cPTSD

[NaToth]

I was diagnosed by a GP in October 2019 and referred me to IAPT. That was the end of the GP’s involvement. IAPT couldn’t help as I am neither anxious nor depressed, and referred me to a local charity that offers counselling. I was assessed in November 2019 and accepted onto their waiting list.

I got to the top of the waiting list in March 2020 but because of lockdown, but although the organisation was prepared to work online with existing clients, they were not prepared to do so with new clients. They work out of a hospital that has never come out of lockdown and are still unable to give me any idea when they may be able to start working with me.

It had taken me three years to get as far as I did, previous attempts at counselling having failed, but things are now much worse than they were in 2019, with the effects of lockdown, losing my job etc etc.

Is there nothing else I can do? I cannot continue much longer living with constant flashbacks, dissociation etc, it’s destroying me, and my relationship.

When you say counseling, do you know what type?

The most recommended/evidenced-based for CPTSD is trauma-focused Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (with some preferring trauma-focused Dialectical behavior therapy which is based on similar ideas) and Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing.

There are also a lot of people who've benefitted from different types of art therapies and/movement therapies, I personally prefer group therapy that focuses on learning and practicing skills (there are different types of therapy that fall into that category) and some find things like daily self-inventories like the type discussed by sometimes alongside the other types of therapy, but there is less research on their effectiveness for trauma disorders.

There are more options. Lockdown and the many things caused by in many people's lives has made it harder and you may be looking at private care, but there are more options for care for trauma disorders.

Psycho-dynamic counselling. That's all I know.

Apparently that is all that is available in my area and only from this one provider.

Apart from going private, no. I had the same issue during the first lockdown and have so far not heard a thing. I've been waiting for help since June 2018. To date I've had no less than 4 phone assessments, 4 useless sessions of CBT with a junior therapist who was sweet but hopelessly out of his depth and one phone conversation during first lockdown with a counsellor who put me back to the back of the list because I had nowhere private to hold online counselling sessions. Since then, no contact. I've been seeing a private counsellor for the last year and he's been brilliant.