Complex PTSD by Pete Walker

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma

These misfirings then, cause dysfunctional warding off of feelings in four different ways:

1. fighting or over-asserting one’s self with others in narcissistic and entitled ways such as misusing power or promoting excessive self-interest;
2. fleeing obsessive-compulsively into activities such as workaholism, sex and love addiction, or substance abuse (uppers’);
3. freezing in numbing, dissociative ways such as sleeping excessively, over-fantasizing, or tuning out with TV or medications (‘downers’);
4. fawning in self-abandoning and obsequious codependent relating. (The fawn response to trauma is delineated in my earlier article on “Codependency and Trauma” in The East Bay Therapist, Jan/Feb 03).

14 Common Inner Critic Attacks

13 Steps Flashbacks Management