AFTER READING COMPLEX PTSD: FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING – A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA by Pete Walker - 9 Lessons I Learned About Complex Trauma, Recovery, and Resilience

AFTER READING COMPLEX PTSD: FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING – A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA by Pete Walker - 9 Lessons I Learned About Complex Trauma, Recovery, and Resilience There is a peculiar thing about memory. We often imagine it as a kind of archive, a storage room in the back of our minds where old events are neatly stacked in boxes. You open one, you revisit a scene, you close it again. But for people who have lived through long stretches of childhood neglect or abuse, memory is less like an archive and more like a trapdoor. You don’t so much recall an old moment as suddenly fall through the floor into it. The feelings surge, the shame floods, the body reacts before the mind can even orient itself. Pete Walker calls these episodes emotional flashbacks, and they are the signature of what psychologists now call complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD. When I first picked up Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, I expected a clinical map. Perhaps a handbook of therapeutic strategies, heavy with jargon, outlining what happens in the brain. Grab a copy of this book now!