Unresolved trauma can humiliate and discourage people for years. After failing diagnoses, treatments, or medicines, most people fear they have a serious illness that may be incurable. Many resort to extreme measures to feel alive, halt pain, terror, and self-loathing, or disappear.

Complex trauma is distinct from the many other terms used to describe trauma exposure or posttraumatic disturbance.

Neuroscientific and clinical research has shown that prolonged or severe interpersonal trauma—especially when it starts early in the child's primary caregiving relationships or living situation—causes fundamental changes to brain development, neurochemistry, physiological stress response, identity, behavior, and relationships as the person tries to endure, escape, and make sense of the trauma.

To understand complex trauma, one must recognize the strong link between trauma exposure and trauma adaptability.

A person's struggles to adapt to or survive several, frequently related traumatic incidents are called "complex trauma".

Complex Trauma involves recurring, harmful experiences that begin in early infancy and are inflicted by others. They're commonly committed during early attachments. Sometimes danger and dysfunctional behaviors that span generations worsen them.

Complex trauma causes a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses and misdiagnoses, functional impairments, and problems with education, career, relationships, and health.

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