Antidepressants aren’t for everyone. But lately I’ve been thinking about why people with complex PTSD have more side effects taking the drugs.
Serotonin makes a person feel better. When we have complex PTSD – we have protectors in our brain – born to help us survive. We create these protectors and they stay in our brain to protect us from the harm that comes our way.

The more harm, through the years, the more protectors we get. Some people have protectors so strong – they develop their own personalities – used to be called multiple personality disorder and now dissociative identity disorder.

Let’s say we develop a protector for a very difficult job and we decide we’ll wear a different hat for that job. Then we go home, and we take the hat off and we think all is fine. We’ve left the work behind us. But the body keeps the score. We can intellectualize that the pain hasn’t affected us but in fact it has.
So now we get older, we have our protectors, but we also have less energy to suppress all the bad stuff that’s stuck in our brain. And we start to get sick. Maybe sick enough to reach for medications, because we can’t sleep, we can’t work, and so on.
The increase in serotonin initially makes us more anxious. And we start to get nightmares. I wonder if the serotonin isn’t interfering with our protectors and now allowing all the bad stuff easier access. So our first response is to stop the meds – get the hell out of dodge.
I think if possible, we need to face our nightmares. Wake up when we have them, and listen to them. They’re telling us a story we have to hear. But we have to take the story and force our brain to remember the good times before and that the pain and harm is past us.
Trauma memories are very strong and very close to your conscious level.
Good memories, on the other hand, take a very unimportant place and are buries. So our brain only remembers vivid trauma memories. WE have to import the good memories so that they are closer to your consciousness.
This is very difficult and requires help. That’s why PTSD is so dangerous.

Another problem with PTSD – complex PTSD – is that we subconsciously crave chaos – we have associated chaos with love – the love and care parents may not have been able to provide. When we take antidepressants, and the chaos starts to decrease – we interpret this as feeling numb. many people with PTSD only feel “alive” when they are around chaos.

Let me know what you think about my theories.
have a great day
judy