There is something uniquely exhausting about living with Complex PTSD, not just the symptoms themselves, but the constant negotiation with systems that don’t understand them. The very institutions that claim to protect and support people with disabilities or trauma-related conditions, often become another obstacle to survival.

CPTSD is not a neat illness that fits into a tick-box form. It’s the consequence of prolonged trauma, years of hypervigilance, betrayal, and fear that shape how the nervous system works. It doesn’t move in straight lines. One day you might manage tasks with calm precision; the next, you can barely get out of bed, or speak. The body remembers danger even when the mind tries to move on.

But systems like the Department for Work and Pensions are built on predictability and proof — not on lived reality. They ask for “evidence” that can be measured, scanned, or documented. Trauma doesn’t leave medical scans. It leaves exhaustion, fragmented memory, and a body that alternates between fight, flight, and collapse. Yet when you explain that to a bureaucratic system, you’re often met with disbelief.

The DWP, like many public systems, is designed to assess compliance, not complexity. It measures how well you can fill out a form, attend appointments, or explain yourself in a ten-minute call. None of those things reflect the actual impact of CPTSD — in fact, they often trigger it. Being questioned under pressure, having to “prove” suffering, or being threatened with sanctions can recreate the same fear, power imbalance, and shame that defined childhood trauma. The system doesn’t see that, it only sees a “non-compliant claimant.”

Every survivor who’s lived through systemic failure knows this pattern. The tone of the letters, the deadlines, the cold official language, mimics the control and disbelief we grew up with. For people with CPTSD, this isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s re-traumatisation by policy. The stress of the process can cause weeks of physical illness, dissociation, or shutdown. And when the system’s response to that collapse is punishment or removal of support, it doesn’t just ignore trauma, it deepens it.

The greatest barrier isn’t laziness or lack of willingness. It’s that the system demands a kind of consistency that trauma has taken from us. We can be articulate and high-functioning in one moment, then unable to speak the next. The same system that praises “resilience” uses it against us, as evidence that we don’t need help. But surviving isn’t the same as thriving. Functioning through trauma doesn’t mean the trauma or triggers are gone.

This is why trauma-informed practice isn’t optional; it’s essential. Every staff member in welfare systems should understand what CPTSD is. They should understand how it affects communication, and why pushing for compliance without compassion perpetuates harm. Until that happens, people with CPTSD will continue to fall through the cracks, but because the system refuses to adapt.

I have experienced it personally. I’ve seen how procedures, red tape, and “evidence criteria” can erase the reality of living with trauma. I’ve felt what it’s like to be punished for the very symptoms that define the condition. That’s why I keep speaking about it, not because it’s easy, but because staying silent allows systems to stay the same.

CPTSD is a disability that affects energy, memory, and emotion, it’s also a story of survival. The DWP and other public bodies need to stop treating trauma survivors as administrative problems and start listening to us as experts in our own lives. Understanding trauma isn’t charity. It’s justice. And until that understanding is built into policy, survivors will continue to pay the emotional cost of a system that refuses to see what it has helped create.

Adults who experienced abuse in local authority care, should not have to live life baring the local authorities burden of failure. It is unfair and unjust, and the system set up to be of help, isn’t equipped for the circumstance.