Sequenced relationship-based treatment for Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders

Abstract

Complex Trauma refers to traumatic stressors that are complicated by a number of factors that differentiate them from single event or short-term exposures (Cook et al., 2005 ; Ford, 2017a ). This statement should not be taken to minimise single event trauma as it is recognised that its occurrence and impact can be at extreme levels of severity, danger, and life threat. Traumatic events may have particularly complex sequelae, however, when they involve interpersonal causation with deliberate and often premeditated acts of physical and emotional intrusion and coercion, exploitation, assault, and when violence is perpetrated on the victim by another person, group of people, or organisation. A younger age of onset of victimisation, greater difference in age between victim and perpetrator, and closer degree of relatedness between them (for example, perpetration of harm or a failure to protect from harm by parents and others known to or related to the victim, and by those from whom he or she would normally expect safety and protection) add the dimension of interpersonal betrayal and predict greater severity of traumatic impact (Becker-Blease and Freyd, 2005 ).