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By the very nature of the topics at hand, trigger warning applies - including the wiki article.
I continue my entries for PTSD awareness month, with another mixed entry - describing both general aspects of it, and personal examples to illustrate. Today's topic is the difference between PTSD and CPTSD.
These terms share the core PTSD, meaning Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the C means Complex.
I'll use this wiki article about cptsd on wiki as basis, and shall avoid repeated or plagiarized content as much as humanly possible. I do want, however, to quote what I feel an important aspect of this distinction "cptsd is a psychological disorder thought to occur as a result of repetitive, prolonged trauma involving sustained abuse or abandonment by a caregiver or other interpersonal relationships with an uneven power dynamic."
What I retain the most are those underscored words above : repetitive, prolonged, sustained trauma, abuse or abandonment, by a caregiver, or another person where the power dynamics are uneven. This means, in my life-example, that I was traumatized by repeated abuse, perpetrated by one parental figure of authority (my father), and experienced a mix of abuse and abandonment once I learned the truth about my mothers (abuse from the one I thought my mother who was actually my step-one, and felt abandoned by my biological one wasn't in the picture at the time). Of course, once I got back home, and learned all that my bio-mom had gone through, and the hurdles thrown at her so she couldn't find me, the feeling of abandonment changed to one of a loss/regain, whilst still suffering from PTSD of abandonment, as healing from it is slower than the understanding of the factors that led to it.
The C in CPTSD doesn't change too much about a PTSD diagnosis, and some therapists don't even use it. It does, however, add a layer of information, though the term haven't been added to the official DSM, as the American Psychiatric Association seems to privilege diagnoses which American health insurances would cover for patients to get the help they need (this is as far as I can understand the logic, don't quote me as an absolute knowledgeable person about this topic).
Nonetheless, many therapists add this C to acknowledge that the patients who suffer from this particular form of post-traumatic stress may need extra help, for longer than a therapy for PTSD for a singular event, since such an singular traumatic event may, at times, be treated faster - say, in fewer therapy sessions, to bring the patient to understand and integrate the trauma experienced, to recover, heal and thrive, whereas in CPTSD, this is a rather unrealistic goal and a patient would need many more sessions, spread over time, and the goal may not always include a full recovery but be redirected to a better coping, and becoming more functional, notwithstanding our struggles.
If your therapist doesn't make this distinction, I sure hope that you are getting the help you need- in regards to how many sessions and interaction from your therapist to bring you closest possible to recovery- no matter what precise diagnosis is used, as help is more important than the exact label, and this is true as long as your therapist knows how to help. Just like any other diagnosis, It's no more than a label designed to better understand what it is you are experiencing, and to decide on a course of action - together, patient and therapist - for your recovery and healing process.
PTSD can be a diagnosis for any kind of event, personal and interpersonal, as well as accidents and disasters, whereas CPTSD have been given, to my knowledge, only in cases of interpersonal trauma, with the afforementioned specifications of repetition and power imbalance.
The trauma model of mental disorders mentioned in the wiki article (just after that quick definition I used at the starting point of this entry), pertains to an approach conceptualizing victims having understandable reactions to traumatic events, rather than suffering with mental illness. I personally prefer to think of understandable mental illness/es as result of trauma/s, because, in my opinion, negating mental illnesses can be dangerous and feeds social stigma on the subject. Let's call each thing as it is, a cat is a cat, a dog is a dog, an illness is an illness - and then we can specify a physical or mental one, knowing that the two are quite linked.
CPTSD is associated with many forms of trauma, as detailed in that same article, from which I copy and adapt the ones I suffered from : emotional and physical abuse as well as neglect in childhood ...I was a victim of kidnapping ; instead of slavery I was in a situation of servitude in the religious cult ; of bullying at school ... and am a defector of said cult.
I was in situations involving captivity/entrapment (lacking a viable escape route from the cult and my father for most of my life, due to prolonged feelings of terror, worthlessness, helplessness, and deformation of my identity and sense of self. These feelings were all linked to the very situation of having been raised by the founder and leader of the cult (my father, exercising during those long years a double authority role over me).
As I said in my post about difficulties in defining who I was due to having experienced my trauma from the youngest age (as young as 0 = my birth, with incremental traumas ever after), the main distinction [between Cptsd and ptsd] that researchers found relate to the distortion of a person's core identity, especially when prolonged trauma occurs during childhood development.
Due to this fact, it makes recovery and healing from such experiences extra-tough on a suffrerer, who tends to need a lot longer to cover the distance between trauma and various stages in healing ; and in identifying as a victim, then survivor, in recovery, healing, and possibly thriving. All these, in my experience, have been slowed down quite significantly.
No matter what kind of trauma you went through ; at what age, and for how long ; if it was one or several short-lived events, or a prolonged form, I want to make it clear that no matter what diagnosis and label specify your trials in life thus far : these terms of CPTSD and PTSD are here to pinpoint cause and effect, trauma and lived symptoms. In turn, these should be used by your therapist to elaborate a course of action, always with your approval, and with your full commitment, as your therapist isn't going to do the hard work, you will. The therapist's job is to listen, diagnose, and offer a non-judgmental external viewpoint and an ear, and advice for you to follow and together, with support and other coping mechanisms, guide you on your healing journey.
C and PTSD share the same kind of symptoms, in more or less intensity. For me, most of the words appearing in this image are true :
But, recovery is possible, so reach for whichever part is realistic for you, and your own story.
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