Maybe you have spent years explaining away a heaviness you cannot quite name, or bracing for the next hard thing even when life looks calm. When difficulty went on for a long time, it settles into how you feel about yourself and how close you let people get. A Complex PTSD evaluation in Madison, WI helps you understand those patterns with care, and no referral is needed to begin.
Each evaluation opens with a baseline of cognitive and executive function, the foundation we build everything else on. From there your psychologist adds trauma focused and emotional measures chosen for your history, and the same licensed psychologist stays with you from the first conversation to the last. Because complex trauma rarely travels alone, we also screen for the related concerns that often sit beside it.
In children, we move slowly and stay curious rather than reaching for a label. The focus is on understanding how ongoing stress or adversity has shaped a young child, noticing what leaves them feeling safe, and building on the moments and people that already help them settle.
For teens, watch for emotions that swing to extremes, a self image that turns harsh or unsteady, and real difficulty trusting or feeling close to others. Reactions that seem outsized often make complete sense once you know what a teen has lived through.
In adults, this can look like a steady undercurrent of shame or feeling not enough, emotions that are hard to steer, and trust that never quite settles. Many describe feeling unsafe long after the danger passed, with effects reaching into work, love, and daily life.
Your evaluation begins with about an hour of conversation, where your psychologist gathers a thorough personal history in a setting built to feel safe. Because Complex PTSD usually grows out of experiences that repeated over time, this talk covers a longer timeline, tracing how those years shaped your emotions, your relationships, and your sense of who you are. You set the pace throughout.
Next your psychologist assembles a battery of assessments chosen to capture the layered effects of complex trauma. In person testing typically runs 2 to 6 hours across one to two days, and you take home self report questionnaires, with the option for someone close to you to complete their own. If signs of anxiety, depression, dissociation, or ADHD appear, those areas are screened as well.
Every piece, the test data, clinical observations, and questionnaire results, is drawn together into a detailed diagnostic report. Your psychologist looks closely at how complex trauma has touched emotional regulation, identity, relationships, and thinking, and documents any co occurring conditions so the clinical picture is genuinely complete.
Roughly two to three weeks later you return for a feedback session. Your psychologist walks you through the findings in plain language and offers individualized recommendations, from specialized trauma therapy and emotional regulation strategies to relationship support and the next steps that fit your own path toward healing.
No, a referral is never required to be seen at Core Spring Diagnostics. You are welcome to reach out on your own, for any reason at all.
Complex PTSD tends to follow prolonged or repeated trauma and reaches more broadly into self image, emotion regulation, and relationships, while PTSD often traces back to a single event. The evaluation clarifies which picture actually fits you.
A trauma informed interview, a cognitive and executive function baseline, trauma focused and emotional measures, and screening for related concerns, all handled by one psychologist at a pace that respects your history.
Yes, we see both teens and adults, and with younger clients we approach trauma related patterns gently, never rushing toward a label.
A plain language report and a feedback session with individualized, trauma informed recommendations, plus a clear sense of the next steps toward healing.
Call our Madison office at (608) 396 4830 and we will find a time that works. There is no referral to track down first; you can simply reach out.
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