Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

milk of human kindness

Trauma occurs when attack or abandonment triggers a fight/flight response so intensely that the person cannot turn it off once the threat is over.

disgust creates shame in the child in a way that soon teaches her to refrain from crying out,

Rage creates fear,

rather than as learned maladaptations to stress

Toxic Shame

Self-Abandonment

Abject feelings of loneliness and abandonment

Fragile Self-esteem

A sense of feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also commonly experienced in an emotional flashback, and all symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame.

I write this I recall the first emotional flashback I was ever able to identify, although I did not identify it until about ten years after it occurred.