Depression, Anxiety, Guilt, Shame, Fear, and Anger

It's normal to feel the need to personalize the experiences of depression and anxiety. The paradox is, there's nothing personal about either of these operatons happening to begin with. They are expressions of an activated survival system we mostly do not understand. 

Inheriting the genetic wiring of our hunter gatherer tribal ancestors, this is what we're working with. We experience lots of nuances with our survival systems operating in our modern life to give us the survival advantage, with depression and anxiety being expressions of this. 

Depression is the survival brain's way of slowing down to avoid the danger.

Anxiety is the survival brain's way of speeding up to provoke us to outrun the danger. 

Depression holds still and tries not to be seen by the threat, anxiety impulsively escapes it, and the human conditions we experience with either of these is they get stuck on, and most people haven't yet figured out how to operate our systems to give ourselves the best fighting chance at turning them off and feeling better sooner rather than later. 

with C-PTSD I experience extreme levels of both of them, so I get it. I experience depression a bit more than anxiety, however the ratio is close. 

Both can be brutal and intense, anxiety feeling like I am under attack by the world closing in on me, while the pressure cooker is running on the inside of me, and I'm just doing my best to hold myself together and get through the grocery shopping trip. 

There's nothing personal about either of them happening. They feel very personal, and our minds personalize circumstances surrounding them, however the mechanical operations of anxiety and depression themselves are part of a mechanical survival operation, and therefore not personal. 

Knowing essentially what's going on does not eliminate the experiences, they are always terrible, however knowing what we're dealing with takes the element of mystery away from it. This reduces a layer of uncertainty, making the symptoms at least a little easier to manage and recover from. Perhaps still difficult, always terrible, yet a little easier. 

Experiencing tremendous amounts of guilt and shame are terrible parts of the experience of having C-PTSD. However, from an evolutionary and survival perspective, guilt and shame are not inherently "bad" emotions. 

They appear to have developed because they serve important social and survival functions. The problem is that in trauma, abuse, or chronic stress, these systems can become overactive and start firing when they are no longer useful.

The hidden benefit the survival system is seeking with use of guilt and shame:

Safety

Predictability

Control

Acceptance

Protection from rejection

Protection from abandonment

Protection from future mistakes

_________________________

Guilt: "I did something wrong."

Guilt is generally behavior-focused rather than identity-focused.

Useful survival functions of guilt include:

Maintains group cohesion. If you harm someone, guilt motivates repair and reconciliation.

Promotes learning. It helps us remember mistakes and avoid repeating them.

Protects relationships. Feeling guilty after violating trust encourages corrective action.

Supports empathy. Guilt helps us recognize the impact of our actions on others.

Reduces future risk. It creates an internal warning system that discourages behaviors that could lead to social rejection or retaliation.

In a healthy form, guilt says:

"I made a mistake. Let me correct it."

Once the mistake is corrected, healthy guilt typically subsides.

__________________________

Shame: "There is something wrong with me."

Shame is usually identity-focused rather than behavior-focused.

While shame often gets a bad reputation, it also has survival purposes.

Useful survival functions of shame include:

Prevents behaviors that could lead to exclusion from the tribe.

Encourages conformity to social norms.

Signals a loss of social standing.

Motivates self-reflection and adjustment.

Helps maintain reputation and belonging.

For most of human history, being expelled from a tribe could mean death. The nervous system evolved to treat social rejection as a serious threat.

Healthy shame says:

"Careful. This behavior may jeopardize your belonging."

___________________________

In Complex PTSD

Guilt and shame frequently become distorted.

Instead of: 

Healthy guilt "I did something wrong."

It becomes: 

Trauma guilt "Everything is my fault."

Instead of:

Healthy shame "I violated a social norm."

it becomes:

Trauma shame "I am fundamentally defective."

The survival system is attempting to keep the person vigilant, humble, agreeable, invisible, compliant, or hyper-responsible because those strategies may once have reduced danger and helped the mind avoid any imagined possibility of death by tribal rejection.