I was/am in similar situation. I experienced abusive behaviour for years but didn’t recognise it. After I divorced I continued on until an unrelated event hit me and precipitated in me having full on PTSD symptoms
no I wasn’t diagnosed by a psychiatrist. And only a psychiatrist can do that. But part of reason for my abuse was that my ex developed severe and enduring mental health problems and was under care of psychiatrist and mental health services. I knew full well how stretched and under resourced the nhs mental health teams are and know that chances of getting a diagnosis unless you are in full mental health crisis are actually zero. A GP is not qualified nor is a psychologist.
but, like most mental health diagnosis cPTSD or PTSD itself are diagnosed through a series of check sheet observations. There are no physical blood test etc to base a diagnosis on. I spent 20 years seeing my ex’s diagnosis being changed subtly within the psychotic spectrum of illlnesses based on what each of psychiatrists he saw personal opinion and interpretation of those observations was. So, a mental health diagnosis is often less than perfect and for a lot of,people they don’t fit into neat categories defined by the mental health diagnosis tool.
BUT,what the diagnosis does is point people to what treatments are likely to work best. And that’s crucial and powerful.
You may or may not have cPTSD , unless a psychiatrist has diagnosed you and I doubt that as cPTSD is relatively “new” diagnosis. But, if a qualified member of the psychologists professional body states they think it’s likely you have this, that is helpful and something to work with. If anyone else has diagnosed you with it, it’s purely guesswork and to be taken with a pinch of salt- but maybe a prompt to get a session with a trained psychologist to get their opinion.
if you are experiencing symptoms that are similar to cPTSD , then treatments developed for PTSD could be helpful and worth trying. The main one is EMDR which is pretty unique to PTSD, very peculiar in terms of how and why it would work, but has very strong clinical evidence to show it does do something to help even if we don’t know how. There are also some other fairly unique approaches to talking therapies with PTSD .
I had a lot of therapy and counselling over 20 years when trying to deal with consequence of living with someone with an acute and severe mental illness : including CBT , family intervention etc. Personally I found them all not very helpful- I used to describe it as “emotional bulletin” (please no offence to those suffering from eating disorder) . Emotions and mental health distress build up, go to therapy, talk, “throw up” all that emotion in very powerful ways, get relief for about an hours, and then all the emotions and problems build up agian. It actually didn’t ever “fix” anything for me.
EMDR did. It took a LOT of sessions. I had to work hard to buy into some of the rather more bizarre aspects, but then made a breakthrough and has been life changing .possibly even life saving
I don’t really care whether I had cPTSD . I clearly had issues as a result of traumatic events arising form abusive situations, I was clearly still struggling with the ramifications of that even after I left that situation, and how that played into how I dealt with stressful events and issues coming up on my life now. The treatment path for PTSD helped me. There’s stil work in progress, but the difference has been massive. So, I’m good with whatever you want to call it
so, move past the diagnosis as a “label”. It doesn’t matter. But it may be helpful to acknowledge to hunt out appropriate treatments for PTSD that you can try, as opposed to other treatments like CBT , which could help you. You have little to loose but money . And yes, the money is an issue as proper treatment for PTSD needs a registered approved psychologist and they charge a lot of money. It’s unlikely you’ll get it on NHS , without a long wait and jumping through a lot of formal diagnosis loops. Don’t go to anyone who’s not a registered psychologist or calls themselves a “counsellor “- they’re not qualified to work on these techniques like EMDR and could do more harm than good. Search on line carefully, a good psychologist will have a number of techniques and tools they can use beside EMDR that they try out with you until they find what works best for you.