> Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD?

True CPTSD as diagnosed over time by a clinician is the result of complex traumas (complex, specifically, as that’s part of the definition. It’s what the C is for). The term is valid in that context.

In common social media language, even the term CPTSD has become diluted. It was intended to represent complex cases of PTSD which were edge cases, and correspondingly rare.

At some point the social media version of CPTSD emerged as a generic term and nearly everyone who self-diagnosed as having PTSD started upgrading themselves to CPTSD.

The comment above is right that “trauma” has become so generic as to cover everything stressful or saddening in common vernacular. The concept of CPTSD was supposed to be a step above even normal trauma, but now even CPTSD is being brought out as a generic term for any post-trauma response, which was never the definition of CPTSD.

A similar trend is happening on social media with the ADHD influencers now upgrading themselves to “AuDHD” which they say is a special more difficult variant of ADHD combined with Autism. My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses or “AuDHD” diagnoses despite not showing Autistic traits at all.

There’s an arms race going on where some people try to amplify experiences into something much more dramatic. These therapy and psychiatry terms start to lose their meaning when they get adopted by social media.

> My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses

Why would you want, much less demand, to be diagnosed with any particular disorder? Is there such a thing as being fashionably disordered?

I think that if I felt something was wrong with me, I would want to be accurately diagnosed, not fashionably diagnosed.

This phenomenon is not new; the love of drama that even common and routine trauma leaves many people with makes these sorts of attractions to diagnoses very appealing. I once hung out a lot with a class of masters students in experimental psychology and they all went thru evaluating their own minds thru the lens of various pathologies.

My own childhood included the relatively common experience of being sexually assaulted by a relative and being threatened with death if I talked about it, and as a young adult, while I never quite believed I had MPD, I read so many books by and on multiple personality disorder, and took both comfort and inspiration from the stories.

Like so many other things in our human society, networked technology is making this part of society more visible.

It looks to me like many of the psych diagnoses come down to how much trouble we have with the situation.

And, personally, I look at the world, do I meet the criteria for Asperger's? Probably, although without a time machine there doe not appear to be any way to be certain. But it's a so-what I have had no reason to ever talk to a psychiatrist about. A label won't change reality, it won't provide any solutions, why should I bother?

Your friends in psychiartry...are they acknowledging the impact of living under oppression as a direct cause of issues & advocating for an end to oppression?

Because that's what many healers outside of western medicine are touting.

People are amplifying because the western medicine approach isn't addressing underlying issues & so people are trying to explain the compounding of their issues in the language of western medicine. The dismissiveness in these comments is a direct driver of this culture.

"True CPTSD" doesn't exist as a diagnosis yet in the DSM. Referring to it that way is highly disingenuous.

I was recently diagnosed as "AuDHD". I noticed that doctors who don't understand anything outside of depression and anxiety were more likely to refer to autism as a "fad".