Hello! I've been bumbling around reading various threads in this forum for the past few days trying to decide whether or not I wanted to risk jumping in but I figured I might as well since I should attempt to do something, at the very least. I ramble and I'm very, very sorry about it.
I'm a college student (psychology major, gender studies minor) in the southeastern United States with undiagnosed C-PTSD due to childhood trauma and relationships that I'm still pretty much powerless against. I enjoy drawing, writing, and critiquing the lack of representation in popular media. I identify as genderless and go by the pronouns singular they/them.
Part of the reason I'm undiagnosed is because it's not in the current DSM and partially because I've been neglecting to make any appointments with a therapist. I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was younger and thought that my symptoms were the entire problem.
For a while I thought that maybe I had BPD but it does not fit me well - also my best friend/partner has BPD and although we share similar fears, our reactions to triggers differ quite a bit. By some unconscious draw, I have a tendency to make friends with mentally ill people and it's been upsetting having them either figure out diagnoses on their own or getting assigned them by professionals (some fit, some don't - professionals aren't always right). Recently, I found out about C-PTSD and having read pretty much all the listed websites in the first five results of google, I feel like I've finally figured out the reason for all the things that I thought were just fundamentally wrong with me. It's been so eye-opening to see that so many of my behaviors have causes but it's also been kind of annoying, do I even have a base of personality or is everything I am intertwined with my trauma? I'm figuring stuff out, and I think that's okay.
Anyway, I think that this forum is fairly anti-self dx (which is understandable) but I hope that I won't be shunned or invalidated regardless. I look forward to talking with everyone!
I'm a college student (psychology major, gender studies minor) in the southeastern United States with undiagnosed C-PTSD due to childhood trauma and relationships that I'm still pretty much powerless against. I enjoy drawing, writing, and critiquing the lack of representation in popular media. I identify as genderless and go by the pronouns singular they/them.
Part of the reason I'm undiagnosed is because it's not in the current DSM and partially because I've been neglecting to make any appointments with a therapist. I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was younger and thought that my symptoms were the entire problem.
For a while I thought that maybe I had BPD but it does not fit me well - also my best friend/partner has BPD and although we share similar fears, our reactions to triggers differ quite a bit. By some unconscious draw, I have a tendency to make friends with mentally ill people and it's been upsetting having them either figure out diagnoses on their own or getting assigned them by professionals (some fit, some don't - professionals aren't always right). Recently, I found out about C-PTSD and having read pretty much all the listed websites in the first five results of google, I feel like I've finally figured out the reason for all the things that I thought were just fundamentally wrong with me. It's been so eye-opening to see that so many of my behaviors have causes but it's also been kind of annoying, do I even have a base of personality or is everything I am intertwined with my trauma? I'm figuring stuff out, and I think that's okay.
Anyway, I think that this forum is fairly anti-self dx (which is understandable) but I hope that I won't be shunned or invalidated regardless. I look forward to talking with everyone!
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