On C-PTSD, gender dysphoria, and great writing

Introducing a marvelous Substack

Content warnings for discussion of trauma and PTSD, brief mentions of abuse and SA, and discussion of right-wing anti-trans talking points

Candles, too many, for Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been stumbling across a lot of really apt and eloquent descriptions and explanations of what complex PTSD is, how it works, how it feels, and how one begins to heal from it. It’s always astounding to me when someone really nails it, and does so in fewer than eighty zillion words.

For example:

The big difference between PTSD and cPTSD is that PTSD comes from a single, horrific event, like [a] car crash. Something monstrous happened to you, and the memory of that event drags on you like a stone that you can’t quite get away from.

CPTSD, meanwhile, happens when someone experiences low-level, long-term trauma. Say, for example, that you had a deeply neglectful parent…Like, they were still there in the house with you. But they just weren’t there for you. So you grew up learning…that you were not and would never be as important to them as whatever was occupying the bulk of their attention…

…The basic premise of cPTSD is that the repeated denial of fundamental needs is an extended form of trauma just as severe as surviving something horrific…

…So, in a nutshell: PTSD and cPTSD are what happens when our minds start doing things in an attempt to keep us safe, but either we escape the dangers or over-adapt and those coping strategies start hurting us. [emphasis mine]

I started reading Stained Glass Woman a couple weeks ago, and it’s astounding, if at times also harrowing. The blog’s writer, who calls herself Doc Impossible, also publishes other trans women’s voices, and the post I’m going to highlight here is by a writer named Joscelyn Inton-Campbell.

Much of the material so far is based around Doc Impossible’s dawning realization that the ways she has experienced gender dysphoria are not meaningfully distinguishable from C-PTSD. I want to be extremely clear here, though, that what these writers are talking about is not at all the popular right-wing talking point you might think it is at first — that being the poisonous notion that being trans or experiencing gender dysphoria is the result of a traumatic event, that being trans is itself an illness. This idea came out of conversion therapy circles, and has reared its ugly head more and more recently as right-wing religious groups attempt to discredit and erase trans people’s existence.

The idea behind Stained Glass Woman is in fact the inverse: it is the sense that the hateful society in which most young trans people find themselves is itself traumatizing to the point where the knowledge that one’s body does not match their gender becomes dysphoria: a suffering the trans person experiences in similar ways as non-trans people with C-PTSD experience their triggers. It’s not that trauma causes people to be trans. It’s that societal and cultural attitudes toward trans-ness frequently make being trans traumatic.

The piece I’ve linked below goes into more detail about this but also about a slightly different topic, which I think of as “TFW you realize what you thought was just you being a naturally shitty person is actually C-PTSD.” I’m not trans, but I’ve definitely been through this dance.

Complex Trauma Disorder? I hardly know her!

Some highlights:

Especially for those of us that don’t have any specific, acute moments of trauma, like being physically hit or sexually assaulted. Nothing we went through really maps directly onto that kind of PTSD. So we all must just be inherently broken, terrible monsters that don’t deserve anything good, right?

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I never experienced any physical abuse, never went to war, and couldn’t really point at any specific moments in my life I would have said something “traumatic” happened. So, clearly, in my professional opinion as a counselor, trauma couldn’t be the problem and I was just a broken girl.

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When I actually did finally tell people about some of the things that happened to me over the years, they would look shocked or upset, and offer their sympathies. Huh, that’s weird, those are just things that happened. Just facts about my life, you know?

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I did have some specific trauma events that I was well aware of, but dismissed because they didn’t make me “feel like” trauma…The thing is, one of the other things trauma can do to memories is dissociate your feelings. Like a form of psychological triage, your brain amputates the feelings that went along with those memories. So, just because it doesn’t “feel traumatic” doesn’t mean it wasn’t and hasn’t left a wound upon you.

For more of this kind of thing, and also some analysis of what it’s like and what to do if this sounds like you and you’re trans, read the whole thing here. I see this article as a good entry point to the blog, not because Doc Impossible’s own writing isn’t amazing, but because it is, and as such, can be hard to take. Her stuff is vivid, visceral, and gets into the nitty-gritty. Inton-Campbell’s post here is a little bit more meta, talking about the condition and how it operates as opposed to the emotional and bodily experience from inside of it. Still, engage with caution, and take good care of yourselves.