Maybe the hard things lasted so long they started to feel like just how life is, and only lately have you wondered what they cost you. Maybe you are asking the same about what your child has weathered. A Complex PTSD Evaluation in Cottage Grove, WI helps name what prolonged adversity actually did and what can help now. You do not need a referral to start.
Each evaluation starts with a baseline of how you think, plan, and regulate under stress, then folds in trauma focused and emotional measures drawn from your own history. One licensed psychologist stays with the process throughout, holding a gentle pace and screening for the concerns that commonly travel with complex trauma.
In children, the focus is on understanding the effects of ongoing stress or adversity with patience, not on hurrying toward a diagnosis. It looks for what helps a child feel safe and steady, and for the places where a sense of security has quietly eroded.
In teens, watch for feelings that reach extremes, a harsh or unsettled sense of self, and difficulty trusting or letting others near. Responses that look excessive usually make sense once you understand what they have carried for so long.
In adults, a steady sense of worthlessness or shame is common, along with emotions that overwhelm, wary relationships, and a background feeling of never being safe. Because it was normal for so long, the toll often goes unnamed while it shapes daily life.
The first hour of your evaluation is conversation, where your psychologist maps a thorough personal history in a safe, steadying environment. Because complex trauma most often grows from experiences that lasted, this reaches across a wide timeline to understand how those years shaped your emotions, relationships, and sense of who you are. You decide the pace.
Your psychologist then puts together a battery designed for the layered effects of complex trauma. Testing generally comes to 2 to 6 hours over one or two days, and you go home with self report questionnaires; someone close to you can fill out their own if they choose. Should anxiety, depression, dissociation, or ADHD emerge, those areas are covered by the screening too.
All testing data, clinical observations, and questionnaire results are compiled into a detailed diagnostic report. Your psychologist considers how complex trauma has affected emotion regulation, identity, relationships, and cognitive functioning, and documents any co occurring conditions completely.
About two to three weeks later, you return for a feedback session. Your psychologist talks through what the results mean and offers recommendations chosen for your situation: trauma focused therapy options, ways to steady overwhelming emotion, resources for relationships, and a next step that fits where you are.
No. A referral is never necessary to be seen at Core Spring Diagnostics. You are welcome to reach out yourself, for any reason.
Complex PTSD generally follows prolonged or repeated trauma and shapes self image, emotion regulation, and relationships broadly, while PTSD usually stems from a specific event. The evaluation identifies which one fits your story.
A gentle, trauma informed interview, a cognitive and executive function baseline, trauma focused and emotional measures, and screening for related concerns, all with one psychologist at a pace that honors you.
Yes. Teens and adults alike can be evaluated, and with younger clients we take trauma related patterns slowly and carefully.
A readable diagnostic report and a feedback meeting where you receive personalized, trauma informed guidance and a concrete direction to move in.
Call our Madison office at (608) 396 4830 and we will settle on a time that fits. There is no referral to line up first.
"*" indicates required fields
"*" indicates required fields
Thank you for sending us your information. We’ve received your details and will be in touch soon.
