I feel like my issues are too complex to recover from

[Deleted member 39476]

That makes sense, I guess a lot of the things I perceive as PD are more just dissociation, the PTSD explanation certainly makes a lot more sense and explains the cause and effect better than borderline. That would also explain why my therapist hesitates so much when I ask him about it, he won't say it's not a PD, he won't really say it is, just that I have traits from lots of mental disorders that are individually categorized differently, but all taken together are best explained by calling it complex PTSD. I was thinking about the PTSD cup thing before, it is a very good explanation of what's going on, I usually use it to explain to other people what's happening to me. It feels like in the last year I've basically been filled all the way to the top of the cup so I'm always very stressed out, any added stress just spills everywhere and I can't function.

 

[joeylittle]

Hey, @jameson? I've re-read your posting history. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?
(I'll ask, you can answer if you want)

1. Is there any history of mental illness - diagnosed or suspected - in your family?
2. Did you experiment with recreational drug use between being 13-18 years old? (no judgement, BTW)
3. Have you completed college/university?
4. What is your best or favorite subject - and/or, what field would you like your career to be in?
5. Are you active on any other mental health forums, or on-line communities generally?

I don't think you are a troll, by the way.

Reminder to the readership: no-one's making you read the thread. If you find the OP frustrating, take it as a good moment to practice regulation. And go do something else.

 

[Sideways]

Your assumption that you are textbook borderline is certainly wrong. You show more potential as an emerging narcissist, but only time would tell.

Can’t help wondering now, given the apparent absence of criteria A trauma (aside from the one being implied as unrecalled preverbal trauma) whether the cPTSD diagnosis is perhaps falling into the same hole as the “classic bpd” case...

The closest the OP has come to discovering a criteria A trauma is given by the following description:

From my understanding my main trauma happened before I can remember, probably when I was not even a year old. We can only extrapolate as to what happened based on how I act, and I probably just had numerous bad experiences being mistreated by my mother. Presumably all of that came to a really awful climax when she left,

While the cptsd diagnosis is something that the OP has clung to, the criteria A trauma currently isn’t there. It’s being implied. The OP has spent a lot of time fitting symptoms to the cPTSD diagnosis. But has been doing exactly the same with BPD. And the BPD diagnosis is, well, bollocks.

By the OP’s recent posts, the T seems to now not want to commit to an actual diagnosis at all, although the OP states that cptsd is still his ‘official diagnosis’. In the absence of criteria A trauma, in the absence of any re-experiencing symptoms, where does the ptsd diagnosis come from?

When is it time to seek a second opinion? Presumably before further work is done on your trauma and parts.

 

[Deleted member 39476]

Hey, @jameson? I've re-read your posting history. Do you mind if I ask you a fe...

1.Nothing diagnosed but to me it seems like there is blatant and rampant mental illness in my family. My mother seems to have ADHD and has sociopathic traits, my father is really obviously depressive, one of my grandmothers was a hardcore workaholic and hoarder, one of my grandfathers apparently used to beat my grandmother in the 70s. I don't know where to draw the line though, because my extended family came from rough circumstances, many of them were in the world wars, polio killed a lot of them, their parents were immigrants who came to here because of famine and political oppression. I wouldn't say there's any obvious pattern of any particular mental illness though, I know people who have bipolar running straight down the line, my extended family is pretty dysfunctional but nothing like that.

2. Yes, I tried weed numerous times but all it ever did to me was give me a really bad headache and cause me to space out. When I was 18 I took mushrooms and it was a very life altering experience that lead to where I am now, I used to have no insight before I took mushrooms I just kind of lived a dysfunctional life, after doing them I ended up losing 120 pounds and changing a lot of things, only to ultimately realize that my problems were way deeper than weight.

3.Nope, grade 12 highest education.

4. Best subject has always been English, favorite subject was electronics, if you don't count vocation then it's English. I can't answer what field I want to work in because I've had such a bad experience with work so far that I just don't want to work, and can't in my current state. If I was in good health I would probably enjoy either running a business or working with electronics. I could probably also write but its not lucrative. I also have no idea what I'm actually good at because I've basically failed at everything so far and got bad grades all the way through school. I now know of course that the main reason I always did poorly was because I was always in poor health, backed by basically all my teachers writing "not applying himself" on all my report cards since middle school.

5. Not active on any other forums although I post on a bunch of different websites, none of which are mental health related.

 

[joeylittle]

When I was 18 I took mushrooms and it was a very life altering experience that lead to where I am now, I used to have no insight before I took mushrooms I just kind of lived a dysfunctional life, after doing them I ended up losing 120 pounds and changing a lot of things, only to ultimately realize that my problems were way deeper than weight.

What kinds of things did you notice were different about yourself, after the mushrooms?

 

[Deleted member 39476]

What kinds of things did you notice were different about yourself, after the mushrooms?

There was much more depth to all of my experience afterwards, as well as a totally rocked point of view on the world. I enjoyed music more, enjoyed nature more, thought more, had way more introspection, considered my life more. Before doing them I had never once in my life considered why I was fat, or why I did things, I just did things.

 

[Deleted member 39476]

The main thing is that I had an earth-shattering experience, it shook my concept of what is real, what is true, what is objective, what is right, it made me realign my entire life.

 

[joeylittle]

I don't know how things work in Canada, so forgive me - is your therapist qualified to do diagnosis? I'm not making a judgement about whether or not they are good at it, just don't know what the various levels are, in your country. I'm also wondering, have they ever mentioned the idea of getting a second opinion on your case, or consulting with anyone?

 

[Deleted member 39476]

I don't know how things work in Canada, so forgive me - is your therapist qualified to do diagnosis?...

I'm pretty sure you need a medical degree to give legally recognized diagnosis' in Canada so no he cannot. I think on a personal level he doesn't like using labels either, and he also probably isn't even that sure. I got a second opinion from a psychiatrist once, it wasn't a diagnosis more of a consultation, and she said that "it looks like GAD with maybe a personality disorder", CPTSD is not recognized by psychiatrists and I didn't get a real profile though so its just what she felt.

I think my therapist is correct when he says "it's not one straightforward thing that fits a label, you have aspects of lots of different things" so its kind of not worth putting too much thought into, CPTSD seems like an accurate enough explanation.

 

[DharmaGirl]

I definitely feel the urge to break things, hurt myself, yell, etc, I just generally don't do it because I'm equally afraid of the consequences of doing things like that

I also used to do that. I would hurt myself a lot. This didn't happen until after I started therapy and opened up the "can of worms". I was hospitalized every other month, attempted suicide 6 or 7 times, was always dissociated and lived in a lovely fog. I feel like my dissociation and depersonalization was a really good tool, or I would be dead by now. I know it seems horrible, and like you will never get better, and I apologize for my remark, but that is just how it feels where you are now. Not to be trite, I have lived it. I would have told you I had no criteria A for PTSD, then stuff started coming back and my brother with PTSD confirmed a lot of crap that happened. I know where you are, having been there, and it was a good 3 years before I started to notice I was getting better instead of worse. I still dissociate, and I am high on the dissociative spectrum, such that the only thing that keeps me from having Dissociative Identity Disorder is that my alters are aware of each other. I never got that since I never realized when I was someone else.

Anyway, just wanted to apologize, and say that if you keep questioning and working at this, you might find you have a few moments of clarity, and can build on that. Best wishes, Dharma

 

[Sideways]

GAD would seem to be a good fit, if you understand GAD.

You have described at length your generalised panic, anxiety and worry (about the risks of doing anything from brushing your teeth to trying pushups,) and excessive stress. Dissociative states? Can also be a feature of GAD. Unlike Ptsd (or cptsd, which is not an official diagnosis), there is no requirement for criteria A trauma or re-experiencing symptoms, which are central to ptsd, and which you don’t appear to have.

GAD has a lot of overlap with ptsd. Which would explain a lot here for you. Right up until the DSM 5 was released, ptsd was considered to be a form of anxiety disorder.

GAD was a diagnosis suggested by someone qualified to offer a diagnosis. Cptsd is, like BPD, just something you feel you relate to. That’s really not how diagnosis works. Your self-diagnosis of bpd is one example of why self-diagnosis is such a bad idea.

There are plenty of examples here on this forum of people who have ptsd from preverbal trauma, and plenty with ptsd (or cptsd) from trauma that was recalled only after delay. But I think you’ll find that for most (all?) of them? Ptsd was not offered as a diagnosis until it became clear “this is ptsd, all the criteria are met”.

What you have done with your T, is decide “I relate to cptsd, so I must have unrecalled trauma.”

Any therapist who gives a ptsd diagnosis in the absence of any recalled trauma, is encouraging you to believe that there is preverbal or unrecalled trauma by doing so. Quite apart from ignoring a diagnosis offered by someone qualified to diagnose? He is encouraging you to believe that you have criteria A, currently unrecalled, trauma.

This is in strong contrast to best practice in trauma-focused therapy, where it is now well documented that it is incredibly important for a T (or anyone) to stay completely neutral on the question of whether there may be unrecalled trauma, so that the brain can recover anything that needs recovering at its own pace.

Where therapy encourages a belief that there must be unrecalled trauma, we know that the brain will quite obliging make it up to fill the gaps in accordance with what is being suggested.

If there is unrecalled criteria A trauma? It may be that you have ptsd. If there isn’t? Your therapist, in extrapolating what may have happened to you in infancy, is doing far more harm than good.

GAD actually seems to go a long way in explaining your distress, symptoms and experience. Adopting a cPTSD diagnosis (much like adopting a bpd diagnosis), because you like it more than a GAD diagnosis? Isn’t going to help you.

 

[ninja]

I agree @Disco Dancing Queen . I am learning a lot from this thread.
And thank you @scout86 and @lostforgottensoul for clarifying BPD for me.

It is often pointed out, even if someone has criterion A trauma does not necessarily mean they will go to develop PTSD, they may end up with anxiety and depression fueled by some nasty and difficult experiences. This does get complicated further when the anxiety and depression started early in life and never received treatment. It does interpenetrate with the growth of personality, and to-be-expected feedback from others about how they perceive you reflects the effects of depression & anxiety. I would be so hesitant to assume you have a personality disorder before trying to tackle the most obvious symptoms of anxiety and fear and depression, especially since you've said you were a different kind of person when getting a deep need met, and consequently feeling clear and well. Certainly regardless of the kind of trauma, you get to have a place to receive kindness, validation and support.

Intuitively you seem to know what will help: more frequent sessions with your T. I understand part of it is because there's some built trust there, knowing he won't come back at you and tell you to "suck it up" or something similarly invalidating. I hope maybe you'll consider a diary here. Writing has helped me, and I think many others, find regulation and receive healing validation and support. Hope this finds you after an ok-ish day.