10 things to never say to someone with CPTSD

If you share with someone that you have trauma, they will either

1. understand or
2. have loads of opinions on what you “should” do.

I have complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), which develops from prolonged trauma.

Unlike with PTSD, there isn’t a “before the trauma” version of you with CPTSD.

Here are some things people — mostly relatives — have said to me about my trauma.

1. “You weren’t even in the military.”

“You can’t have PTSD. That’s only for people in the armed forces. What gives you the right to have that when you haven’t even fought for our country?”

Military experience can be traumatic; it’s not the only event that can be traumatic, though.

On this note, why is it that society has more empathy towards traumatized war veterans than they do regular citizens?

Or rather…why is certain trauma romanticized and considered “acceptable” while other trauma — like abuse — is dismissed and invalidated?

2. “How are you traumatized?!”

“This doesn’t make sense. How are you traumatized?! I did everything I could for you, and you call yourself traumatized!”

This exact response is why I’m traumatized.

It communicates that, no matter what I say, you’re not going to stop waiting for me to stop speaking so you can talk again.

It tells me that you don’t care what my answer is and won’t like it.

Most of all, it tells me you are incapable of taking responsibility and doing what needs to be done to repair the relationship.

It tells me the best move is to cut contact.

3. “You need to move on.”

The only way to “move on” from trauma is to work through it.

Stifling oneself, or refraining from talking about their traumatic experiences, only makes (C)PTSD worse.

4. “It wasn’t that bad.”

If it “wasn’t that bad”, then it wouldn’t affect me so much now.

To people who raised me or were around me, my traumatic years were mere blimps in their life.

To me, my trauma was my entire life — my entire upbringing.

It was my childhood, my teenage years and well into adulthood.

To my abusers, the “bad things” they did were short, quick moments they never thought about again. For me, they were ongoing, repeated patterns that continue to affect me.

Trauma became a part of my childhood brain development. There is no “before trauma” version of Jane — only the “before healing from trauma” Jane.

I have dissociative identity disorder because of severe, ongoing childhood abuse and neglect.

5. “That’s the past.”

The past is present. Who we are today is the result of yesterday, a month ago, years ago, birth.

Childhood trauma is a cancer that festers and carries on through generations until someone is incapable of carrying the burden. I couldn’t carry it anymore; I couldn’t deal.

That’s not a character flaw — it’s me realizing that I can’t and don’t want to continue the cycle of abuse.

“Moving on”, per the people who say this, typically means absolving people of their guilt. It means letting abusers off the hook. It means letting the cycle continue through to the next generation, at whatever cost.

I won’t do it.

Moving on, while healing from trauma, looks like

• talking about my trauma
• accepting that bad things happened TO me
• creating solutions so the trauma doesn’t happen again
• enforcing boundaries so I feel safe

Ironically, I am “moving on”…but not in the way toxic people would like me to.

6. “Others have it worse.”

“I read this book by a child actress whose mother forced her to act and beat her. Now, she’s a famous news anchor after finding God. You should read it. It might help you to know that other people had it worse.”

My family preferring to watch or read stories of other people’s childhood trauma shocked me.

First and foremost, these stories they compared mine to didn’t even scratch the surface of everything I’d been through, that had been done to me.

I’ve been through the kind of trauma that makes you question if God is real — and, if so, whether he’s the hero or the villain. You know, the kinds of questions evangelists perceive as “the devil’s doing” that you should ignore and stop asking about.

Second, they’d tell me, “I wish you’d stop talking about your trauma,” because they didn’t want to hear it. I think hearing about what I went through brought up uncomfortable feelings of regret.

But they were okay with hearing or knowing about traumatic things that happened to other people. It felt like they had more empathy and compassion for other people than they did for me.

That behavior caused irreparable damage to our relationship.

7. “You need to practice gratitude.”

Trauma has nothing to do with a lack of gratitude. If anything, people with CPTSD have been conditioned to be overtly grateful…and were still criticized for not being grateful “enough”.

Telling someone whose parents threatened their lives on more than one occasion to feel lucky they lived is insensitive.

Multiple times, I would have rather died than live. I would sit in my closet, hidden from view when the door was open, and pray to God to be taken away already.

8. “God will take it away if you pray.”

Taking away my trauma would require a complete reset on my life. It would mean a completely different childhood.

Time machines and second chances to live out your childhood don’t exist.

Platitudes like “thoughts and prayers” or telling people to ask their higher power to remove their trauma are insensitive. It’s not compassionate or empathetic.

It says, “I don’t have empathy to give you, and I don’t care that you had a crappy life.”

People who had great childhoods, who don’t have childhood trauma? They don’t say things like this.

9. “Have you tried…”

How about we keep therapeutic suggestions to therapists? Armchair psychologists are highly opinionated and highly ignorant. They don’t actually know anything.

My healing journey is also none of your business. I choose to share very little of my trauma healing path.

10. “You need to forgive and forget.”

The thing about trauma and PTSD: you can’t forget it. The entire reason it’s trauma is that it’s traumatic.

Forgiving the people who hurt me does absolutely nothing for me and only enables them. They want to be absolved of their abusive behavior, as this is what generations before them have done. That’s why the cycle has continued for so long.

It’s why, with me, this cycle stops. ✨