Everything you find here, including links to the foundation I started for post-traumatic healing and complex trauma research, all of it was created with you in mind. CPTSD Learning Center™, Trauma-Informed Tuesday™, Daily Recovery Support™, Healing Book Club™, Daily Encouraging Texts™, Mindfulness, Prayer & Meditation Circle™, Healing in Safe Community™, and all programs offered to the mental health community are a culmination of my life’s work.

This body of work was crafted especially for trauma-informed helping professionals and their patients with a history of ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences – who are now living with post-traumatic stress or presenting with c-PTSD symptoms.

If you are somewhat unfamiliar with terms such as CPTSD, c-PTSD, and Complex PTSD you are not alone. While CPTSD is not currently recognized as a stand-alone diagnosis, great strides are being made. For an easy-to-understand, succinct and painfully accurate definition of CPTSD, I turned to Beauty After Bruises, an incredible organization focused on serving the growing community of adult survivors of childhood trauma who have Complex PTSD with or without the presence of a dissociative disorder. Their definition of complex post-traumatic stress disorder as follows:

“Complex PTSD comes in response to chronic traumatization over the course of months or, more often, years. This can include emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuses, domestic violence, living in a war zone, being held captive, human trafficking, and other organized rings of abuse, and more. While there are exceptional circumstances where adults develop C-PTSD, it is most often seen in those whose trauma occurred in childhood. For those who are older, being at the complete control of another person (often unable to meet their most basic needs without them), coupled with no foreseeable end in sight, can break down the psyche, the survivor’s sense of self, and affect them on this deeper level. For those who go through this as children, because the brain is still developing and they’re just beginning to learn who they are as an individual, understand the world around them, and build their first relationships – severe trauma interrupts the entire course of their psychologic and neurologic development.” –Beauty After Bruises

As you can clearly see, the fact that CPTSD is not recognized as “a thing” by most mental health practitioners, it can feel invalidating, minimizing, confusing, painful, and emotionally dysregulating.

No one should have to feel this way. Everyone deserves to feel heard–to have their human experience validated.

* If you or your adult patients are living with CPTSD and are in need of a professional consult, please fill out the contact form.

* If you or your adult patients are living with CPTSD and are in need of affordable ancillary services to support and aid in the healing from developmental trauma and ongoing child abuse, CPTSD Foundation’s daily, interactive, trauma-informed peer support calls can aid in and augment the healing of Codependency, Negative Self Image, Affect Regulation, Anxiety, OCD, Disordered Eating, Dissociation and PTSD symptoms complicated by Childhood Emotional Neglect, Exploitation and Toxic or Narcissistic Family Systems, including when Childhood Sexual Abuse and Trafficking was a contributing factor.

You and your patients deserve Daily Recovery Support™ between therapy appointments. 

Let’s collaborate. Reach out today. I look forward to connecting with you.

Warmly,
Athena