Understanding CPTSD Through the Jenga Tower Analogy

If you struggle to understand what's happening with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), I have an analogy that I use with my clients a lot. I think it's a really valuable way to understand what's happening with CPTSD.

If you're unsure what CPTSD is and how it differs from PTSD, take a peek at this blog then come back here!

The Jenga Game Analogy

Remember the classic kids' game Jenga, where you move blocks and pile them up, trying to see how high you can build a tower? CPTSD is kind of like that, except we're not trying to build it up. We're trying to collapse it.

Trauma Blocks in Jenga

I want you to imagine that each incident of trauma is one Jenga block. If someone has experienced only one, two, maybe three experiences of trauma (like we would with PTSD), that's like having one, two, or three Jenga blocks. When we're trying to heal the trauma, what we do is go in and address each block individually. Because there are just a few blocks, we have the time and capacity to go towards each block to heal each one on its own.

CPTSD: A Tower of Trauma

With CPTSD, though, rather than having just one to three blocks, you'll likely have hundreds of blocks. Each moment of trauma creates a new Jenga block, resulting in a huge tower built up of many, many moments of trauma.

It's just not feasible to think that to heal, we could go towards each block and address each block individually. That's just not realistic.

How to Heal CPTSD

So, how do we heal CPTSD then? Rather than trying to address each block individually, we look for groupings of blocks that are all connected to the same thing. We go to the lowest block we can reach in a particular section. When we remove that block from that section, everything above it kind of falls away. Then, we move to the next section and remove the lowest block we can, purposely causing that part of the tower to crumble. We do that for each chunk of blocks, ultimately working to get to the bottom to remove the bottom few blocks and get the entire tower to crumble altogether.

Final Thoughts

I hope this Jenga tower analogy helps clarify what's happening with CPTSD. It's a complex process, but breaking it down like this can make it more understandable. If this analogy makes things clearer for you or if you have more questions, us know. We're here to help.