outer critic mode, and silently fumes and grumbles in long judgmental ruminations. To bastardize Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I find thee lacking? Let me count the ways.”

  When silently blaming the wrong person becomes habitual, it manifests as passive-aggressiveness. Common examples of passive aggression are distancing yourself in hurt withdrawal, or pushing others away with backhanded compliments. Other examples include poor listening, hurtful teasing disguised as joking, and the withholding of positive feedback and appreciation. Chronic lateness and poor follow through on commitments can also be unconscious, passive-aggressive ways of expressing anger to others.