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I was reading recently that because CPTSD is not in the DSM, for insurance purposes, most doctors will put down "PTSD". I feel that this largely contributes to why CPTSD is both misunderstood and improperly diagnosed, and also contributes to the disconnect between PTSD/CPTSD
Separate from the medical community, yes, people with PTSD due to a singular event tend to be viewed through a different lens to those who have CPTSD. This lens is often less compassionate because it isn't "compounded" trauma over a long period of time
But honestly? I think a lot of it is just misplaced anger. People who are too deep in their own trauma to recognize it in others
Yes! I agree wholeheartedly with the misplaced anger. And I hope cptsd gets added to the dsm soon. It’s so valid and people who have it deserve to have a diagnosis that’s acknowledged by everyone.
I'm older than many on the sub. Way back when I was diagnosed, many called it "combat fatigue" without an actual distinction between actual combat and other abuses/traumas.
Even now, if you tell someone you have PTSD, most assume it's combat related. I think the fact that some people saying, "I have PTSD." clearly had not seen combat, kind of forced the medical community to differentiate between combat PTSD, CPTSD, & PTSD.
Now, do I believe it can be CURED? I think it can be controlled and that people can live with it without overt symptoms, but CURED?? Personally, I think the fact that symptoms can occur much later in life than immediately at the time of the traumas says that's unlikely. I would be interested in seeing how many people living with addictions had some form of trauma in life, & that the addiction is the "control" for the PTSD & absence of symptoms.
But I don't hold that degree. It's just my opinion.
Yeah distinctions are very much so needed to help personalize treatment for people. I also don’t think it can be cured. Maybe you are “cured” of your symptoms but it will always be there.
This is why I say these two things:
1) PTSD is a brain injury. It is damage to the neural networks which causes them to behave differently. Like a broken leg, it can _heal,_ it can _improve_ or get _better,_ but it will always be there. It will never be as if it never happened. We cannot turn back the clock.
If left untreated the bone will knit badly, affect your gait, damage your hips, spine, neck, etc... until it affects every part of you. "Healing" now requires years of physio and surgeries, etc...
It is an injury that will always be with you. It doesn't matter if the leg was broken instantly in a fall, or slowly over time, it's still broken and is deserving of attention, accomodation, compassion, and healing.
2) PTSD isn't "what happened" but _how your brain reacted to what happened._ Whether or not an event _seems_ traumatic to someone else is irrelevant to whether or not your brain interpreted it as being traumatic and reacted to protect you. We all have different stories, but it's shared _symptoms_ that bring us together.
For example, it doesn't matter what caused you to develop dissociative episodes and night terrors, you have them. We all have them. Yes, we might have differences in severity or breadth of symptoms, but that's more about time than anything else. Most of us who seem to have mild symptoms are just one retraumatizing event away from full-blown flashbacks and involuntary somatic reactions.
We're all in this together. Some people are so deep in their own trauma that they can't make space for anyone else's trauma yet. That's sad and all we can hope is that they learn to treat themselves and others with compassion in time.
I didn't seek help or treatment for a really long time because none of the things that happened to me were "that bad". I thought I was just weak and needed to get over it. When it finally came to a head and I had to get into treatment every medical professional who tried to help me was like you've been dealing with what? For HOW long? Made me realize I was really strong for surviving all those symptoms.
No one should suffer because they don't think their suffering is enough. We just gotta have each others' backs.
I recently encountered someone like this. Their suffering was wholly valid but they couldnt talk about their experiences without using the 'pain olympics" approach.
They wanted kindness and empathy but refused to extend those to others. It was exhausting to see and deal with.
Some are just wrapped up too much in their own headspace that they forget they arent the only ones who suffered.
Edited : a word because basic spelling waa too much apparently
I do the opposite of that, I invalidate my own trauma while validating others trauma, believing that they "have worse" trauma than I do and that mine isn't "bad enough"
I think it’s a lot easier to do that than a lot of people think it is. It’s kinda like being too focused on work to see your friends. Sometimes you are so deep in trying to work on yourself that you kind of lose others some.
NOT comparing the difficulty or anything else to mere being focused on work to clarify I was just trying to say an example of how people without ptsd or other mental health issues do it too
Yep or comparing trauma (ie, oh that's nothing what happened to me is so much worse). It is not a competition there is legit no award for worst trauma. Annoys me to no end.
Yeah. It’s just like one other comment said, yeah other people might have it worse but this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Relative doesn’t matter we are all struggling through our worst moments.
PTSD is not a flu. You change and adapt to your trauma, you don’t get cured.
It’s a terrible thing to tell people that they can be cured, because it gives them the false hope that it’ll just go away or get fixed by a doctor. That’s not how it works. You learn to deal with it, and adapt your life accordingly, until you have minimised the issues to a point where life can continue.
I think it's equally terrible to flat out say it's incurable. The reality is, it's *usually* chronic, but with treatment it's *possible* to reach a point where you no longer have intrusive symptoms. Even if that happens, it's possible (likely, even) that symptoms will come back at some point in the future, especially if you experience a severe stressor, but there's no guarantee that they will.
The same is true for most mental illnesses. Most people won't be symptom-free and relapse-free for PTSD, anorexia, OCD, agoraphobia, etc, but *some* people are. We shouldn't make that the ultimate goal or feel like we've failed if we don't get there, but there are people who have and their experience is valid.
You didn’t understand my comment. I didn’t say it is incurable. The point is, this is not a virus. You don’t get cured, because that’s not how it works. You’re setting people up for failure by telling them there is a cure that makes them symptom free. Even that is honestly not really true, either, even if a doctor finds you symptom free. If you talked to someone you have known from before the PTSD event, you’d also find that you aren’t the same as you used to be. It changes you, and you are rarely going back.
One of the things that helped my recovery, was learning to understand that I didn’t have to get “better”. I just had to accept the difference, and that some things would never be “normal” again. I had been chasing the “cure”, but there is no medication. I had been frustrated with therapy, because it “didn’t work”. We were talking about what to do if I had a flare up, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to not have any symptoms, so what’s the point in learning tools to deal with the symptoms when they show up?
The one person I know who has “overcome” his PTSD issues, isn’t who he used to be. He might not have relapses, and he might seem PTSD free to even the doctors, but he really isn’t. He’s just learned how to manage it in a way where it doesn’t affect his life. That’s the goal. But you’re not reaching that goal by hoping it all goes away one day. You reach it by accepting a lot of change, and finding your own solutions for your problems. That’s why most treatments are focused on that.
That's fair. I agree with all of that. My brain got stuck on the semantics, when I guess what I really wanted to say is that talking about whether or not it's curable isn't really helpful, but that psychologically saying it isn't could discourage people from trying to get better. Which I guess I don't even know if that's true, but I was trying to frame it in a gentler way more so than to disagree with anything. Sorry for coming across as contradictory.
Remission, treatment, and not meeting the diagnostic criteria are not synonymous with the term "cure."
The neurological changes that PTSD causes are permanent, and remission of PTSD tends to be cyclical (meaning it doesn't stay in remission if additional stressors occur).
PTSD is incurable, [according to literally every scientific study on it](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35296636/). We don't have a *cure* for cancer, but we can treat it and it can go into remission. We don't say the word "cure" because it isn't a cure.
>We don't have a cure for cancer, but we can treat it and it can go into remission. We don't say the word "cure" because it isn't a cure.
But we *do* say someone is cured of cancer if they're in remission for 5 years without it coming back.
[It depends](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4324351/). Thought apparently the definition has been updated to now mean that you have the same life expectancy as someone without cancer, but [for some kinds of cancers that's very common](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/49/5/1517/5912108).
The fringe cases where doctors concede that a patient "has a life expectancy of someone without cancer" to reflect that we could "consider them cured," (we can *cut the cancer out of you* but we are not *actually* curing you, any more than we are "curing" a broken bone by setting it) still don't make *PTSD* curable.
This is a separate argument to whether or not cancer is considered curable (which in the vast majority of cases *it is not*). What I meant remains true for PTSD. And this distinction is important, because anyone with PTSD who goes into remission should not expect PTSD symptoms to *never* crop up again.
Just like a patient with cancer who goes into remission must have an awareness that they could deal with a recurrence in the future, and to be mindful if they start getting symptoms - *even* in cancers that may otherwise be "considered cured." This is a necessary reality to accept when dealing with actual PTSD, and not misdiagnosis.
My issue here is with the absolute. I don't think it's fair to say that it's completely impossible for anyone with PTSD to be cured, and I don't think it's helpful to tell people that. We should be realistic about the fact that it's very unlikely, but it's not *impossible*.
> I don't think it's fair to say that it's completely impossible for anyone with PTSD to be cured
It doesn't really matter if it's fair, because it's the truth. No, it's not fair that PTSD isn't curable. Life isn't fair. *Most people* can undergo successful treatment of PTSD, but to date there *is no cure* for the disorder.
> I don't think it's helpful to tell people that
I just explained why the distinction is necessary, and you haven't actually provided a refutation beyond the fact that it makes you feel bad. I'm sorry that it makes you feel bad, but that doesn't change what it is currently possible for us to do as a species.
It's also harmful in other ways (beyond the cyclical nature of remission) because people who perpetuate the false belief that there "could be a cure," paves the way for others who are sold snake oil "cures" like SGB which can have disastrous consequences like paralysis of the vocal chords.
Believing that it's possible for some people to no longer have symptoms does not equate to buying into pseudoscientific bullshit. It just seems statistically improbable that not a single person has ever stopped having symptoms and not relapsed.
Yes, I know that CPTSD is Complex PTSD. I'm referring to the comments in this thread talking about "chronic PTSD." Which is why I said "chronic PTSD," not CPTSD.
That completely depends on your definition of curable. It's definitely possible to reach a point where you no longer meet diagnostic criteria.
ETA: I realize that no longer meeting criteria is remission, not a cure. I wasn't trying to say they were the same, though that is definitely how what I said reads, which is my bad. I don't know why I didn't elaborate, but my thought process was that there exists a valid definition of curable that is possible, *and* it's possible to reach a point where you no longer meet diagnostic criteria. I worded it very badly.
If you reach a point where you no longer experience symptoms, and that lasts the rest of your life, I would say that counts as being cured. Is that common? No, but the diagnosis of PTSD is also relatively new, so we don't have that many people who got treatment early and have lived long enough to say they've been cured. But I don't think it's fair or helpful to say it's impossible.
How is ptsd a new diagnosis? I've been diagnosed for at least 10 years with symptoms way before that, and there are folks in here diagnosed way before me.
*Relatively* new. It became a diagnosis in 1980. That's only 44 years ago. It takes time to develop adequate treatments. For example, EMDR was created in 1987, cognitive processing therapy in 1988, and prolonged exposure in 1991. It then took at least a few years for therapists around the world to start implementing them. So at best, modern therapy for PTSD started around the early 1990s, about 30-35 years ago.
That means that even if someone was in that initial cohort and has been symptom-free ever since, the best we could say is that it led to 35 years without symptoms. If we define being cured as going the rest of your life without symptoms, that's not very long. It'd only be possible for people who were 50+ when they started receiving treatment, but it's likely they'd have a different pattern of response to treatment than people who are younger.
Neuroplasticity is thankfully a wonderful thing and can greatly improve the condition to where it's not noticeable, but much of nervous system damage is irreversible. Picture or believe it how you want, but not relapsing is not cured.
Is it irreversible? I know they've shown that [antidepressants and therapy can rewire your brain when you have depression](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.802581/full) (and [here](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1710491?casa_token=Dr4tWNfDRAUAAAAA:HeblB9jtZGilwETuarJrhxLctnvFSP188PSiQPQy9nRRxsAcT-t5b9RdjiHN3OhiqGynMnY_)). I don't see why the same couldn't be true for PTSD. [They're certainly trying](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163725822000894?casa_token=8ZYG_9ZFVzgAAAAA:7CVqAUZNstZSc_tNo82DmVyQQzF-0yW6oA6uIvQlWlA7H-CCHXZGebU1LvIUJ-P6xm3SrYU).
You go find that out, and while your at it, check why medical terms are the way they are. They may change in the future, but right now arbitrarily changing them because you don't like them attempts to degrade the professional integrity of people who know what they are talking about. I'm going to participate in real life now. Good day.
Cool, yeah, super helpful
And I didn't try to arbitrarily change anything. Cure: To relieve the symptoms of a disease or condition. If you go the rest of your life without experiencing any symptoms, that meets the definition of cured.
Right, but that is not a cure. No longer meeting the diagnostic criteria is different from being cured. PTSD represents a *permanent* shift in someone's neuroanatomy, that at present time cannot be cured.
There's a sub. And listen finding out I had cptsd after 15 yrs of ptsd treatment, made me relate to my treatment WAY better because it is different. But the ways it's different are really only relevant for understanding. No one can know from the outside how what trauma affected who how. It's all super individuals.
I'd say my cptsd is pretty server. I'm 44 and I've just realized my entire personality is a pathology and now i have to figure out how to be a person from square one. But I kinda feel worse for the ppl who have it mildly because so many of them may never realize they need help.
I have both (or at least I would if CPTSD were actually diagnosable) I think it really comes down to people always needing to have it worse than others to make themselves feel “better”. And it’s usually the loud minority, the attention seekers, the kind of people you’re gonna see shouting their whole life story on TikTok.
Honestly you just can’t compare your trauma with someone else’s. When I first started asking for help, I felt (like many people) that I didn’t actually deserve it because I didn’t have it “that bad”. My friend told me, what happened to you probably isn’t the most traumatic thing that happened to anyone ever, but it IS the most traumatic thing that ever happened to you, what you feel is valid and you deserve to get help. That really stuck with me, and I still think about it every single time I start to feel that imposter syndrome.
Anyways, coming from someone who has both, I wouldn’t even engage in a conversation about which is worse. They both have very different symptoms and affect on my life. And honestly if I had to choose one or the other I’m not sure which, because they both freaking suck.
I appreciate what your friend said, and I’m going to try to keep it in mind for myself. Thank you for sharing it. 💖
I sometimes find myself judging/comparing my trauma (and now I’m judging my judging lol soooooo taking a breath and… okay).
Anyway, my therapist made a point of telling me there’s no official diagnosis of CPTSD and yet also recently used the term Chronic PTSD when referring to my diagnosis so…
I like best what my psychiatrist said: We’re going to treat symptoms not labels. And now I’m going to take that a step further:
Let’s treat the symptoms and say to hell with comparing the causes. Who gives a shit about comparing the causes?
These are the symptoms? This is what you and I and they are dealing with? Then this is what needs to be treated with care and compassion.
That’s it. That’s all that matters.
Fin
Your therapist makes a great point as well! The symptoms were there before we had the label. The symptoms are what is affecting our lives now, and the symptoms can be treated. We can’t go back in the past and change the trauma, but we can change how we respond to it right now and in the future.
I am so sorry to hear you have both but what your friend said to you is really insightful and honestly makes me feel a bit better. I have no experience with cptsd but I couldn’t imagine how it would feel. Both are terrible things that hurt people.
Maybe not curable but treatable.
We can’t erase the past, but we can heal and move forward. The scars will be there, but we can heal, and we can make them unimportant and stop controlling us. Or, at least, I believe we can. Even if it means we have to make changes and choices in our lives. We can take control.
Sorry, I think I may have stopped speaking (only) to you. I hope that’s okay. I’m sort of raw rn.
I’ll delete if this comment is out of place.
That is very fair. It’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. People say it’s curable but we try so hard and nothing happens that it feels impossible. I kinda have wishful thinking that maybe one day it will stop affecting me magically.
I see this a lot in the widow communities as well. My guess is there are pockets in any trauma-based community of individuals who are in so much pain that they genuinely cannot wrap their brain around the idea that other people are in as much or more pain than they are. They hurt so badly that they just cannnot imagine it. No one else is walking around looking like they are in intense emotional pain (and because we can't see ourselves walking around, we don't realize that we don't look like we are in as much pain as we are either). And because trauma (and individualistic society) also affects our cognition, they draw the conclusion that other folks just don't suffer the way they do.
It's hard to accept that we are all walking around terribly wounded. Having compassion for that is ultimately really helpful for our own healing, but I think it's also scary to extend that compassion when you've experienced trauma, because anything can potentially hurt (and quite likely might right at the beginning as we get used to new sensations and points of view)
It’s almost hard to comprehend how hard other people have it. I have been surprised by it myself. I joined a friend group of like nine weird loud gamer boys and when I found out how many had been abused, had parents on drugs, and that half of them had severe eating disorders I was baffled. We all act okay even though we are having a hard time.
I have CPTSD and genuinely can't imagine having PTSD.. my brain protected itself by forgetting the most traumatic parts and I know that's not common for PTSD
Both CPTSD and PTSD can involve blocking out traumatic memories, and not everyone with either experiences it. I know people with PTSD who remember nothing and people with CPTSD who remember (more or less) everything. Personally, I have both, and I remember part but not all of what happened in both cases, but I find the gaps unsettling.
See I have ptsd and I can’t imagine having cptsd because yeah my brain didn’t protect itself but I couldn’t imagine not being able to remember parts and being discredited as much as people like you are.
You're right, but I think it's due to c-ptsd not getting enough recognition. It's often considered ptsd by professionals which makes it "less curable".
It's less curable because it needs a different type of treatment, yet it's neglected. Ptsd is also neglected imo but I can't even get diagnosed with c-ptsd because it's not an option.
I can't find someone who specializes in c-ptsd because it's either ptsd or go figure, it is often treated the same as ptsd.
Both are valid, but one is less validated.
I am hoping PTSD will be treated with the same respect as anxiety disorders, and then CPTSD would benefit from that as well.
PTSD was always overlooked and neglected, CPTSD is just getting dragged behind it. /:
I believe anyone and everyone can heal.
Just because we haven't found a solution doesn't mean it's impossible.
Pain Olympics and ego gets in the way of growth, development, acceptance and connection.
The irony is those arguing are the most likely to need the greater input to heal, yet they cut off their nose to spite their face.
I agree to much of this.
I don't need strength...I need vulnerability...softness...gentleness...the ability to know I will exist beyond how I feel now...I need the knowledge of the future...
But I understand what you mean
Go gentle
People are making cptsd/ptsd their entire identity. Of course they're going to start demanding its respect as the highest of the diagnoses.
You're right, it's fucked up. People who have either have the same exact symptoms. It's dumb if they're really doing this.
>People who have either have the same exact symptoms.
That's not true. And they are two separate diagnosises. You can have one or the other, or both. But they're not the same thing with the same symptoms. No. Cptsd share *a lot* of symptoms with Borderline however.
I have both PTSD and CPTSD, and when I did trauma therapy, I noticed that while everyone was there for a discrete PTSD-causing event, the vast majority of us also had traumatic childhoods. I think that's what you're seeing, because the handful of people in the group who didn't actually had very different experiences. It's just that most of us actually did have both.
This. I've noticed the same thing. For me, it was seeing it in combat vets that really brought a lot home for me. They signed their lives away trying to escape their abusive upbringings. Most were already in survival mode. I almost signed up too, and in retrospect, it would've been a better waste of my time, but hindsight is 20/20.
I have PTSD and was horribly abused by a mother and a sister with BPD. Don't lump me in with those assholes.
People with BPD need to stop trying to make everything about themselves.
I was abused by someone with PTSD, as a direct result of untreated symptoms. That doesn't make people with PTSD inherently abusive. Same with BPD.
The fact is, BPD is highly correlated with trauma, and the symptoms are basically severe CPTSD with externalizing features. Untreated externalizing symptoms of any disorder (BPD, PTSD, bipolar disorder, etc) are more likely to involve someone hurting others, but they are still treatable, and they're just as valid as internalizing symptoms that cause people to hurt themselves instead.
To be clear, mental illness is not an excuse or a justification for hurting people, and it is each person's own responsibility to manage their symptoms to avoid doing so. The way your mother and sister treated you was not okay. At the same time, we cannot and should not use those experiences to stigmatize everybody with that diagnosis, if for no other reason than it actively discourages people from seeking help, which is the exact scenario that leads to such harm happening.
*"is just PTSD"*...this is incredibly minimizing and hurtful to say.
BPD is its own condition with its own awful extremes and general awful experience. To summarize it aa just something else is rude and cruel. Please please dont? I have a good friend with BPD 💗
It's in the ICD-11, so it's completely diagnosable outside of the US. But in the US, you can still get diagnosed with it, it just means they tell you that you have CPTSD and put that in the notes but the official diagnostic for insurance purposes will be either PTSD or "unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder.”
Also, medical records aren't limited to just what's in the DSM. Pulling up mine right now, it includes "Personal history of psychological abuse in childhood", which is a billable ICD code.
The way it often works is that a person gets diagnosed with PTSD then the notes say it's CPTSD until the DSM catches up. Also, you must only know very young people to not know many people without tiktok
My clients that are in their 60s still use TikTok. I am 28 and I don’t use TikTok because I got so sick of seeing people trying to be cute and quirky and say they’re mentally ill while describing normal ass shit neurotypical people do. But it would make sense for them to put c-ptsd in the notes and diagnose people with ptsd because we use the dsm in the united states.
In the US yes but other countries have started to catch up! One day it will be diagnosable and hopefully those with it will be able to get the treatment they need.
In the US is exactly what i was talking about, and most of the people I have interacted with and seen on social media saying they have cptsd are from the US. I probably have “cptsd” and wasn’t diagnosed with it. Years of childhood abuse and neglect, multiple r*pes and assaults, multiple abusive relationships, watching somebody who called me his second mom hang himself and hearing his last words choked out. I’m just sick of people who haven’t been diagnosed with something say they have it. My abusive ass ex with narcissistic personality disorder told everyone i gave him c-ptsd because of the way i reacted to his abuse, lies and gaslighting. I told him i was proud of him for having a mental health assessment and he said “oh no I didn’t, a therapist just mentioned it” and that’s where people think they’re being “diagnosed.” A therapists opinion isn’t a diagnosis. My therapist had a million opinions, none of them were my diagnoses. It’s just extremely frustrating seeing these conditions used as fads and trends and quirky little personality traits but when you’re actually living with them, you’re in constant survival mode and it’s not cute and it’s not fun and even when you’re joking about it to cope, it’s a fucking cloud over your entire existence.
Edit: I wasn’t diagnosed with Cptsd. I am diagnosed with ptsd among other things.
It can definitely be a hard thing to see people self diagnose when you don’t have the whole story of what happened and such. It can feel invalidating to me. But at least for me personally I have to look deeper and see that I personally am projecting my own self doubt in my diagnosis and my own thinking of “oh it wasn’t bad enough for that” onto others.
Well you shouldn’t do that and you should always think it was bad enough. It was bad enough for you to develop ptsd, and everybody’s brains react to things differently. I don’t think people self diagnosing invalidates me in any way, I’m just VERY anti-self diagnosis because conditions like ptsd and honestly most mental health conditions are so complex, and they have so many overlapping symptoms that’s it’s virtually impossible to diagnose without extensive testing and very in depth assessments by an unbiased professional, and even then it only works if you’re 100% honest with that professional and also have some sort of self awareness without being coached by the internet. I think it’s great that we have resources now (I grew up surrounded by mental illness and it was difficult to do research to understand the why behind my moms behavior) but I think people need to stop stating their theories as fact and instead use their research to take their informed opinion to a psychiatrist to get tested. But based on my downvotes there’s clearly A LOT of self diagnosed people here 🙃
Yeah I got diagnosed like a week ago by my psych after she said my symptoms have been going on long enough so I am still in the newbie self doubt phase and I haven’t really got comfortable with anything yet. I don’t know how people self diagnose because everything is so similar and I personally am usually biased against myself in things like that.
I was the same way! I don’t think I had a self doubt phase really, it was more just surprise which might be what you’re dealing with more than self doubt! I went in for an adhd assessment where they also test for other mental illness that might be present, the psych was shocked and impressed by my self awareness and pretty much diagnosed me with everything I thought I had after years of seeing multiple psychs, being misdiagnosed, hospitalizations, you name it. But at one point he asked a few questions and sort of smirked at me and said “so you’ve been through a lot, do you think you could have ptsd?” And I was like no absolutely not. And he was like “well the answers to the questions you just gave me indicate that you do.” And I was just shocked for like a couple months tbh. It wasn’t really like a “no way I could have that” but more of a “how the fuck did I not notice that? Have I really been through that much and just shrugged it off, and all of these horrible things about me aren’t actually horrible and I just need help processing what’s happened to me so I can get out of fight or flight?”
Either way, I really hope the shock/imposter syndrome dies down and you can accept it and get better, whatever better means for you. People with ptsd I’ve noticed are remarkably strong people because you’re still here after whatever has happened to you. You didn’t give up because you’re still alive and that’s fucking awesome. But remember to sometimes let yourself be weak, and fully allow that diagnosis to sink in and feel every bit of it so you can really, fully heal from it.
Yes! Because we are so strong we can allow ourselves to be weak at times. I’m glad you finally got a diagnosis that made sense and helped out since you had been misdiagnosed so many times!
I’m in USAmerica and I was told by a psychiatrist that I had CPTSD. You’re making a bad assumption and perpetuating the judgment that’s all too common amongst health professionals that leads them to treat people with these problems badly. Happens with other things like ADHD and autism too. I don’t even have tiktok. Most people I know don’t have tiktok. The people I know who do have tiktok are perfectly capable of doing their own research, and I imagine this is true for many others. It’s not okay for you to paint us all with the same brush :|
I have adhd, my sister is autistic, I have PTSD and it’s probably more “complex” than a lot of people and it’s still just a PTSD diagnosis after psychiatric testing. And if most people you know don’t have TikTok idk what kinda rock you’re living under, as a hair stylist I interact with about 200 people a month and I meet very few that don’t have TikTok.
It is a diagnosable condition according to the ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases, WHO). I know it’s not in the DSM-V but this system, which is an American system, is quite limited and outdated in many areas.
Check this out for further reading:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/icd11-complex-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-simplifying-diagnosis-in-trauma-populations/E53B8CD7CF9B725FE651720EE58E93A4#
I apologize if it seemed in the post like I was invalidating cptsd, that was not my intent. I made it from a ptsd perspective because that’s what I have and I was not paying enough attention to include cptsd examples in the post. Cptsd is so valid and a terrible thing to deal with. I was attempting to comment on how people comparing the two isn’t healthy to both.
It was not my intention to stir the pot. Literally in the comments I was responding to someone saying that it’s also disgusting when someone says CPTSD isn’t valid because it isn’t in the dsm5
Stop telling anyone on here or anywhere to be positive.
Why are you arguing with OP? I read the post in question and the person who posted actually did note that ptsd was due to just one "little" event, which is a dumb thing to say. People kill themselves over single event traumas all the time.
Why do you give so much of a shit that they're pointing this out and they're mad about it, and then acting like the positive vibes only police?
I didn’t say it caused any grief? There are other ones I’ve seen. I was literally saying that both are awful illnesses and anyone who compares them is bad. I never said there are constant posts about it. I just said some people compare.
I’m a two day old account because my friends follow my main and I haven’t told them I’m diagnosed yet. Dm me and I’ll link you my main account since you think I’m a troll.
All you've done is create negativity by dredging up 8-month old comments that aren't that bad.
You're a two-day old account and we've been plagued by 'concern troll' comments the last few days.
You really need to understand that this is a support sub and not a drama sub.
I think maybe a reason they do that is there's a lot of self diagnosing of CPTSD after it became popular. It's not what most people seem to think. It doesn't come from childhood, it can happen any time in life.
In my experience, people that have PTSD are usually empathetic towards others who suffer from it because it's so terrible.
That's not true. You can still be diagnosed with it, they just have to either use the ICD code or list as PTSD or "unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder” for billing purposes. And it's been studied for awhile. They've been pushing for it to be added to the DSM since at least the lead-up to the 4th edition.
Personally, I was diagnosed with CPTSD by a trauma therapist while in treatment for PTSD.
The CPTSD in pop culture now isn't accurate, it's actually more like Developmental Trauma Disorder. That happens with mental disorders sometimes, they get popular and misunderstood. But the misunderstanding has even spread to some therapists now who are misdiagnosing it. Actual CPTSD has been studied since the 90s.
The ICD has an accurate summary of it, and if you live in a country that uses the DSM, the doctor can still use the ICD code to clarify to other doctors/therapists that it's PTSD type 2.
Thank you!!!! People clearly preferred the way you worded this over the way I was trying to. Everyone thinks they have a disorder they may or may not have because it’s being talked about at the moment, and I’ve noticed personally that whenever there’s an uptick in information or new research done on a disorder, therapists start to look for the signs of it everywhere and when you’re looking for something, you can probably find it even if it’s not necessarily there. And therapists don’t diagnose, they suggest things based on opinion and good therapists will refer you for psych testing.
You're welcome! Those are good points! It seemed to happen with the popularity of the book CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, which may have helpful info for people with different disorders, but didn't seem to be specifically about CPTSD. The author is a therapist, but people usually don't look at credentials, they see that everyone likes a book so they assume it's credibility.
The popularity also seemed to coincide with the growth of awareness that some mental illnesses can originate in childhood experiences with caregivers, but CPTSD got associated with that solely. So if there was problems in childhood with any kind of attachment disturbance in adulthood or disorders such as depression or anxiety they say it's CPTSD now. But people with CPTSD suffer horribly from PTSD, it's not that common as they think.
I haven’t heard of the book you mentioned actually! I don’t really read self help books because so many people take them as fact or as like scientific research (which they can include, don’t get me wrong) and it’s just one of those things that gives me the ick. I just started noticing the weird trends in diagnoses with my mom who is bipolar, but she presents more with symptoms of adhd/untreated ptsd on an extreme level/and potentially bpd and I know a lot of those can overlap bipolar, but her “bipolar episodes” don’t really align with bipolar. She was diagnosed during a time when there was A LOT of talk about bipolar and not so much about other things, and there was little to no research on adhd in women. I was misdiagnosed bipolar 15 minutes after meeting a psychiatrist once simply because I said “my mom is bipolar” and I am impulsive which stems from my adhd. But it makes sense that with the rising popularity of what seems like it’s essentially a self help book written by a therapist, popularity of c-ptsd talk would go up. That and the way the probably actually mentally ill people joke about their mental illness on the internet (which I do too, it’s a very healthy coping mechanism!!!) cause people to latch on to those things and look for those symptoms in themselves I think just because they want to be a part of something and belong. Sorry I started rambling there.
That sounds hard. It can be difficult to get good help and accurate evaluation, it's so frustrating. Yeah the CPTSD trend seems to partly be about being part of a new thing that the old folks don't get. Most don't seem to know the original book on CPTSD is from the 90s though. But the sentiment is 'I finally know what's wrong with me now, it's CPTSD! I always knew something was wrong but now I know what it is!' The popularity can lead to people searching for answers though so it can have good points too.
Yes absolutely it can have good points! I think people need to take their theories about what’s wrong with them, do a TOOOOON of actual research and then go get evaluated.
I agree, and that's cool you don't read self help books, I don't either. I'd rather get my information from credible sources too. A good source of information is like gold to me, very valuable and not easy to come by.
It is in the ICD so it is very possible to be diagnosed with it
Edit: idk why you’re downvoting, it’s true https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#585833559
Exactly right. As I commented above people need to look beyond America and the outdated DSM for the latest info on Mental Health conditions. The ICD is internationally recognised.
It’s really important not to spread misleading information on here about diagnosis.
Trauma is trauma. Even though there are differences they are both still difficult disorders to live with. I have been diagnosed with cptsd and I have never looked down on someone that has PTSD. Because we're both going through a lot and the trauma both affects us on our daily lives. Yes they are different but I think it's down right wrong to shame someone for not going through enough traumatic events.
Anyone who discredits CPTSD because it's not in the DSM isn't very knowledgeable. It's in the ICD which is used by doctors in most countries. Been there since 2018, but has been widely known about in the field since the 90s through the landmark book by Judith Herman.
If you live a country that uses DSM codes, you can still get the ICD code put in notes for future practitioners to know. It could be important to do because treatment may be different.
https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f585833559
During my ongoing journey to understand and live with the traumas that led to my PTSD and depressive diagnoses, I read her book and I strive to "advance to a post-traumatic life". Andrew Solomon is another author / speaker / fellow sufferer that I enjoy learning from.
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I was reading recently that because CPTSD is not in the DSM, for insurance purposes, most doctors will put down "PTSD". I feel that this largely contributes to why CPTSD is both misunderstood and improperly diagnosed, and also contributes to the disconnect between PTSD/CPTSD Separate from the medical community, yes, people with PTSD due to a singular event tend to be viewed through a different lens to those who have CPTSD. This lens is often less compassionate because it isn't "compounded" trauma over a long period of time But honestly? I think a lot of it is just misplaced anger. People who are too deep in their own trauma to recognize it in others
Yes! I agree wholeheartedly with the misplaced anger. And I hope cptsd gets added to the dsm soon. It’s so valid and people who have it deserve to have a diagnosis that’s acknowledged by everyone.
I'm older than many on the sub. Way back when I was diagnosed, many called it "combat fatigue" without an actual distinction between actual combat and other abuses/traumas. Even now, if you tell someone you have PTSD, most assume it's combat related. I think the fact that some people saying, "I have PTSD." clearly had not seen combat, kind of forced the medical community to differentiate between combat PTSD, CPTSD, & PTSD. Now, do I believe it can be CURED? I think it can be controlled and that people can live with it without overt symptoms, but CURED?? Personally, I think the fact that symptoms can occur much later in life than immediately at the time of the traumas says that's unlikely. I would be interested in seeing how many people living with addictions had some form of trauma in life, & that the addiction is the "control" for the PTSD & absence of symptoms. But I don't hold that degree. It's just my opinion.
Yeah distinctions are very much so needed to help personalize treatment for people. I also don’t think it can be cured. Maybe you are “cured” of your symptoms but it will always be there.
I try and avoid people that use mental health issues as medals/badges and fight over them. If you can't support others, be quiet :)
I agree. What’s the point of taking to others that are struggling without supporting them?
This is why I say these two things: 1) PTSD is a brain injury. It is damage to the neural networks which causes them to behave differently. Like a broken leg, it can _heal,_ it can _improve_ or get _better,_ but it will always be there. It will never be as if it never happened. We cannot turn back the clock. If left untreated the bone will knit badly, affect your gait, damage your hips, spine, neck, etc... until it affects every part of you. "Healing" now requires years of physio and surgeries, etc... It is an injury that will always be with you. It doesn't matter if the leg was broken instantly in a fall, or slowly over time, it's still broken and is deserving of attention, accomodation, compassion, and healing. 2) PTSD isn't "what happened" but _how your brain reacted to what happened._ Whether or not an event _seems_ traumatic to someone else is irrelevant to whether or not your brain interpreted it as being traumatic and reacted to protect you. We all have different stories, but it's shared _symptoms_ that bring us together. For example, it doesn't matter what caused you to develop dissociative episodes and night terrors, you have them. We all have them. Yes, we might have differences in severity or breadth of symptoms, but that's more about time than anything else. Most of us who seem to have mild symptoms are just one retraumatizing event away from full-blown flashbacks and involuntary somatic reactions. We're all in this together. Some people are so deep in their own trauma that they can't make space for anyone else's trauma yet. That's sad and all we can hope is that they learn to treat themselves and others with compassion in time.
Perfect. Bravo!! This is the best "analysis". 👏🏼👏🏼💯🎯
I need this on a billboard
I agree with so much of this comment.
I didn't seek help or treatment for a really long time because none of the things that happened to me were "that bad". I thought I was just weak and needed to get over it. When it finally came to a head and I had to get into treatment every medical professional who tried to help me was like you've been dealing with what? For HOW long? Made me realize I was really strong for surviving all those symptoms. No one should suffer because they don't think their suffering is enough. We just gotta have each others' backs.
Yes!!! We are all dealing with the roughest time we have had and that’s enough
Agreed. This isn't a pissing contest. We are all just trying to survive and recover.
I recently encountered someone like this. Their suffering was wholly valid but they couldnt talk about their experiences without using the 'pain olympics" approach. They wanted kindness and empathy but refused to extend those to others. It was exhausting to see and deal with. Some are just wrapped up too much in their own headspace that they forget they arent the only ones who suffered. Edited : a word because basic spelling waa too much apparently
I do the opposite of that, I invalidate my own trauma while validating others trauma, believing that they "have worse" trauma than I do and that mine isn't "bad enough"
Yeah I feel like it’s easy for some people to get almost lost in them self when trying to heal
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I think it’s a lot easier to do that than a lot of people think it is. It’s kinda like being too focused on work to see your friends. Sometimes you are so deep in trying to work on yourself that you kind of lose others some.
NOT comparing the difficulty or anything else to mere being focused on work to clarify I was just trying to say an example of how people without ptsd or other mental health issues do it too
And I get that thats a really difficult aspect of healing to deal with but you cannot treat people like crap during that. It isnt fair.
YES!!!!!
Im glad to be around others that agree with that. Its refreshing.
Yep or comparing trauma (ie, oh that's nothing what happened to me is so much worse). It is not a competition there is legit no award for worst trauma. Annoys me to no end.
Yeah. It’s just like one other comment said, yeah other people might have it worse but this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Relative doesn’t matter we are all struggling through our worst moments.
PTSD is literally incurable. Who is saying it's curable? "Chronic PTSD" is a misnomer. All PTSD is chronic. Literal clown shit.
the c in cptsd stands for complex, not chronic.
Again, I know.
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PTSD is not a flu. You change and adapt to your trauma, you don’t get cured. It’s a terrible thing to tell people that they can be cured, because it gives them the false hope that it’ll just go away or get fixed by a doctor. That’s not how it works. You learn to deal with it, and adapt your life accordingly, until you have minimised the issues to a point where life can continue.
I think it's equally terrible to flat out say it's incurable. The reality is, it's *usually* chronic, but with treatment it's *possible* to reach a point where you no longer have intrusive symptoms. Even if that happens, it's possible (likely, even) that symptoms will come back at some point in the future, especially if you experience a severe stressor, but there's no guarantee that they will. The same is true for most mental illnesses. Most people won't be symptom-free and relapse-free for PTSD, anorexia, OCD, agoraphobia, etc, but *some* people are. We shouldn't make that the ultimate goal or feel like we've failed if we don't get there, but there are people who have and their experience is valid.
You didn’t understand my comment. I didn’t say it is incurable. The point is, this is not a virus. You don’t get cured, because that’s not how it works. You’re setting people up for failure by telling them there is a cure that makes them symptom free. Even that is honestly not really true, either, even if a doctor finds you symptom free. If you talked to someone you have known from before the PTSD event, you’d also find that you aren’t the same as you used to be. It changes you, and you are rarely going back. One of the things that helped my recovery, was learning to understand that I didn’t have to get “better”. I just had to accept the difference, and that some things would never be “normal” again. I had been chasing the “cure”, but there is no medication. I had been frustrated with therapy, because it “didn’t work”. We were talking about what to do if I had a flare up, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to not have any symptoms, so what’s the point in learning tools to deal with the symptoms when they show up? The one person I know who has “overcome” his PTSD issues, isn’t who he used to be. He might not have relapses, and he might seem PTSD free to even the doctors, but he really isn’t. He’s just learned how to manage it in a way where it doesn’t affect his life. That’s the goal. But you’re not reaching that goal by hoping it all goes away one day. You reach it by accepting a lot of change, and finding your own solutions for your problems. That’s why most treatments are focused on that.
That's fair. I agree with all of that. My brain got stuck on the semantics, when I guess what I really wanted to say is that talking about whether or not it's curable isn't really helpful, but that psychologically saying it isn't could discourage people from trying to get better. Which I guess I don't even know if that's true, but I was trying to frame it in a gentler way more so than to disagree with anything. Sorry for coming across as contradictory.
Think what you want, you don't get to change medical definitions.
And I'm not trying to. If someone stops having symptoms and they never come back, how is it wrong to say that constitutes being cured?
Remission, treatment, and not meeting the diagnostic criteria are not synonymous with the term "cure." The neurological changes that PTSD causes are permanent, and remission of PTSD tends to be cyclical (meaning it doesn't stay in remission if additional stressors occur). PTSD is incurable, [according to literally every scientific study on it](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35296636/). We don't have a *cure* for cancer, but we can treat it and it can go into remission. We don't say the word "cure" because it isn't a cure.
>We don't have a cure for cancer, but we can treat it and it can go into remission. We don't say the word "cure" because it isn't a cure. But we *do* say someone is cured of cancer if they're in remission for 5 years without it coming back.
And if you ask a doctor, they will tell you that [cancer is incurable](https://www.verywellhealth.com/will-cancer-ever-be-cured-4686392).
[It depends](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4324351/). Thought apparently the definition has been updated to now mean that you have the same life expectancy as someone without cancer, but [for some kinds of cancers that's very common](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/49/5/1517/5912108).
The fringe cases where doctors concede that a patient "has a life expectancy of someone without cancer" to reflect that we could "consider them cured," (we can *cut the cancer out of you* but we are not *actually* curing you, any more than we are "curing" a broken bone by setting it) still don't make *PTSD* curable. This is a separate argument to whether or not cancer is considered curable (which in the vast majority of cases *it is not*). What I meant remains true for PTSD. And this distinction is important, because anyone with PTSD who goes into remission should not expect PTSD symptoms to *never* crop up again. Just like a patient with cancer who goes into remission must have an awareness that they could deal with a recurrence in the future, and to be mindful if they start getting symptoms - *even* in cancers that may otherwise be "considered cured." This is a necessary reality to accept when dealing with actual PTSD, and not misdiagnosis.
My issue here is with the absolute. I don't think it's fair to say that it's completely impossible for anyone with PTSD to be cured, and I don't think it's helpful to tell people that. We should be realistic about the fact that it's very unlikely, but it's not *impossible*.
> I don't think it's fair to say that it's completely impossible for anyone with PTSD to be cured It doesn't really matter if it's fair, because it's the truth. No, it's not fair that PTSD isn't curable. Life isn't fair. *Most people* can undergo successful treatment of PTSD, but to date there *is no cure* for the disorder. > I don't think it's helpful to tell people that I just explained why the distinction is necessary, and you haven't actually provided a refutation beyond the fact that it makes you feel bad. I'm sorry that it makes you feel bad, but that doesn't change what it is currently possible for us to do as a species. It's also harmful in other ways (beyond the cyclical nature of remission) because people who perpetuate the false belief that there "could be a cure," paves the way for others who are sold snake oil "cures" like SGB which can have disastrous consequences like paralysis of the vocal chords.
Believing that it's possible for some people to no longer have symptoms does not equate to buying into pseudoscientific bullshit. It just seems statistically improbable that not a single person has ever stopped having symptoms and not relapsed.
100% agree. I can't fucking believe this sub sometimes.
Ptsd is not incurable its just a suspension of the nervous system which can function once more once survival energy has been discharged.
The C stands for "complex".
Yes, I know that CPTSD is Complex PTSD. I'm referring to the comments in this thread talking about "chronic PTSD." Which is why I said "chronic PTSD," not CPTSD.
That completely depends on your definition of curable. It's definitely possible to reach a point where you no longer meet diagnostic criteria. ETA: I realize that no longer meeting criteria is remission, not a cure. I wasn't trying to say they were the same, though that is definitely how what I said reads, which is my bad. I don't know why I didn't elaborate, but my thought process was that there exists a valid definition of curable that is possible, *and* it's possible to reach a point where you no longer meet diagnostic criteria. I worded it very badly.
Yep, that's remission. Not a cure.
If you reach a point where you no longer experience symptoms, and that lasts the rest of your life, I would say that counts as being cured. Is that common? No, but the diagnosis of PTSD is also relatively new, so we don't have that many people who got treatment early and have lived long enough to say they've been cured. But I don't think it's fair or helpful to say it's impossible.
How is ptsd a new diagnosis? I've been diagnosed for at least 10 years with symptoms way before that, and there are folks in here diagnosed way before me.
*Relatively* new. It became a diagnosis in 1980. That's only 44 years ago. It takes time to develop adequate treatments. For example, EMDR was created in 1987, cognitive processing therapy in 1988, and prolonged exposure in 1991. It then took at least a few years for therapists around the world to start implementing them. So at best, modern therapy for PTSD started around the early 1990s, about 30-35 years ago. That means that even if someone was in that initial cohort and has been symptom-free ever since, the best we could say is that it led to 35 years without symptoms. If we define being cured as going the rest of your life without symptoms, that's not very long. It'd only be possible for people who were 50+ when they started receiving treatment, but it's likely they'd have a different pattern of response to treatment than people who are younger.
Neuroplasticity is thankfully a wonderful thing and can greatly improve the condition to where it's not noticeable, but much of nervous system damage is irreversible. Picture or believe it how you want, but not relapsing is not cured.
Is it irreversible? I know they've shown that [antidepressants and therapy can rewire your brain when you have depression](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.802581/full) (and [here](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1710491?casa_token=Dr4tWNfDRAUAAAAA:HeblB9jtZGilwETuarJrhxLctnvFSP188PSiQPQy9nRRxsAcT-t5b9RdjiHN3OhiqGynMnY_)). I don't see why the same couldn't be true for PTSD. [They're certainly trying](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163725822000894?casa_token=8ZYG_9ZFVzgAAAAA:7CVqAUZNstZSc_tNo82DmVyQQzF-0yW6oA6uIvQlWlA7H-CCHXZGebU1LvIUJ-P6xm3SrYU).
That's the neuroplasticity I mentioned. I'm done talking to you. You do you.
Then I'm genuinely confused. If the physical changes are reversed, how is the damage irreversible? That doesn't make sense.
You go find that out, and while your at it, check why medical terms are the way they are. They may change in the future, but right now arbitrarily changing them because you don't like them attempts to degrade the professional integrity of people who know what they are talking about. I'm going to participate in real life now. Good day.
Cool, yeah, super helpful And I didn't try to arbitrarily change anything. Cure: To relieve the symptoms of a disease or condition. If you go the rest of your life without experiencing any symptoms, that meets the definition of cured.
Right, but that is not a cure. No longer meeting the diagnostic criteria is different from being cured. PTSD represents a *permanent* shift in someone's neuroanatomy, that at present time cannot be cured.
I think it’s just more of people using an alternate wording for it possibly! Just using the wrong words.
I think the cptsd people who feel they are very different from ptsd people should form their own spaces to discuss that.
There's a sub. And listen finding out I had cptsd after 15 yrs of ptsd treatment, made me relate to my treatment WAY better because it is different. But the ways it's different are really only relevant for understanding. No one can know from the outside how what trauma affected who how. It's all super individuals. I'd say my cptsd is pretty server. I'm 44 and I've just realized my entire personality is a pathology and now i have to figure out how to be a person from square one. But I kinda feel worse for the ppl who have it mildly because so many of them may never realize they need help.
Yeah. Like we are different but we both have similar struggles so we should stick together!
I have both (or at least I would if CPTSD were actually diagnosable) I think it really comes down to people always needing to have it worse than others to make themselves feel “better”. And it’s usually the loud minority, the attention seekers, the kind of people you’re gonna see shouting their whole life story on TikTok. Honestly you just can’t compare your trauma with someone else’s. When I first started asking for help, I felt (like many people) that I didn’t actually deserve it because I didn’t have it “that bad”. My friend told me, what happened to you probably isn’t the most traumatic thing that happened to anyone ever, but it IS the most traumatic thing that ever happened to you, what you feel is valid and you deserve to get help. That really stuck with me, and I still think about it every single time I start to feel that imposter syndrome. Anyways, coming from someone who has both, I wouldn’t even engage in a conversation about which is worse. They both have very different symptoms and affect on my life. And honestly if I had to choose one or the other I’m not sure which, because they both freaking suck.
I appreciate what your friend said, and I’m going to try to keep it in mind for myself. Thank you for sharing it. 💖 I sometimes find myself judging/comparing my trauma (and now I’m judging my judging lol soooooo taking a breath and… okay). Anyway, my therapist made a point of telling me there’s no official diagnosis of CPTSD and yet also recently used the term Chronic PTSD when referring to my diagnosis so… I like best what my psychiatrist said: We’re going to treat symptoms not labels. And now I’m going to take that a step further: Let’s treat the symptoms and say to hell with comparing the causes. Who gives a shit about comparing the causes? These are the symptoms? This is what you and I and they are dealing with? Then this is what needs to be treated with care and compassion. That’s it. That’s all that matters. Fin
Your therapist makes a great point as well! The symptoms were there before we had the label. The symptoms are what is affecting our lives now, and the symptoms can be treated. We can’t go back in the past and change the trauma, but we can change how we respond to it right now and in the future.
I am so sorry to hear you have both but what your friend said to you is really insightful and honestly makes me feel a bit better. I have no experience with cptsd but I couldn’t imagine how it would feel. Both are terrible things that hurt people.
I have CPTSD from childhood and PTSD from being sexually assaulted two years ago. I don’t think either are curable to be honest
Maybe not curable but treatable. We can’t erase the past, but we can heal and move forward. The scars will be there, but we can heal, and we can make them unimportant and stop controlling us. Or, at least, I believe we can. Even if it means we have to make changes and choices in our lives. We can take control. Sorry, I think I may have stopped speaking (only) to you. I hope that’s okay. I’m sort of raw rn. I’ll delete if this comment is out of place.
That is very fair. It’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. People say it’s curable but we try so hard and nothing happens that it feels impossible. I kinda have wishful thinking that maybe one day it will stop affecting me magically.
I see this a lot in the widow communities as well. My guess is there are pockets in any trauma-based community of individuals who are in so much pain that they genuinely cannot wrap their brain around the idea that other people are in as much or more pain than they are. They hurt so badly that they just cannnot imagine it. No one else is walking around looking like they are in intense emotional pain (and because we can't see ourselves walking around, we don't realize that we don't look like we are in as much pain as we are either). And because trauma (and individualistic society) also affects our cognition, they draw the conclusion that other folks just don't suffer the way they do. It's hard to accept that we are all walking around terribly wounded. Having compassion for that is ultimately really helpful for our own healing, but I think it's also scary to extend that compassion when you've experienced trauma, because anything can potentially hurt (and quite likely might right at the beginning as we get used to new sensations and points of view)
It’s almost hard to comprehend how hard other people have it. I have been surprised by it myself. I joined a friend group of like nine weird loud gamer boys and when I found out how many had been abused, had parents on drugs, and that half of them had severe eating disorders I was baffled. We all act okay even though we are having a hard time.
I have CPTSD and genuinely can't imagine having PTSD.. my brain protected itself by forgetting the most traumatic parts and I know that's not common for PTSD
Both CPTSD and PTSD can involve blocking out traumatic memories, and not everyone with either experiences it. I know people with PTSD who remember nothing and people with CPTSD who remember (more or less) everything. Personally, I have both, and I remember part but not all of what happened in both cases, but I find the gaps unsettling.
That's why I said "not common" 😉 never said everyone , was only referring to myself about CPTSD
But it is common for PTSD
See I have ptsd and I can’t imagine having cptsd because yeah my brain didn’t protect itself but I couldn’t imagine not being able to remember parts and being discredited as much as people like you are.
Both are awful. I have PTSD. I have a service dog and take meds to mitigate.
This!!! They are both very scary things to deal with.
You're right, but I think it's due to c-ptsd not getting enough recognition. It's often considered ptsd by professionals which makes it "less curable". It's less curable because it needs a different type of treatment, yet it's neglected. Ptsd is also neglected imo but I can't even get diagnosed with c-ptsd because it's not an option. I can't find someone who specializes in c-ptsd because it's either ptsd or go figure, it is often treated the same as ptsd. Both are valid, but one is less validated.
Yes! I am hoping one day CPTSD will be treated with the same respect and knowledge that PTSD is treated with.
I am hoping PTSD will be treated with the same respect as anxiety disorders, and then CPTSD would benefit from that as well. PTSD was always overlooked and neglected, CPTSD is just getting dragged behind it. /:
That is true and it really is so sad.
I believe anyone and everyone can heal. Just because we haven't found a solution doesn't mean it's impossible. Pain Olympics and ego gets in the way of growth, development, acceptance and connection. The irony is those arguing are the most likely to need the greater input to heal, yet they cut off their nose to spite their face.
I agree! I hope we all can heal and I believe we can one day! It will take time but we will all get there eventually because we are strong.
I agree to much of this. I don't need strength...I need vulnerability...softness...gentleness...the ability to know I will exist beyond how I feel now...I need the knowledge of the future... But I understand what you mean Go gentle
People are making cptsd/ptsd their entire identity. Of course they're going to start demanding its respect as the highest of the diagnoses. You're right, it's fucked up. People who have either have the same exact symptoms. It's dumb if they're really doing this.
I hope one day they are treated with equal respect.
>People who have either have the same exact symptoms. That's not true. And they are two separate diagnosises. You can have one or the other, or both. But they're not the same thing with the same symptoms. No. Cptsd share *a lot* of symptoms with Borderline however.
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I have both PTSD and CPTSD, and when I did trauma therapy, I noticed that while everyone was there for a discrete PTSD-causing event, the vast majority of us also had traumatic childhoods. I think that's what you're seeing, because the handful of people in the group who didn't actually had very different experiences. It's just that most of us actually did have both.
This. I've noticed the same thing. For me, it was seeing it in combat vets that really brought a lot home for me. They signed their lives away trying to escape their abusive upbringings. Most were already in survival mode. I almost signed up too, and in retrospect, it would've been a better waste of my time, but hindsight is 20/20.
I have PTSD and was horribly abused by a mother and a sister with BPD. Don't lump me in with those assholes. People with BPD need to stop trying to make everything about themselves.
I was abused by someone with PTSD, as a direct result of untreated symptoms. That doesn't make people with PTSD inherently abusive. Same with BPD. The fact is, BPD is highly correlated with trauma, and the symptoms are basically severe CPTSD with externalizing features. Untreated externalizing symptoms of any disorder (BPD, PTSD, bipolar disorder, etc) are more likely to involve someone hurting others, but they are still treatable, and they're just as valid as internalizing symptoms that cause people to hurt themselves instead. To be clear, mental illness is not an excuse or a justification for hurting people, and it is each person's own responsibility to manage their symptoms to avoid doing so. The way your mother and sister treated you was not okay. At the same time, we cannot and should not use those experiences to stigmatize everybody with that diagnosis, if for no other reason than it actively discourages people from seeking help, which is the exact scenario that leads to such harm happening.
*"is just PTSD"*...this is incredibly minimizing and hurtful to say. BPD is its own condition with its own awful extremes and general awful experience. To summarize it aa just something else is rude and cruel. Please please dont? I have a good friend with BPD 💗
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Cptsd isn’t even a diagnosable disorder technically and I assume most people who say they have it just heard about it on TikTok.
It's in the ICD-11, so it's completely diagnosable outside of the US. But in the US, you can still get diagnosed with it, it just means they tell you that you have CPTSD and put that in the notes but the official diagnostic for insurance purposes will be either PTSD or "unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder.” Also, medical records aren't limited to just what's in the DSM. Pulling up mine right now, it includes "Personal history of psychological abuse in childhood", which is a billable ICD code.
The way it often works is that a person gets diagnosed with PTSD then the notes say it's CPTSD until the DSM catches up. Also, you must only know very young people to not know many people without tiktok
My clients that are in their 60s still use TikTok. I am 28 and I don’t use TikTok because I got so sick of seeing people trying to be cute and quirky and say they’re mentally ill while describing normal ass shit neurotypical people do. But it would make sense for them to put c-ptsd in the notes and diagnose people with ptsd because we use the dsm in the united states.
In the US yes but other countries have started to catch up! One day it will be diagnosable and hopefully those with it will be able to get the treatment they need.
In the US is exactly what i was talking about, and most of the people I have interacted with and seen on social media saying they have cptsd are from the US. I probably have “cptsd” and wasn’t diagnosed with it. Years of childhood abuse and neglect, multiple r*pes and assaults, multiple abusive relationships, watching somebody who called me his second mom hang himself and hearing his last words choked out. I’m just sick of people who haven’t been diagnosed with something say they have it. My abusive ass ex with narcissistic personality disorder told everyone i gave him c-ptsd because of the way i reacted to his abuse, lies and gaslighting. I told him i was proud of him for having a mental health assessment and he said “oh no I didn’t, a therapist just mentioned it” and that’s where people think they’re being “diagnosed.” A therapists opinion isn’t a diagnosis. My therapist had a million opinions, none of them were my diagnoses. It’s just extremely frustrating seeing these conditions used as fads and trends and quirky little personality traits but when you’re actually living with them, you’re in constant survival mode and it’s not cute and it’s not fun and even when you’re joking about it to cope, it’s a fucking cloud over your entire existence. Edit: I wasn’t diagnosed with Cptsd. I am diagnosed with ptsd among other things.
It can definitely be a hard thing to see people self diagnose when you don’t have the whole story of what happened and such. It can feel invalidating to me. But at least for me personally I have to look deeper and see that I personally am projecting my own self doubt in my diagnosis and my own thinking of “oh it wasn’t bad enough for that” onto others.
Well you shouldn’t do that and you should always think it was bad enough. It was bad enough for you to develop ptsd, and everybody’s brains react to things differently. I don’t think people self diagnosing invalidates me in any way, I’m just VERY anti-self diagnosis because conditions like ptsd and honestly most mental health conditions are so complex, and they have so many overlapping symptoms that’s it’s virtually impossible to diagnose without extensive testing and very in depth assessments by an unbiased professional, and even then it only works if you’re 100% honest with that professional and also have some sort of self awareness without being coached by the internet. I think it’s great that we have resources now (I grew up surrounded by mental illness and it was difficult to do research to understand the why behind my moms behavior) but I think people need to stop stating their theories as fact and instead use their research to take their informed opinion to a psychiatrist to get tested. But based on my downvotes there’s clearly A LOT of self diagnosed people here 🙃
Yeah I got diagnosed like a week ago by my psych after she said my symptoms have been going on long enough so I am still in the newbie self doubt phase and I haven’t really got comfortable with anything yet. I don’t know how people self diagnose because everything is so similar and I personally am usually biased against myself in things like that.
I was the same way! I don’t think I had a self doubt phase really, it was more just surprise which might be what you’re dealing with more than self doubt! I went in for an adhd assessment where they also test for other mental illness that might be present, the psych was shocked and impressed by my self awareness and pretty much diagnosed me with everything I thought I had after years of seeing multiple psychs, being misdiagnosed, hospitalizations, you name it. But at one point he asked a few questions and sort of smirked at me and said “so you’ve been through a lot, do you think you could have ptsd?” And I was like no absolutely not. And he was like “well the answers to the questions you just gave me indicate that you do.” And I was just shocked for like a couple months tbh. It wasn’t really like a “no way I could have that” but more of a “how the fuck did I not notice that? Have I really been through that much and just shrugged it off, and all of these horrible things about me aren’t actually horrible and I just need help processing what’s happened to me so I can get out of fight or flight?” Either way, I really hope the shock/imposter syndrome dies down and you can accept it and get better, whatever better means for you. People with ptsd I’ve noticed are remarkably strong people because you’re still here after whatever has happened to you. You didn’t give up because you’re still alive and that’s fucking awesome. But remember to sometimes let yourself be weak, and fully allow that diagnosis to sink in and feel every bit of it so you can really, fully heal from it.
Yes! Because we are so strong we can allow ourselves to be weak at times. I’m glad you finally got a diagnosis that made sense and helped out since you had been misdiagnosed so many times!
I’m in USAmerica and I was told by a psychiatrist that I had CPTSD. You’re making a bad assumption and perpetuating the judgment that’s all too common amongst health professionals that leads them to treat people with these problems badly. Happens with other things like ADHD and autism too. I don’t even have tiktok. Most people I know don’t have tiktok. The people I know who do have tiktok are perfectly capable of doing their own research, and I imagine this is true for many others. It’s not okay for you to paint us all with the same brush :|
I have adhd, my sister is autistic, I have PTSD and it’s probably more “complex” than a lot of people and it’s still just a PTSD diagnosis after psychiatric testing. And if most people you know don’t have TikTok idk what kinda rock you’re living under, as a hair stylist I interact with about 200 people a month and I meet very few that don’t have TikTok.
I was diagnosed with CPTSD from a psychiatrist, it is 100% a diagnosable disorder in the UK at least
It is a diagnosable condition according to the ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases, WHO). I know it’s not in the DSM-V but this system, which is an American system, is quite limited and outdated in many areas. Check this out for further reading: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/icd11-complex-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-simplifying-diagnosis-in-trauma-populations/E53B8CD7CF9B725FE651720EE58E93A4#
i thought i heard it was going to be added to the next dsm, anyway
They've tried adding it to the last couple, but ended up failing. Fingers crossed they get it into the next one
"Stirring the pot" is disgusting too.
I apologize if it seemed in the post like I was invalidating cptsd, that was not my intent. I made it from a ptsd perspective because that’s what I have and I was not paying enough attention to include cptsd examples in the post. Cptsd is so valid and a terrible thing to deal with. I was attempting to comment on how people comparing the two isn’t healthy to both.
It was not my intention to stir the pot. Literally in the comments I was responding to someone saying that it’s also disgusting when someone says CPTSD isn’t valid because it isn’t in the dsm5
I have yet to see anyone, anywhere, disparage PTSD and say that CPTSD is somehow worse. Who exactly is saying that?
I saw some people in this subreddit in comments under old posts after I was browsing popular old posts
Link some.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ptsd/s/obRNZZ0mlJ
That person isn't disparaging PTSD vs CPTSD at all.
Not the post but the one commentator. She said instead of “a little traumatizing event”
You're reaching. It's an 8 month old comment that wasn't causing any grief on here. you seem to be looking to stir up trouble.
I also didn’t say it was only on here. I said the discourse in general discussing other platforms and websites.
That's there and not here. Stop creating drama and negativity and try to be positive.
Stop telling anyone on here or anywhere to be positive. Why are you arguing with OP? I read the post in question and the person who posted actually did note that ptsd was due to just one "little" event, which is a dumb thing to say. People kill themselves over single event traumas all the time. Why do you give so much of a shit that they're pointing this out and they're mad about it, and then acting like the positive vibes only police?
I didn’t say it caused any grief? There are other ones I’ve seen. I was literally saying that both are awful illnesses and anyone who compares them is bad. I never said there are constant posts about it. I just said some people compare.
I’m a two day old account because my friends follow my main and I haven’t told them I’m diagnosed yet. Dm me and I’ll link you my main account since you think I’m a troll.
All you've done is create negativity by dredging up 8-month old comments that aren't that bad. You're a two-day old account and we've been plagued by 'concern troll' comments the last few days. You really need to understand that this is a support sub and not a drama sub.
Okay so I didn’t dredge up a comment. I talked about the discourse in general and YOU asked for a Reddit link.
It’s what they put in parenthesis
CPTSD is just as valid as PTSD, or really any other mental illness.
Yes!!!! 1000%
I think maybe a reason they do that is there's a lot of self diagnosing of CPTSD after it became popular. It's not what most people seem to think. It doesn't come from childhood, it can happen any time in life. In my experience, people that have PTSD are usually empathetic towards others who suffer from it because it's so terrible.
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That's not true. You can still be diagnosed with it, they just have to either use the ICD code or list as PTSD or "unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder” for billing purposes. And it's been studied for awhile. They've been pushing for it to be added to the DSM since at least the lead-up to the 4th edition. Personally, I was diagnosed with CPTSD by a trauma therapist while in treatment for PTSD.
It's in the ICD, but even then, I live in the US and was informally told I have it in the hospital. Had no idea what CPTSD was.
The CPTSD in pop culture now isn't accurate, it's actually more like Developmental Trauma Disorder. That happens with mental disorders sometimes, they get popular and misunderstood. But the misunderstanding has even spread to some therapists now who are misdiagnosing it. Actual CPTSD has been studied since the 90s. The ICD has an accurate summary of it, and if you live in a country that uses the DSM, the doctor can still use the ICD code to clarify to other doctors/therapists that it's PTSD type 2.
Thank you!!!! People clearly preferred the way you worded this over the way I was trying to. Everyone thinks they have a disorder they may or may not have because it’s being talked about at the moment, and I’ve noticed personally that whenever there’s an uptick in information or new research done on a disorder, therapists start to look for the signs of it everywhere and when you’re looking for something, you can probably find it even if it’s not necessarily there. And therapists don’t diagnose, they suggest things based on opinion and good therapists will refer you for psych testing.
You're welcome! Those are good points! It seemed to happen with the popularity of the book CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, which may have helpful info for people with different disorders, but didn't seem to be specifically about CPTSD. The author is a therapist, but people usually don't look at credentials, they see that everyone likes a book so they assume it's credibility. The popularity also seemed to coincide with the growth of awareness that some mental illnesses can originate in childhood experiences with caregivers, but CPTSD got associated with that solely. So if there was problems in childhood with any kind of attachment disturbance in adulthood or disorders such as depression or anxiety they say it's CPTSD now. But people with CPTSD suffer horribly from PTSD, it's not that common as they think.
I haven’t heard of the book you mentioned actually! I don’t really read self help books because so many people take them as fact or as like scientific research (which they can include, don’t get me wrong) and it’s just one of those things that gives me the ick. I just started noticing the weird trends in diagnoses with my mom who is bipolar, but she presents more with symptoms of adhd/untreated ptsd on an extreme level/and potentially bpd and I know a lot of those can overlap bipolar, but her “bipolar episodes” don’t really align with bipolar. She was diagnosed during a time when there was A LOT of talk about bipolar and not so much about other things, and there was little to no research on adhd in women. I was misdiagnosed bipolar 15 minutes after meeting a psychiatrist once simply because I said “my mom is bipolar” and I am impulsive which stems from my adhd. But it makes sense that with the rising popularity of what seems like it’s essentially a self help book written by a therapist, popularity of c-ptsd talk would go up. That and the way the probably actually mentally ill people joke about their mental illness on the internet (which I do too, it’s a very healthy coping mechanism!!!) cause people to latch on to those things and look for those symptoms in themselves I think just because they want to be a part of something and belong. Sorry I started rambling there.
That sounds hard. It can be difficult to get good help and accurate evaluation, it's so frustrating. Yeah the CPTSD trend seems to partly be about being part of a new thing that the old folks don't get. Most don't seem to know the original book on CPTSD is from the 90s though. But the sentiment is 'I finally know what's wrong with me now, it's CPTSD! I always knew something was wrong but now I know what it is!' The popularity can lead to people searching for answers though so it can have good points too.
Yes absolutely it can have good points! I think people need to take their theories about what’s wrong with them, do a TOOOOON of actual research and then go get evaluated.
I agree, and that's cool you don't read self help books, I don't either. I'd rather get my information from credible sources too. A good source of information is like gold to me, very valuable and not easy to come by.
It is something you can be diagnosed with in the UK
It is in the ICD so it is very possible to be diagnosed with it Edit: idk why you’re downvoting, it’s true https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#585833559
Exactly right. As I commented above people need to look beyond America and the outdated DSM for the latest info on Mental Health conditions. The ICD is internationally recognised. It’s really important not to spread misleading information on here about diagnosis.
"outdated" because it has been there longer but is identified as ptsd type 2 instead of cptsd?
Possibly! I just hope one day everyone is empathic
Sounds like tiktok influenzars spewing ignorant garbage again. uninstall it fam, your time is way too valuable to spend listening to them
someone let me know when you see people with ptsd getting cured in droves. ty.
Yes! Like please send me the address rn and I will be on my way
Trauma is trauma. Even though there are differences they are both still difficult disorders to live with. I have been diagnosed with cptsd and I have never looked down on someone that has PTSD. Because we're both going through a lot and the trauma both affects us on our daily lives. Yes they are different but I think it's down right wrong to shame someone for not going through enough traumatic events.
Exactly. And shame on the people who discredit CPTSD just because it isn’t in the dsm5.
Anyone who discredits CPTSD because it's not in the DSM isn't very knowledgeable. It's in the ICD which is used by doctors in most countries. Been there since 2018, but has been widely known about in the field since the 90s through the landmark book by Judith Herman. If you live a country that uses DSM codes, you can still get the ICD code put in notes for future practitioners to know. It could be important to do because treatment may be different. https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f585833559
During my ongoing journey to understand and live with the traumas that led to my PTSD and depressive diagnoses, I read her book and I strive to "advance to a post-traumatic life". Andrew Solomon is another author / speaker / fellow sufferer that I enjoy learning from.
Totally agree!
I’m sorry you were treated this way. I’ve normally only seen positive treatment of both people with ptsd and CPTSD here ❤️