CPTSD/Disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified

There’s a general misconception that people with BPD and CPTSD lie about being abused. This is incorrect. Psychologists were warned years ago not to throw around the label BPD, before CPTSD was added into the ICD, as they are normally victims of prolonged trauma, whereas BPD is more relational to a specific trauma – more commonly sexual violence and emotional abuse that occurred in your childhood. This is why CPTSD has the core symptoms of BPD as well as additional PTSD symptoms.

The lying part is not intentional: It happens for two reasons;

1. Confused about the perpetrator at the time which is very common.
2. Escaping to a fantasy world – which is also listed in the PTSD workbook.

If you buy the PTSD workbooks, there’s no clinical difference between PTSD and BPD. What’s different between BPD and CPTSD is, in BPD – it’s more common to have defence mechanisms come up from an abusive event that happened in your childhood and it can be triggered by a reminder of a perpetrator of that abuse and some aren’t aware of it so begin to develop unhealthy behavioural patterns. Personally, I think BPD is dissociative PTSD related to an abusive event that happened in childhood and CPTSD is the result of untreated dissociative BPD, and or, victims of prolonged trauma.

A way to test this – if someone is presenting with BPD symptoms that have arisen suddenly out of nowhere, is instead of accusing them of having a disordered personality or they’re the problem say to them “What happened in your childhood in the teenage years”. Their bodies will react to this during a crisis because it is dissociative PTSD. This will send them spiralling, on top of CPTSD if they do have that as an additional diagnosis but 60% of women have both BPD and CPTSD, because PTSD was already there. CPTSD is more relational to what occurred from those years and has been left either untreated or they’re experiencing abuse in their current environment. So I think of them both this way. BPD – childhood PTSD – event that happened in childhood. CPTSD – untreated BPD (dissociative PTSD), and/or victims of prolonged abuse – more specifically sexual, emotional, or physical.

CPTSD – you’ll see PTSD attacks, avoidance.

BPD – If there is relationship instability, then they were more likely sexually abused as a child so it’s a reaction to that specific event and this defence mechanism is the same as relationship PTSD.

CPTSD – withdraw from their partners when triggered externally, have multiple ptsd attacks, numbness, etc and can resemble multiple conditions occurring at once.

In other words, these labels aren’t labels to throw around or judge, especially when not having the lived experiences.