**Trigger warning** What are your experiences with a Complex PTSD diagnosis and treatment?

@Zoe7 i know youve read my story so im not going to repeat it but do you think i have complex PTSD?

@Former-Member i think youve read them as well

I discovered what complex PTSD is only last year when I attended an eight-week trauma workshop.

Discovering that the way I was parented, was far from the idyllic story that we told ourselves we were living. We used to say that we were a close family. That we would always look out for each other. That we wouldn't allow others to break our family apart. That ours was a family filled with love and support.

But I hid the anger and emotional violence in forgotten memory.

I have been unable to reconcile the difference of my past and my ideal story until I was once again confronted with reality and I noticed that I was making excuses and reinventing and rewriting reality to support my ideal version. But I was forced to examine reality and I have been grieving the loss of my fantasy life since.

My identity has been messed up as I've believed I must please people to be safe. At any cost. This has lead to a loss of the development of my own value system and an inability to recognise my own survival needs.

Complex PTSD has been a bitter sweet diagnosis. But with the truth in my hands, i am able to work towards a new life and style of living.

Hello @Quilly

Welcome to the forums, it is nice to meet you 🙂

That is really interesting that you have managed to cope by pleasing people to feel safe, that is something that I also tend to do (which is helpful sometimes but also completely draining) but I am working on it, it is not easy though is it?

I think it is really helpful to focus on your own individual values and how when people's behaviours/reactions don't align with those how it affects you, I am glad you are also working on your survival needs first and foremost, it is really great you have got to that.

Was it the trauma workshop that helped you do that? Or were there others things?

Lunar

Hey Lunar, thanks fr saying "Hi" 🙂

I learned about complex PTSD as an outpatient trauma workshop. It was brilliant to look at the symptoms, backtrack and look at family dynamics and then look again at the definition of complex PTSD.

Once identified I sought our a super trained clinical psychologist (PhD) and we have been working together for over a year.

I also use rTMS (repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) to open up my prefrontal cortex and then I spend the following months learning and changing behaviours that I can practise over and over. For example, I used to give in to other's requests and sacrifice my own needs without even thinking about my needs. Now I am aware, I have to stop and think about it, then choose whether to give into the urge or stand against the desire to feel 'safe' and meet my own need. It's taken months and months. I'm a slow learner since my breakdown, but I'm a hard worker 🙂

Hello @Quilly

Thank you so much that is really interesting that with a lot of hard work you came to realise that you tended to give in to other people's need before acknowledging yours. That is such a powerful thing to do and I am sure was not easy for to begin doing that. How many months did it roughly take for you to start learning new behaviours with the rTMS ?

I was just wandering around Forum Land and I came across this thread. I don't actually have anything to say right now, but I think it would be a good thread to revive. I plan to come back to it sometime soon.

I find it really frustrating that most mental health professionals lack an understanding of C-PTSD. Of course, this could be because it is such a newly recognised condition that it isn't even a formal diagnosis yet. I do not understand why the powers that be refused to include it in the DSM-V.

I know there is debate about whether C-PTSD is distinct from BPD (i.e. borderline personality disorder). I hold the view that they are one and the same thing. When I read the diagnostic criteria of BPD and the proposed diagnostic criteria of C-PTSD, I really can't see how anyone can view them as distinct entities. I really wish the term BPD had been changed to C-PTSD in the DSM-V. This would very much change the dominant discourse around BPD. The term BPD invites pejorative attitudes. It focuses on what's "wrong" with the person. In contrast, if the struggles of people with BPD were viewed through a more trauma-informed lens, the focus would become more about what had happened to the person rather than what was wrong with them. All behaviour has meaning and the behaviours of those with BPD are normal reactions to very abnormal situations. I believe that if BPD had been renamed C-PTSD, it may have encouraged mental health professionals to take a more empathic approach to those of us labelled with BPD, rather than constantly telling us horrible things such as that we are just being difficult or that we are "resistant to change."

I am so very grateful that TTT and I are in agreement that BPD and C-PTSD are one and the same thing and I am so very VERY grateful that she truly knows that I am doing the best I can - even when my best may look extremely chaotic. Yay for those rare few mental health professionals who get it!

Hi @Former-Member,

I thought this might be a good place to continue the conversation around PTSD vs C-PTSD. I'm a bit scared of continuing the conversation on the other thread because @NikNik or @Former-Member might come along with their bossy voices if we take that thread off on such a tangent.

Having said that, I now can't actually remember much of what was in your post regarding PTSD vs C-PTSD.

Here is a really good description of the difference between PTSD and C-PTSD: https://www.blueknot.org.au/Resources/General-Information/What-is-complex-trauma

This page (also on the blueknot website) has a really good video which discusses C-PTSD. I'll just flag that it has some people in it talking about their lived experience of childhood sexual assault in the context of explaining that people can and do heal from C-PTSD. https://www.blueknot.org.au/Workers-Practitioners/For-Health-Professionals/Resources-for-Health-Professionals

The blueknot website has lots of other good information if you want to take a look. https://www.blueknot.org.au

Yes @Phoenix_Rising

I hope mh treatments improve as the discourse around BPD changes towards more trauma informed mh workers.

I have posted a little more about my brother's experience of BPD and I know he could have been helped.

I still do not have any clear Dx and a year later my pdoc seems resistant to giving me one. Maybe that is because he wants to get it right. I am still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Glad you brought up this thread again.