Therapist said I don't have trauma, just negative experiences leading to negative core beliefs.

CPTSD Vent / Rant

TL;DR: New therapist is making me doubt my trauma from neglect because my intrusion symptoms aren't picture book PTSD (no visual flashbacks, no specific individual events my trauma links/refers back to) and says she'd be wary for now to call my experiences (complex) PTSD.

(possible TW for trauma from child neglect)

EDIT: I'm Europe based, so DSM-related comments I can't really utilise/relate to well. We use the ICD-11 here and complex PTSD is a recognised condition separate from PTSD. Do feel free though to still add your responses for others to read!! :)

I started seeing a new ("trauma-informed"/"high-intensity") therapist recently (we had our second session yesterday) and though she's incredibly kind and empathetic, it seems to me that she's really keen on diagnosing/treating me with only PTSD in mind, despite acknowledging CPTSD existing and acknowledging it being much tougher to treat. I do understand she's being careful, not wanting to offer a wrong diagnosis/treatment and possibly making things worse that way, but it certainly didn't help when she said she's not too sure yet whether what I've been describing to her can actually be classified as CPTSD.

As for many of us, my flashbacks are mostly emotional flashbacks; suddenly getting triggered by someone's behavior that reminds me of my mother's behaviors and immediately feeling intense panic, overwhelm, and self-hatred (lots of shame and guilt). My mind scrambles to try and figure out how to best act in order to appease the other person, even if there is absolutely no need for it. Being triggered genuinely feels like the world around me is crumbling and nothing will ever be okay again, everything around me turning dark and things appearing utterly pointless because of how my mind is telling me I completely effed up and will be abandoned all over again for not having been better.
My new therapist says flashbacks have to have images or sensations linked to them. That me startling and panicking when I hear my flatmate's key in the door when they come home is not a trauma response.

It basically eventually all boiled down to her saying she can't tell yet whether I'm really traumatised or whether I've merely had a few negative experiences that led to negative core beliefs, and that it's those beliefs/the resulting anxiety and avoidance that I act on now.
She further based this on the fact that I don't have any specific core traumatic memories. Obviously, the emotional neglect I experienced from my mother was constant; her behaviors never changed and my reactions to them were the same over and over again with each time I was hurt or disappointed.
I told my therapist about my nightmares, but she said they have to be about a specific event in order to be considered related to trauma, and that my nightmares always being about abandonment and the pure terror of perpetual loneliness I feel in them is not relevant to that and merely indicates I had a lonely childhood, but is not necessarily a sign of trauma.

I guess I'm mostly just looking for validation here right now... It'd be nice if you could leave your thoughts/experiences to ease my anxieties surrounding this because I genuinely feel so invalidated and, obviously, the whole thing pushed me into a flashback yesterday...
I'm also honestly just not quite sure how to explain any of this to my therapist. She gave me the homework of logging intrusion symptoms and nightmares until our next session, but how am I even supposed to do that if she doesn't see my intrusion symptoms as trauma-related and considers them overthinking due to anxiety?

in CPTSDby stardust_mxa

150

95%

1mo

View all comments

Bokthersa00

1mo

I‘m German, we still have the ICD 10, where cPTSD is not recognised. As it was explained to me, under the ICD 11 it IS recognised, BUT the diagnostic standard is the same as for PTSD. Meaning you must have all the PTSD symptoms to get the diagnosis. It’s widely criticised, because it means like 90% of all cPTSD people won’t get the proper diagnosis (you MUST have the visual flashbacks, that’s the core symptom of PTSD).

I lied about having visual flashbacks to get the diagnosis, but it doesn’t help me. All the potential therapists I try to get appointments with immediately try to smash the PTSD diagnosis and basically say, „there is no such thing as an emotional flashback“.

It’s so invalidating and triggering to me, I immediately start building a block in my mind against the therapist. It makes me me want to give up on therapists altogether and just do it by myself with books and YouTube videos. For the emotional neglect it seems to be working, I have made lots of progress. But I don’t think I can do EMDR by myself for the csa. I really don’t know what to do at this point.

stardust_mxa

1mo

God, I'm sorry you had to even go as far as lie just to get a diagnosis. I'm German too (living in the UK) and previously saw a German therapist for two years and though she couldn't diagnose me with CPTSD, she was hugely supportive of my own experiences either way and accommodated accordingly, taking my words at face value and working with me to learn more about myself/my trauma to try and help me manage to cope. If only every therapist was like this instead of working exclusively by the guidelines of diagnostic criteria...

I also do feel that block towards this therapist, but I also know from experience that for me, it tends to ease up a bit once I manage to talk things through, so I'm hoping things will work out for now. I'm in the same boat as you though when it comes to giving up therapy altogether and not really having much of a choice. I'm moving back to Germany later this summer, and I just know I'll feel terribly lost just because there's so few therapists who actually know how to deal with CPTSD and who are empathetic enough to understand victims. It's frustrating and terribly invalidating and triggering, as you said. Wishing you the best of luck and much strength either way <3 Hopefully we'll both figure something out. We're not alone in this :)