Umbrella Diagnosis of C-PTSD

You said earlier that getting the CPTSD dx was validating and healing. But your posts make it seem that you are not really satisfied or happy with it. You say you trust your treatment providers yet you keep questioning it. So I am confused over all of this.

I thought I was understanding what you are saying but I am even more confused now. If you trust what you have been told and diagnosed with then that's all that really matters. I am not sure if you are trying to convince us that everyone with CPTSD experiences the same things or trying to convince us that you have DID. If your treatment is helping that's all that really matters.

I once went to the doctor with an infection. The doctor didn't know what it was exactly and called it a garden variety infection and cleared it up with an antibiotic. I could have pushed and questioned and asked others and compared symptoms but ultimately all that mattered was getting better. Like you I trusted my treatment provider and that's what mattered.

I am not sure what types of responses you are seeking. Whenever anyone replies you keep saying the same thing, what you have been told and that you trust your treatment providers. If that's what they told you then that's fine and true for you and that's ok even if it's not true for others.

Then keep on trusting them and go with that.

I'm curious abusedtoy, are these professionals you trust the same ones that you have been talking about since you joined here?The same ones that told you to have your mom do EMDR on you at home that you talked about in another thread?

Im late to this thread so pardon me if I am saying anything that has already been said....

Abusedtoy..... I know you are trying to figure things out and it can be confusing... your first post is asking whether anyone has heard of cptsd being an umbrella diagnosis for a whole bunch of disorders. if I remember right you did ask this before in other threads. but considering you keep asking the same thing Im guessing the answers are getting are confusing you.

psych central has many people from all different places around the world.
each place around the world have their own rules for what is and isnt mental disorder. what is CPTSD in one place may not be in another place.

you are in australia I am in the USA...

here in the USA we do not have a mental disorder called CPTSD . so no CPTSD does not cover the things you are asking about... we have other mental disorder names for things that other people call CPTSD.

my suggestion is not worry about whether CPTSD in other locations covers what it does where you are. just go according to what your own treatment providers have told you.

if you dont believe your doctors and therapist, you can ask them to show you in their diagnosis books what CPTSD is in your location and whether it covers everything or not.

This is a new psychiatrist I am seeing, who is associated with this EMDR thing. The formal diagnosis was done by two of my other psychiatrists and that my therapist agrees with them.

Thanks Amanda. You make sense. I do agree it is ideal to ask them about their diagnosis books what C-PTSD is in my own country and what it covers.

In response to other posts, yes, I am trusting my psychiatrist and therapist, because they are professionals. It is just at the same time, I am wanting more validation, because I have been doubting, when hearing some have been diagnosed separately. So I am 50% trusting my providers, if it makes sense.

If you really want to know more I would ask all of your professionals to show you the cptsd criteria in their diagnostic book.

Just as in the US, Australia used DSM 5 and ICD 10 and neither of these diagnostic books includes cptsd as a valid diagnosis. There is talk that ICD 11 will include cptsd but it has not been released yet. It will be published later this year.

I tend to question a lot of what your professionals have told you. Although different issues can have similar symptoms I do not see cptsd (again not an option as an official diagnoses in our countries) as an umbrella term for all the things they say it us.

Beside the fact that cptsd is an anxiety (stress) disorder and not a personality disorder. DID is also an anxiety disorder but it has very specific criteria to meet as a diagnoses. Although people with cptsd may happen to also meet the criteria for DID or BPD, it is not an umbrella term that includes all of those other disorders. If that was the case it would most definitely include MDD as well but you state that your professionals have given you a separate diagnosis for MDD.

DSM-5: why all the fuss? - Health & Wellbeing

Even though C-PTSD isn't (yet) part of diagnostic manuals it is obviously a thing. After all here we are in the C-PTSD forum created by Doc John himself.

Yes it is a thing but not an official diagnosis that should be given by mental health professionals. Mt T says I have complex ptsd but my official diagnosis is ptsd, DID, and MDD Severe.

I agree, you should be talking to your treatment providers about this and ask them to put it in layman's terms. Sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what they're saying.

It's possible you could be misinterpreting what they're saying. It might be that you don't have DID or BPD or any other things and just have PTSD,cptsd as they're calling it. You may be assuming it's DID since you have alters but that's not always necessarily the case. Just the same as dissociation is and can be a part of PTSD but it doesn't automatically mean a dissociative disorder. So it's best to talk to the ones that are treating you so you can understand better.

If CPTSD was a valid diagnosis I know that's what mine would be but since it's not I was diagnosed with PTSD.

Let us know how it goes if you talk to them more about it.

yes it is an official diagnosis but here in america we call it by many different things based on ones own combinations of symptoms.

some locations call it conversion disorder, some places call it somatic disorder, some places call it Acute Stress Reaction. other locations call it PTSD, Chronic (Chronic PTSD instead of Complex PTSD)

my own CPTSD disorder combination of symptoms are called Acute Stress Disorder plus depersonalization/derealization disorder.

CPTSD (aka Complex Trauma Disorder) is a valid diagnosis - it's just the DSM hasn't caught up yet.

That is the same for me. T says I have C-PTSD (as a distinction from PTSD), but officially I am diagnosed with DID, PTSD, and MDD (and AN). I find Ts use the C-PTSD label quite freely, at the same time understanding it isn't an official diagnosis (yet).

I don't really have a problem with this, firstly DSM is not the arbiter of what is an actual diagnosis or not, it's just a diagnostic tool and since it reflects current practice it will always be someway behind it. Secondly I think it makes sense to understand many mental health symptoms as having their roots in complex developmental trauma. This fits well what is now known about the development of the self and how it is nurtured by attachments and attunement.

I totally agree with you. Scientific understanding of trauma and its developmental sequelae is ever expanding and it is that knowledge that drives change in the diagnostic manuals. The scientific knowledge comes way before it gets to the point where it can be printed in a manual.

What other disorders have alters? (Alter being a personality state with a separate identity/feelings/thoughts/behaviors etc)

It's my understanding that there can be different parts of the self(dissociated parts or different dissociative states)with PTSD(cptsd)and even BPD without it being DID or OSDD.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong though.But my point was maybe what the OP is calling alters and DID is just part of PTSD(cptsd ) and why it doesn't meet the dx of DID (as she quoted in bold herself when explaining why she didn't recieve additional dx.)

Maybe these discrete states of consciousness are what she calls 'alters'.IDK.

Okay, yeah, I understand what you are saying. I thought initially you meant that there are other disorders that have alters other than dissociative disorders.
Rightly or wrongly I personally would only call fully dissociated self states (i.e. those that would warrant a diagnosis of DID) "alters". Other dissociated self states that don't have a fully separate sense of self-identity I would call "parts of self".
Having said that, I most often use the word "parts" to describe my fully separated and independently functioning alters.
Oh, no, I am never inconsistent at all.

Perhaps what might help you understand what is meant by "umbrella" is that when there is childhood trauma and neglect in one's history the child can develop different challenges depending on the trauma and dysfunction that child is exposed to. Every single person has that "inner child" in them. That inner child gradually develops their perception of life and the world based on what they experience first in their own home and then as that child is exposed to the social atmosphere of going to school as well as whatever social/cultural customs that child experiences. If a child is raised in a dysfunctional home, that child has to learn how to deal with whatever that child is experiencing and children don't have enough life experiences to know how to deal with or even identify the kind of behaviors that are unhealthy for them and cause them to feel unsafe. So a child can begin to disassociate as well as look for ways to distance themselves from the things that make them upset and confused. A child may learn to copy unhealthy behaviors they see their parents show in order to get some kind of control unknowingly simply because that's how human beings are designed where they pick up things from other human beings even if these behaviors are unhealthy.

A child doesn't know what a narcissist is, so if a child grows up with a narcissistic parent that child will learn to do things and feel things according to that parent's narcissistic behavior patterns and often that child will think these are "normal" behaviors. Unfortunately, what can come from that is that this child may very well end up in a similar relationship/relationships with other narcissists thinking it's ok because it's "familiar" when their being with this type of person only ends up where that child who is now older begins to experience the same kind of "neglect" and "abusive" patterns they experienced as a child that were NEVER healthy for them. This is why a person who struggles with borderline personality disorder often ends up in an unhealthy relationship with a narcissist. Or, a person ends up practicing "codependent" behavior patterns because that is what that individual learned to do in their childhood in order to survive with a parent that could not be a parent but instead groomed the child to parent "them" instead.

So, when a therapist or psychiatrist talks about this "umbrella" what that really means is that many of the symptoms a patient is challenged with can all be coming from their childhood experiences where they experienced things that traumatized them and they did not have a nurturing presence there to help them feel safe. Therapy for a challenged individual will be based on their history and what kind of symptoms that patient is challenged with based on that history where the patient gradually learns to identify these challenges and also how to learn new ways to function that can gradually help that patient gradually gain more control of these challenges.

The way you talked about how when you got this diagnoses that you found it "healing" can be something others can relate to feeling Amyjay. What this diagnoses is saying is "You have experienced a lot of trauma and neglect and that's why you are struggling so much". It's helpful in that it can be "validating" for the patient in a way that "someone" knows that YES, I am hurt and there is a reason for it and now I can learn about it and get help. Actually, being able to hear "this is how you are hurt" can actually be "grounding" too. It can mean the difference between "I am so alone and confused" to "someone knows what I am suffering from and I don't have to be so alone with it now".

I think you've confused me with the OP.