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Justin Sunseri, LMFT

Traumas After the Trauma(s) / show notes

Updated: Mar 27, 2020

This episode definitely requires a content warning on it. It's heavy stuff. We don't go into specific trauma stories or details, but the episode is all about the stuff that reinforces the stuck defensive state, so please make sure you're ready to take it in. I can almost guarantee this is an emotionally triggering episode.



It’s never just the trauma

What you’re left with that affects your daily life that reinforces the trauma

The stuff that keeps you stuck

  • Stuck state: flight/fight, shutdown, freeze (And what these are)

  • Emotions: Anxiety, sadness, numbness, anger, panic, rage, overwhelm

  • Reflections of the stuck state: Thoughts, Self doubt, beliefs, judgments

  • Behavioral adaptations to the stuck state, emotions, thoughts: Addiction, OCD, abuse, increased sleeping, pushing others away

Being cut off from safety -

  • These represent losing a safe person or place

  • No escape, no way to fight back

  • No opportunity to climb the ladder to safety

  • Central to the process of C-PTSD

1. By the perpetrator

Due to threat- The fear of loved ones being harmed if victim tells

Due to wanting to protect someone else from harm, like a sibling or parent

Living with the abuser and never getting to safety

Perpetrator has control over your life - like finances, privacy, food; Having to appease the perpetrator to get needs met


2. How the people in your life react

Not believing the victim - Probably due to their own stuff; Not a reflection of the victim at all

Not being able to act on their belief - Possibly more of a shutdown state; Not enough sympathetic fight or flight energy to act; Minimizing what happened, Not reporting, Keeping a secret


3. Losing a safe person or place

Death in the family like a grandparent - the safety escape is no longer an option



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Stuck Not Broken: Book 1 is now available!

 

Learn the Polyvagal Theory clearly and simply. Understand yourself without shame, blame, or judgment.

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