The Hugeness of CPTSD & the Unraveling Layers of the "Onion of Self"

The Friday Edition | No. 19

The Hugeness of CPTSD & the Unraveling Layers of the “Onion of Self”

At times, I underestimate the “hugeness of CPTSD” but in a split second, I am fiercely reminded again. Recently, a series of strange events caused a cataclysmic shift in my life. Among the chaos and confusion, a subtle pattern was emerging. Aspects of myself that I knew about, relatively, but had remained in the background on the list of things I would attend to later. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know about this particular aspect of trauma and how it affected me over the course of my life but it seemed overwhelming in its scope and size. So many other things had taken up priority – until now. This new layer pertains to attachment styles, emotional dysregulation, and dysfunctional coping strategies. I hope to explore and write about these topics at a later date when I have been able to process this unfolding pattern further.

I never start out as a guinea pig, curious to understand what is happening from a psychological or healing perspective, but I often realize as the brutal depths of complex trauma twist and turn that it is the only way through. It is vital to acknowledge, understand, open to, and cooperate with its arrival, and do my best to hold on, observe and take notes. It is here to help me loosen the grip of trauma and help me evolve, heal and move forward in a new way. But it is a perilous journey no matter what perspective you bring to its coming. Much of the time is just surviving, waiting for the stranglehold to lessen, and the clouds to part and bring some light back into your world again. It is only then that you can begin to harness what you have learned and know about complex trauma, and claw back to the present moment so that you can find some foothold, and access your emergency tool kit of healing modalities and aids to find your way back to sanity and your body again.

CPTSD is like a huge onion with countless layers that peel away over time. Some layers are easier to handle, some peel away and are barely perceivable, others hurt like hell, and then there are some layers that feel like your own skin is being torn away. As each day passes, life carries on, and it feels like your insides have been turned outside, leaving you feeling raw, burning, and aching. There is intense pain, emotional flashbacks, extended feelings of dissociation, flooding, and feeling so overwhelmed that doubts arise about whether healing is possible, or if you will ever find yourself and a world that resembles something you have known before. All of it happening as you stand in the aftermath of your past tearing holes in your present and feeling as though you are being ripped apart limb from limb. This is the hugeness of CPTSD. The ever-peeling onion. The unknown. The uncertainty. The unexplainable. The inexplicable. The isolation and terror built into your body over time and then suddenly revealed again, one layer at a time.

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

_Carl Sandburg, “Selected Poems”