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PTSD/cPTSD
- Jen Meller
- Mar 1, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 10, 2025
Not all wounds are visible. And not all trauma comes from one, single event.
PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a very human response to an experience that overwhelmed your system—something that was too much, too fast, or too frightening to process at the time. It might come from a car accident, an assault, a natural disaster, or witnessing violence. Even if the danger has passed, the nervous system may still be holding onto the fear, pain, or confusion, keeping your body stuck in a kind of "survival mode."
Complex PTSD (cPTSD) is something that often develops when trauma happens over and over, especially in childhood. It could look like emotional neglect, persistent criticism, or being in an environment where love and safety were conditional—or absent. These are the slow-building, repetitive experiences that shape not just how we feel about the world, but how we feel about ourselves.
Author Pete Walker describes cPTSD as the internalization of ongoing relational trauma, where the child’s basic needs for emotional safety, attunement, and protection are repeatedly unmet. Instead of feeling seen and supported, you may have learned to shrink, fawn, dissociate, or over-function—survival responses that made sense then, but may feel exhausting now.
Both PTSD and cPTSD can impact how you think, how you connect with others, how you trust, and how you feel in your body. Healing is possible, but it takes intentional work.
In our work together, we’ll go at your pace. We’ll build safety and curiosity around your internal world—what your symptoms are trying to protect, what patterns were once necessary, and where space for something new might open up.
Some of the tools I love using with folks who are navigating PTSD or cPTSD are:
Internal Family Systems (IFS) – helping you understand and gently unburden the parts of you that carry fear, shame, or pain
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) – a method for working with dissociation and internal fragmentation
Somatic experiencing – because trauma often lives in the body, not just the mind
There’s no one-size-fits-all in trauma recovery. But there is room for your story, your pace, and your healing. If you'd like to work through PTSD with me, book a call today.
