PTSD & Complex PTSD Are NOT the Same Thing 🧠
Why Complex PTSD Is So Misunderstood — And What Your Brain Has to Do With It (6min Read)
TL;DR Summary
PTSD is usually caused by a single shocking event; Complex PTSD (CPTSD) stems from repeated, relational, and developmental trauma.
Both change your brain’s alarm systems (amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex), but CPTSD rewires your entire sense of self and relationships.
CPTSD causes chronic nervous system inflammation, emotional dysregulation, and difficulty with trust, boundaries, and identity.
Trauma gets "stored" in the body through hormonal and neuroimmune loops involving the HPA axis, fascia, muscles, and skin.
Bottom-Up healing approaches are crucial for CPTSD because it lives in the body, not just the story.
Bottomline? The brain can rewire. You are not stuck. Healing is possible.
The PTSD vs. C-PTSD Conversation
Why does it feel like your body is on high alert, even when nothing “bad” is happening?
Why do you trust people too quickly—or not at all—and end up burned out, anxious, and ashamed?
Why is it so hard to regulate your emotions, even if you're great at controlling everything else?
These aren’t “character flaws.” They’re the scars of Complex PTSD—a condition most people don’t even know they have because our culture has only ever talked about trauma through the lens of PTSD.
Today, we’re changing that!
PTSD & Complex PTSD are vastly different things, and affect your nervous system in totally different ways.
Let’s find out how!
PTSD: The Aftershock of a Singular Event
Most people associate PTSD with soldiers or survivors of natural disasters or violent crimes.
And they’re not wrong.
PTSD typically results from a single, life-threatening experience that overwhelms the brain’s ability to cope.
Think of it like this: You're driving on a quiet road, and suddenly a deer jumps in front of you.
You slam the brakes. Your heart races. Your body floods with adrenaline. That’s a healthy stress response.
But if your brain doesn’t “come back online” after the danger passes, you might start reacting as if the deer is always there—even if you’re just looking at a photo of one.
That’s PTSD.
20% of people experience it after a traumatic event.
And for some types of trauma, like sexual violence, the average is closer to 50%.
Ok, so what’s Complex PTSD then, Cody?
Great question!
CPTSD: The Slow Burn That Reshapes Who You Are
Now imagine this: instead of one single traumatic event, you grew up with unpredictability, emotional neglect, or chronic criticism.
Or maybe you were in a long-term emotionally abusive relationship (been there).
In this kind of trauma, there is not just one deer or one event.
It’s a forest filled with invisible threats that never let you feel safe.
That’s Complex PTSD.
CPTSD doesn’t just hijack your fear response—it rewires your whole nervous system, making it harder to feel safe, to trust others, and to understand your own emotions.
And because it often begins in childhood, you grow around the trauma like a tree around a nail—it becomes embedded in how you see yourself, others, and the world.
The Symptom Overlap (and What CPTSD Adds On)
These are two vastly different things, as you can tell, but they’re both affecting the nervous system, and they have some overlap in the ways they show up day to day.
PTSD and CPTSD can both cause:
Flashbacks
Panic attacks
Dissociation
Memory fragmentation
Hypervigilance
But CPTSD brings extra layers:
Chronic emotional dysregulation
Deep shame and distorted self-concept
Struggles in relationships and attachments
Low self-esteem and confidence
Persistent feelings of emptiness or despair
Body-based symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or muscle tension
It’s not just that CPTSD lasts longer.
It affects everything, including how you see your worth, how you love, and how you protect yourself!
So What’s Actually Happening in the Brain?
This wouldn’t be the Mind, Brain, Body Lab if we didn’t dive into what’s happening in the brain!
Both PTSD & CPTSD affect the brain in similar, but different ways.
Amygdala: This is your fear radar. It becomes hyper-reactive in both PTSD and CPTSD, causing frequent false alarms.
Hippocampus: This part helps encode memory and time. Trauma literally shrinks this area of your brain, leading to fragmented, nonlinear flashbacks.
Default Mode Network (DMN): This is the brain network involved in self-reflection and identity. In CPTSD, it becomes disrupted, which can lead to chronic shame, negative self-talk, and feeling like you have no stable sense of self.
HPA Axis (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal): This is your brain-body stress highway. Trauma over-activates it, flooding your system with cortisol and stress hormones — especially in CPTSD, where there’s no off switch.
Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): The logic and regulation center. Trauma dampens it, so you struggle with emotional control and impulse regulation.
But here’s where CPTSD goes further.
In Complex PTSD, the PFC often never fully develops its emotional regulation circuits, especially when trauma happens during childhood.
Your brain gets “wired” for survival, not connection.
That wiring is adaptive then but debilitating now.
Wild, right?!
How CPTSD Shows Up in the Body
Last week, we unpacked the myth that trauma is “stored” in the body like files in a drawer.
It’s not.
However, in CPTSD, it sure does live through the body.
Why?
Because trauma reshapes your entire brain-body network — especially when it’s repeated, relational, and chronic.
The Nervous System Doesn’t Forget
With PTSD, the nervous system goes into overdrive when triggered.
The threat is past, but the brain reacts like it's still happening.
With CPTSD, there often isn’t a clear trigger.
The body lives in survival mode because it never got the signal that the danger ended.
It shows up as:
Constant muscle tension
Gut problems
Chronic inflammation
Emotional numbing
Exhaustion that no amount of rest fixes
Remember, this doesn’t mean trauma is stored in your body; it means it’s expressing the defensive mechanism of your nervous system!
The amygdala keeps scanning.
The PFC struggles to regulate.
The hippocampus loses track of time.
And your Autonomic Nervous System keeps firing signals that say, “stay on alert.
The body displays the ongoing imprint of unreleased survival responses.
Bottom-Up > Top-Down: Why the Way You Heal Matters
You can’t think your way out of CPTSD.
You can’t out-journal it.
You can’t affirm your way to safety.
CPTSD isn’t just about what happened — it’s about what your system had to become to survive.
And because that survival pattern lives in the nervous system, healing has to start there.
Approaches like IFS, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, DBR, and TRE help teach the body:
You’re safe now.
You can rest.
You don’t have to organize around danger anymore.
Trauma therapies like these help you regulate your physiology & neurology, not just your cognition.
Think of it like teaching a scared dog that the doorbell doesn’t mean danger.
You’re not explaining it—you’re showing it through new experiences, body-first.
What This Means for You
If this resonated, you’re not broken.
You’re not “too sensitive.”
You’re likely just brilliantly wired for survival—in ways that no longer serve you.
CPTSD often hides in high performers, perfectionists, and anxious achievers who’ve learned to control the outside because their insides feel unpredictable.
But healing is possible!
The brain is plastic.
Your nervous system can rewire.
And your body can finally learn what safety feels like.
You’ve got this.
Until next time… Live Heroically 🧠
Want to Work With Me? Here Are 3 Ways I Can Help You
Join the Balanced Creator Community (free): It’s the only community on earth built to support the mental health & mindset of content creators & entrepreneurs (creatorpreneurs) while growing and monetizing their brand and business.
Become a paid subscriber to the Mind, Brain, Body Lab Digest: You’ll get subscriber-only video posts, email replies, access to my entire blog archive, early access to new products, workshops & tools I create!
Work With Me 1on1 Through the Me 2.0 Program: Work with me 1on1 to heal the unresolved trauma and limiting beliefs that are holding back your health, wealth & relationships. (Extremely Limited Spots; Paid Subscribers Are Prioritized on Waitlist)
Supporting Research
Davidson, J. R. T., et al. (1998). The posttraumatic stress disorder field trial: Evaluation of the PTSD construct--criteria A through E. The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Karl, A., et al. (2006). A review of hippocampal structural alterations in posttraumatic stress disorder. Neuropsychobiology.
Silove, D., Tay, A. K., Kareth, M., & Rees, S. (2017). The Relationship of Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in a Culturally Distinct, Conflict-Affected Population: A Study among West Papuan Refugees Displaced to Papua New Guinea. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 8, 219658. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00073
Lanius, R. A., et al. (2010). Emotion modulation in PTSD: Clinical and neurobiological evidence for a dissociative subtype. The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Schmid, M., Petermann, F., & Fegert, J. M. (2013). Developmental trauma disorder: pros and cons of including formal criteria in the psychiatric diagnostic systems. BMC Psychiatry, 13, 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-13-3
Cutuli, J. J., et al. (2010). Cortisol function among early school-aged homeless children. Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
Bonanno, G. A., et al. (2011). Trauma, PTSD, and resilience: A review of the literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse.
Was like reading about myself, everyday. It is the absolute hardest thing to overcome, I feel utterly defeated!
This is such an excellent summary! Thank you so much! Would you be willing to come on my podcast to break this down someday? I’d be so grateful!