Aware And Prepared

Complex PTSD Awareness: My Journey From Surviving to Finding Peace

• Mandi Pratt • Season 3 • Episode 24

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September is Complex PTSD Awareness Month, and in this solo episode I share an authentic part of my journey as a survivor of narcissistic and sociopathic abuse — including the long years of post-separation abuse that followed. 


What trauma looks like in real life: hypervigilance, brain fog, and decision fatigue, to self-doubt, health struggles, and relationship challenges, I open up about the many ways complex PTSD shows up in daily life.


BUT woven throughout is also a message of hope: the power of resilience, faith, and nervous system healing to restore a sense of peace. 


This episode sets the stage for the upcoming expert guests joining me to unpack anxiety, healing strategies, and how we can learn to feel safe again. Whether you’ve faced trauma yourself or are just navigating everyday stress and anxiety, this series is for you.


RESOURCES


TheMENDProject.com with Annette Oltmans (Providing Clarify / Supporting Abuse Survivors)


My Gnarly Life Story Episodes One and Two


National Domestic Violence Hotline: Thehotline.org | 1-800-799-7233


988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 if you or someone you know is in crisis


An app for better sleep, meditation and relaxation: Better Sleep


Just a couple of my favorite nervous system tools to help get stress out of the body: humming or standing up and shaking out your arms. (We will discuss these in the upcoming episodes.)


Connect with Mandi:

The primary purpose of the Women Aware and Prepared Podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute advice or services. Please use common sense for your own situation.

 Hey, brave one. Welcome to the Aware and Prepared Podcast. I'm your host, Mandy Pratt, trauma-informed, resilient speaker, domestic violence victim advocate, and narcissistic abuse survivor. Here we keep it real with true crime stories and real world strategies to prevent emotional and physical harm. My guests and I share a mix of insight and survivor grit, all to help you feel safer, trust yourself more deeply.

And live with greater peace and power. Let's trade fear for freedom and step into the peace that you deserve.

Welcome back to the Aware and Prepared Podcast where we talk about preventing harm and violence and about healing from trauma and having better mental health. So we are in September right now, which is complex PTSD Awareness month. So I wanna pause and just share part of my own journey as a survivor of being married to someone who was a narcissist.

Sociopath and experiencing abuse and more than a decade of post-separation abuse from that person. So this isn't gonna be about labels or clinical talk, it's about real life, what it can look like and how we can find peace. So today is just a solo episode, and then I'm going to have on a few very high level experts.

It's coming on to address our questions. So first of all, what is complex? PTSD? A quick definition in just everyday terms. PTSD is a response to one traumatic event. And then you have complex PTSD, which is trauma that's repeated or ongoing over time.

So for me. That trauma went on for a very long time and it was prolonged stress, prolonged trauma, so that's what made it into complex PTSD. Also, when I disclosed. And had some institutional betrayal that also moved it from PTSD into complex PTSD. You'll hear my friend and colleague Annette Altman's from the MEND Project who's been on here.

Um, she coined the term double abuse, so that's a whole nother subject. But oftentimes victims will go and disclose to somebody, maybe a pastor or. Police officer or somebody. And if that person isn't properly prepared and trauma informed, they might do more damage than they do good, which was my story.

So why does this matter? Complex, PTSD and PTSD doesn't just live in our memories. It shows up in our bodies, in our thoughts, in our relationships, and frankly our daily lives. So not all of you have PTSD or complex PTSD, which is great. I'm thankful for that. But a lot of you have some real anxiety troubles as well.

So some of these. Things that we're gonna be going over today. And then over the course of the next few weeks when we have the guest experts on, you will also receive some help in regards to dealing with anxiety. So this little series here is a relief for everybody because honestly, I don't know anybody who at this moment, um, doesn't have any anxiety about something.

So this is for everybody. I'm gonna start in with just a little bit more of my own personal story. Obviously I'm not gonna share my whole story in this one episode. I've shared it in the very first episode, number one. And then in episode number two, I had the detective come on who, um, dealt with helping the FBI find my former.

Partner who was a felon wanted by the FBI. So that's in episodes one or two if you haven't heard that, but I think most of you have heard that by now. In my own personal story, I just wanna make this authentic and relatable. Not too heavy, not too triggering. I will share a specific instance, which might be a little triggering of course, if that happens.

Just. Pause it. Fast forward, I think you can skip ahead 15 seconds, hit that button once or twice and then move on to the next part. But I'm not gonna be saying anything that's super triggering. I don't think so. Just wanted to put that out there. So my own personal story, I mentioned just on a high level here, big picture.

I was married to somebody for 11 years. Who was kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a narcissist who would some days be great and some days be absolutely horrible and terrifying. And I lived on eggshells 'cause I didn't know which person would be walking through the door that day.

And then of course, the abuse that was done to both me and my son. You know, lives on in the body and then trying to leave that person was difficult. This person was also a sociopath.

You might be wondering what the heck is a sociopath, by the way, we hear that term thrown around. It's somebody who is marked by a consistent pattern of disregard for others' rights, a lack of empathy, manipulative or deceitful behavior. And difficulty forming genuine emotional connections, emphasis on genuine,

I am going to share with you first of all, how complex PTSD came through in my body, in my mind and self relationship and other relationships and in business. And as I share those, I'll share a couple of the stories, that, caused a lot of trauma. So in my body, I am jumpy at sounds,

Let's say I'm sitting in a crowd and somebody drops their keys or something, right? So everybody might jump a little bit, but I'm like jumpy and then nervous for a little bit after that. But then I'm strangely calm in chaos. I think that is just over time that because of being in heightened hypervigilance, my body was like always up here,

buzzing up here. And so something big dropping was like, oh, like I'm already up here ready to run from the lion that's chasing me. So that's how I think I could be strangely calm in chaos. And some of you might find yourselves in some of these positions as well, or you can relate, um, anxiety. So I feel like that's like in my genes now.

Um, hyper vigilance. I shared ruminating, so thinking about something over and over, like a loop, you can't break. Um, chronic health issues, it's insane because I hit early menopause even though nobody. And my family had struggled with that, either having that happen to them early or even dealing with menopause that badly so far.

So yeah, chronic health issues. I blew out my adrenals basically because when you're, cortisol is so high like that all the time and in hypervigilance for years and years and years and years, and you're walking on eggshells and you don't know what else is gonna drop. Your cortisol level is super high, and then that just burns out your adrenal glands and that leads to thyroid issues.

It can lead to thyroid issues, what is, what has happened to me recently. Um, and then brain fog. So honestly, I also have a neuromuscular problem that I had before any of this, started. I've had it for a long time before I went through all the trauma, so that kind of plays into this a little bit as well.

Um, but only on a very small scale. So I noticed that people with a neuromuscular disorder, that I have also have a little bit of trouble with brain fog, but that coupled with complex PTSD was like, whoa, hello? Like, showing up at the grocery store without my wallet. And it's not just,

oh, I walked into this room and I forgot what I was walking into it for. Yeah, that happens a lot more, but it's like higher levels than that. So in my mind and self relationship, that would be second guessing myself. So I know a lot of us do that anyway, but like seriously, seriously. Second guessing myself, frequent negative thoughts.

So back when I came out of that horrible relationship and abuse, I remember trying to even. Be like, who the heck am I? What kind of things did I even like before this? Like, what makes me happy? And, you know, trying to just find myself. Of course the frequent negative thoughts have gotten better over time with work,

with counseling and then working trauma out through my body. But, um, that was a huge one for me. And then, you know, just being a harsh inner critic and being so incredibly hard on myself, which is so interesting because now I've come through all the healing work I've done on the opposite end of that, and being able to talk to myself like, Hey, Mandy, like you went through so much hard, hard stuff.

So it's no surprise you know that you X, Y, Z, or that you feel that way or whatever. So. Having self-compassion is such a wonderful, um, balancing force to help with that, the negative thoughts and the harsh inner critic. So we'll talk about that more with one of our guests coming up and then difficulty focusing and context shifting.

Oh my gosh, like I can't glue my butt to the chair, so I do a little of this and then I do a little of that. What was I doing? Oh, I was taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and, oh wait, I had started hanging up some clothes. So like everything's kind of half done. Um, so that is a big thing as well.

So, you know, as we're going through this, what parts of this is part of our personality, what parts of this is due to something else? We're gonna kind of sort through all of that with our experts that come on. So in relationship. Friendships, a relationship with my spouse, that would look like self-doubt, trust issues,

over functioning or shutting down. Even just needing to get away and have quiet space. Part of that's just my own personality, the getting away and having quiet space, but I feel like that's intensified when you have complex PTSD. Or even PTSD, uh, which is equally horrible. And then in business, like decision fatigue is real and doubting my choices and that struggle to focus yet being highly competent in crisis.

It's so weird. So we will break down all of this later, but, and just pulling out some of this, I had mentioned being strangely calm in chaos that has grown over time. But I remember one instant. S when I didn't experience that, and then when I did, so I remember the time and just even thinking back to this, I'm like, geez, no wonder like anxiety had gotten so ingrained into my bones.

I feel like, um, I mentioned, you know, I would come home every day or my partner would come home and it'd be like, hmm. Well, what do we got today here? Are we gonna have a peaceful day or is it gonna be absolutely horrible? And, um, this person is gonna be doing dishes with me and start throwing dishes and calling me an effing bee out of the blue for no reason.

I didn't even do anything. Right. What are we gonna get? Two. I remember when it heightened after leaving for a little bit, I remember. This one instance where we were separated, we were going through the court system, trying to figure out custody and all of that, which I did win sole legal and physical custody, but he was losing power and control, right?

So they need to feel like they can get that back somehow. Um, that's what they're striving for. So this person comes to the house that our son is being babysat at and jumps the fence so trespasses and is going around to all the doors and windows, trying to open them to get inside.

To take our son, God knows where. And at the time I did not have a restraining order. And I remember that person inside who was babysitting, our son was calling me like in a panic. You know, he's at the door, he is at the window, he's trying to get in, what do I do? And they had called 9 1 1, which was great.

But, um, I was luckily close by with my mom.

We happened to be staying in a family friend's house that was in a gated community and this person was not allowed in the community yet had gone through and I don't know if they followed through somebody and got through or what the deal was, but I remember when we were rushing back to get home and we got through the gate and we were saying, why'd you let that person through?

We were, you know, causing a little bit of a scene and a family friend was in the car behind us, or right around us somehow, and noticed this and recognized us. And they followed us back to the home where all of this was happening and we pulled up. And as we were pulling up, uh, my ex was walking back to the car,

and our family friends got out and. We're approaching this person and saying, you need to get out of here. And it was helpful that we had somebody there at the moment. So I, because I, we had called 9 1 1 and it was taking forever for somebody to show up. It was like 20 minutes it, the issue was already gone and over with.

My son was thankfully still safe inside with a family member watching him I remember the police saying, Hey, like right now you are separated. The divorce isn't final, so there's nothing showing us that this person can't have, visits with their child

But granted he was trespassing, right? That's not okay. Um, so they had recommended that I look into getting a restraining order. Well, I did end up getting that, and it, it didn't. We all know that's just a piece of paper. It doesn't actually stop somebody from, harassing you on phone calls or, midnight knocks on the doors, which I experienced all of these, and then more.

But at least it gave a piece of paper where the police showed up and said, okay, there is a restraining order. This person is breaking the law because the judge said, this is the law. You are not allowed to be on this property or. Within, you know, X amount of feet within the property or yards. So that was interesting.

So that made me super anxious. And then I was like, good lord, like do I need to be everywhere my kid is right now? 'cause he's gonna try to kidnap him out of, you know, this place and trespass. So that was really difficult. So I was not strangely calm in chaos at that moment, but further down the road, I remember again,

he was trying to get power and control and using actually suicide as a manipulation tool. We should do another episode on that, because how do you tell the difference between when somebody is seriously wanting to harm themselves or just using that as a manipulation? So in this case, the first time was more of a manipulation, you know, calling me, threatening this. If you don't let me come back, if you don't let me X, y, z, you know, I'm going to do this and you're gonna have to live with it. And so I remember calling the police, calling my therapist.

I had like two lines going. I had my cell phone, the landline, um. You know, police, what do I do right now? And then hung up with them. Um, therapist, get them on the phone, you know, they're trying to help me, guide me through what to say so this person doesn't take their life.

And it was, so difficult, but we realized that it was more of a manipulation tool. And then I remember one other time I get a call and. Coming to find out, he was standing on the bridge, a very tall bridge where we live and was threatening to jump off if I didn't come back.

How do you deal with that? Right when. Somebody's life is on the line according to your behavior and what you're gonna say. Like, that's horrible, horrible, horrible place to put somebody into. And I remember, going back and forth saying, you know, I will talk to you, yes, I will forgive you.

You'll have rights to our child. You will be seeing him. I'm not trying to take him away from you. You know, trying to calm that down and just doing the best I could, and then having him hang up on me and he wasn't picking up and just thinking, okay, all right, there's nothing else I can do.

What's gonna happen is what's gonna happen, and I have no control over that. So I remember praying. And being like, okay, God, this is in your hands. I have no control. Um, it's late at night now I need to go to bed. I am single parenting my child. I really need your peace. And I was able to go to sleep. So I feel like I got some supernatural help that time.

And then there's been other times too where not even related, being at a restaurant and somebody starts choking, right? And you need to do like the Heimlich maneuver and everybody's frozen in fear. And I was like, no big deal. I walk over and I'm just like trying to do the Heimlich thing, you know?

And it like didn't even really phase me, I guess, because I was just so in heightened hyper vigilance all the time. So I'm always up there ready to do what's ever needed,

so anyway. What does all this mean? You know, here's a honest reflection. Sometimes it's hard to know what part of this is trauma, what part is our personality?

What part is just current day tension? You know, when we're struggling with anxiety, when we're trying to get through PTSD, you know, trying to part through that. What part is this? What part is that, well, maybe when the one of the guest experts gonna come on and say, it's all intertwined. I can hear her voice in my head already.

We will address all of those things, but I'm just kind of setting the stage here for what we're getting into, what we're talking about.

If I am unearthing anything for you at the moment, I want you to know that I'll be leaving some resources in the show notes for you so you can always reach out to these. Websites or places that you can make a phone call. Um, because the last thing I ever want to do is start talking about trauma and leave you hanging.

So whenever I go out and do my speaking gigs, I always give a solution. I always give resources because it is not my goal to drum up. Let's open up our trauma. Good luck. Have a good day. That's not my goal. So. The whole point of what I'm doing here is supporting you over the next few weeks. So in the meantime, between this week and next week, when we have those experts on, I will leave you with some resources that are calming, um, some nervous system tools and some, hotlines and different things that you can have.

And you know what I always say? Here's my motto. Why not ask? Why not just call any of those if you're struggling right now and just say, Hey, you know, I'm just gathering information. I'm not acting on anything right now, I don't think. I just wanted to get the information. I would love to know X, Y, z, or I'm struggling with this.

So if you ever felt stuck, anxious, just in this dysregulation moment of life you are dealing with fight or flight, you're in freeze mode or you're fawning and you're always people pleasing and bending to everybody, right?

Or just frankly exhausted. I just wanted you to know that you're not alone and that there are solutions for this. I want you to know you're not alone. If you are trying breath work and you can't calm down enough to do breath work, or you're trying meditation and you can't meditate 'cause your brain never stops, guess what?

That's totally normal. Part of meditating is noticing those thoughts, not trying to stop them. So we'll get into that. And if you've tried different affirmations, like I know I have, trying different affirmations, you know, I am enough exactly as I am. Well, our brain oftentimes, if we've gone through some of these things, wants to fight back

So far that hasn't felt safe. So I am enough. That doesn't feel safe to my brain. So it's foreign to my brain and my brain rejects that, so there's ways that we can tweak different affirmations to help our brain feel more curious about that and try to investigate it instead of fighting it.

That's something that we will address as well. So I just wanted you to know you're not broken. If you're trying these different things like I did and they're not working, no matter how, how hard you try, sometimes it's better to not try to force it

we're trying to help our bodies feel safe and our brains feel more curious and how that might be true sometime.

So we are going to address that. As we wrap this up, I'm gonna share with you. Our upcoming guest experts, these are some of the very most listened to episodes that we get. So you guys tell me your favorites by when I look at my stats on my podcast here, which ones were most listened to. So those were with Dr. Kian and talking about healing the nervous system. And With Brit Frank, who is a let's see if I get this neuro psychologist, who was talking about being stuck in anxiety, stuck in fight or flight. Those were some great conversations. So if you scroll through once we're done with this episode in just a minute, you can see anything from Brit, Frank or Dr.

Kean. Those are very highly listened to episodes. And then I have one or two other guest experts that I'm so excited to share with you. I'm gonna leave those as a surprise, but they're gonna help us unpack, the difference between PTSD, complex PTSD and everyday stress and anxiety. What actually helps, I love this part.

I'm so practical. I want to know the practical parts. What actually helped? Is it talk therapy? Is it somatic work? Is it nervous system tools? Is it daily practices? By the way, we've talked about somatic work before. That means getting the trauma out through your body. A good example is EMDR therapy, eye movement therapy.

We've talked about that in the past too. Um, but you'll hear more about that as our guests come on. So we're talking about how to gently move trauma out of the body. And get more peace and better mental health. Who could use that? Yeah. All of us. Right? So here's the highlight. Even if you don't have PTSD or complex PTSD,

the strategies we'll learn can help anyone dealing with anxiety, like I said, which these days is just about all of us. So. In closing, I just wanna encourage you to check out the most popular past episodes with Britt Frank and Dr. Kean for grounding Insights. And then I wanna invite you to stay tuned for this month's special series.

Make sure then that you're following the show, so you can click in like the top right hand corner here. You'll see follow. You can click on that.

Also simply just sharing this with somebody who do you know that's really dealing with anxiety. Who do you know that maybe has had PTSD or even complex PTSD, right?

You can share that with them by, again, going to the top right and pull down menu. You can copy the link and, paste that into a text or email somebody, or you can even send it directly in a text or email,

so we're in this together. Let's keep learning how to find more peace no matter what our past or our present looks like.

I will talk with you next week with one of our special guests.

 Thanks for being here on the Aware and Prepared Podcast. Don't forget to hit, follow that little plus sign in your app in the top right, ensures you never miss an episode. Curious how tuned in your intuition really is. Take the free quiz at aware and prepared. Life and get your score. See how sharp your inner guide is.

Remember, you are worthy of a safe and peaceful life. Talk to you next week.