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Hi, I've had CBT on the NHS. I was referred due to my insomnia. My GP said they had a good programme for improving sleep, but when I spoke with my T it became apparent that I have so many other issues and we worked on several.

It is meant to help you change your thinking patterns for more positive ones.

I felt comfortable with my T, I felt he understood me and my problems. I never mentioned cptsd to him as it was a few years ago and I didn't know about it yet.

My CBT experience did not change my stress responses like insomnia, anxiety etc, but it did help me improve my confidence and self-esteem, so I consider it worthwhile.

What I had a bit of a problem with was that it was very structured and limited to only talking about my current difficulties and focusing on how to change my thinking about these difficulties. At the time I wished I could talk about other things, and more about my past, but since then I've had a short experience with psychodynamic psychotherapy and it wasn't helpful but that's possibly because of the particular T I was seeing (which you might remember from my thread).

Thank you for your support Eyessoblue. You wrote you had to wait a month before you were seen.. I'm not sure what that means. You waited a month to be seen by a therapist from the time you were referred? I know you are seeing a specialist trauma counselor, which is amazing. I have no idea how you got such great opportunity because where I am (a big city) I have been trying for years to access proper therapy and there was always something in the way, or not right for me (apparently), or not available for this or other reason, so all I ever got was a few months of CBT - which did help me to some degree.

To see the psychotherapist I had to wait for more than 10 months from when I was referred. Now that this hasn't worked out and I'm back on the waiting list, I have waited almost 14 months!! This is really discouraging.

So I referred myself to CBT and today I had a telephone assessment.. I knew I shouldn't have told them that I'm on the waiting list for psychotherapy, but I said it in the end. The outcome is that they won't offer me CBT because then  I'd have to be taken off the waiting list for psychotherapy and they feel psychotherapy will be better for my needs.

How frustrating and discouraging!! I need help, I want help, I do all I can do get help, but I'm getting nowhere. It takes a lot of effort, as many people on here will understand, to even fill in an online form to refer myself and a lot of effort to make time and prepare mentally for a telephone assessment and for it to achieve nothing YET AGAIN just makes me want to give up.

Again, I'm feeling dreadful today after having to talk about all of the stuff that is so painful for me and having nothing good coming from it. I think it gives me emotional flashbacks that last for a couple of days and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make it stop.

Well, she said she would send me information about other services, including low-cost counseling, so we'll see but from experience I expect that it won't be as good as it all sounds. I'm getting impatient with this banging my head against a wall and not being able to get any help or treatment.

In any case, I am told, all therapies on the nhs are very limited in time (several weeks for CBT and 16 sessions for psychotherapy, which is described as long-term) while from what I've read about cptsd, the treatment should last for a couple of years.

It is also very interesting for me to read that you had EMDR Eyessoblue - was it also on the nhs and was it at the same time as counseling? I have an appointment with my gp tomorrow and I intended to ask if I can be referred for EMDR but now I'm feeling pessimistic and expect that they will tell me that I can't be referred to anything else while I'm on the waiting list for one thing. If it is even available in my area at all.

What happened in the end was that I emailed the service and asked to speak to a supervisor. A week or two later I received a phone call from a lady who said she was a supervisor and she wanted to know quite in detail what I was unhappy about during the sessions. I told her and she did try to defend the therapy style and explain away some (or most) of my concerns.

She said, for example, that silences were allowed and I said but there were too many silences. She said that the relationship between a client and a therapist plays a big role as an indication of client's relationships and interactions with other people. However, (and I don't think I explained this to the supervisor, I'm just explaining it here) when I was talking to the t the last time I saw her, the issue I had was not that she kept bringing up the client - therapist relationship, but that I kept telling her what bothered me about her "style" and asking her questions and she kept ignoring all of that and instead turning it all on me and asking what bad experiences did the therapy with her remind me of and in this way taking the focus away entirely from herself and what I tried to bring to attention. I would say something like "you never followed up on my suggestions about what I wanted to do in this therapy after you asked me for suggestions" and she would be like "Hmm, I'm just wondering what our relationship reminds you of from your past".

I also told the supervisor about the "I don't see your feelings" incident. The supervisor tried to justify that too. She said that a t observes a client's reactions and might see things that a client is not aware of. She gave me example that her client was talking about an argument with someone and was saying she was angry but she (the supervisor, who is also a t) saw that the client was sad and the client agreed. I said but it has to ring true and it didn't in my case. And I repeated that at the time my t said she wasn't seeing my emotions, I was crying and shaking, struggling to keep my composure. She said "oh I see".

I explained that I didn't feel understood and validated etc. I told her that I'd felt physically ill after the sessions.

The supervisor heard me out, more or less, and then told me her suggestion. She said that in cases like that "they" advise that a client should go back to the same t and try again, once it is known what the problems are. She talked about it for a while, basically repeating it in different ways, and I finally kind of interrupted her and said that I'm not going back to this lady. I said it was too stressful for me, I tried but it was too much effort, too much organising and I didn't get anything out of it, I only ended up distressed. I think my voice trembled a bit at some point when I was saying that. I really felt upset at the thought of going back to this t.

The supervisor didn't sound impressed and she said she would have to speak to her colleagues and call me a week after and let me know what was going to happen. About a week later she did call and said they would put me back on the waiting list and I would see another t. She asked a few questions about what time and place would be convenient for me.

I've heard nothing since. I don't know whether they placed me at the end or the beginning of the waiting list. I should probably chase it up and find out.

Yeah, it looks like mental health services are really poor on the NHS. I wish I could afford private t.

I have recently referred myself back to a place where I had CBT for a while. I found it helpful to some degree at the time and I hope that it is a bit more accessible than the one I'm waiting for. Haven't heard back yet, though.

I notice that a couple of posters mentioned my ability to stand up for myself. It is definitely not something that always came easy to me - quite the opposite. It took a lot of effort, time and hard work for me to learn it and I'm still not perfect. Sometimes I can't do it, other times I overdo it (get very defensive and argumentative), but it's work in progress. It is nice to 'hear' that some of you noticed it. I can pat myself on the back.

Thank you.

Thank you for your replies Sanmagic and Gromit.

Yes, the t seemed to pay too little attention to what I was saying and didn't seem to try and put herself in my shoes at all. In my view she used her own life experiences to assess my life situation and my feelings. Her reactions seemed to have little to do with what I was saying. I ended up twisting myself in a pretzel to try to explain to her how I was feeling and what my problems were and it was distressing. Talking about my most painful stuff would be difficult enough with someone who would understand but trying to explain it to someone who didn't seem to understand was soul-destroying.. It actually reminded in some ways of the times when I experienced emotional abuse.

There were so many other things that were very concerning, which I mostly descrtibed in this thread. It began with her asking me what I wanted to do in this therapy and when I told her what I wanted to do she said we would do something else first (put my past behind and look towards the future), then when I said that I didn't see how we could do that, she told me that I was blocking all her ideas!! Ok, there were some more details in the story but this is a rough summing up. She never followed up on what I had said I wanted to do in therapy.

And during the fourth session she said she didn't see the emotions I was talking about (sadness, anguish, fear, anxiety) while I was crying and trembling!! I mean - seriously??? How could I ever want to come back to this person, what would be the point after hearing this? This is just unbelievable.

Gromit, thank you for shedding some light on psychodynamic psychotherapy, but are you saying that this is how it should normally look? I am really confused about that and I asked the t this question many times but never received a straight and informative answer.

Eyessoblue, thank you for validating my experience and needs.

It's good to hear that also living in the UK you've got the right therapy and a good experience that has really helped. I will keep trying.

You're right that this T sounds very inexperienced or just struggling at her job. Maybe she knows the theory but applying it in practice is a different story, as you need to have certain personal characteristics to be good at that.. Anyhow, my chapter with her is closed now.

Thank you.

Sanmagic, Ah and Eyessoblue - once again big thank you for your sharing and support.

I agree that it is possible to help and heal ourselves with hard work, using information and inspiration from sites such as this, books etc. I have done tons of work over the years and have changed positively from the lost, pitiful person that I was at the beginning of my adult life and I have done most of it by myself. But there is still so much healing left to do, it is overwhelming sometimes.

As for afforing therapy, I also could not possibly afford private therapist, so I am dependent on what I can get from the NHS and it is very limited. It is not like in the US, where from what I'm reading it is easy to access therapy paid by insurance and one can choose a therapist. I waited 10 months from when I was referred and then I got this lady. Now I can hope to convince her supervisors to let me wait for another one without being put back at the bottom of the queue.

Yes, it is extremely important to have a T who understands and makes us feel safe. This one did neither. I'm wondering if she can possibly help anyone with the way she approaches therapy. I think she isn't just a bad match for me, I think she is not a good T at all. Sadly, these things happen. Maybe more often than we expect.

Another thing that had made me feel uncomfortable was that she'd mentioned quite often how she needed to observe our interactions and our relationship so that she would have a better idea about how I interacted with people.. No other T that I dealt with before was so focused on that idea. No one else even mentioned it to me before but this T did at almost every session. It made me feel like I was some object to be observed, a subject of an experiment and not a person to engage with. I think she was too focused on things like that and not paying enough attention to what I was actually saying and trying to convey about how I feel. Plus, the way I interact with a T is not necessarily the way I interact with other people in my life, especially since other people come in many various capacities.

So this time the subject of our interactions came up a lot as well. I was saying a lot of stuff about what I was bothered by in this therapy with her (about the way she was acting) and she was mostly ignoring it and turning it all on me. She was asking me what our interactions reminded me of from my past. She was trying to blame my dissatisfaction with her on me and my past traumas. She was trying to turn it into analyzing my problems and finding explanation in my past. She asked me whether there was something in my past traumatic experienced that our relationship (of therapist and client) reminded me of. I said no, it's just that we don't understand each other. I had to insist on that.

She said things like that several times and when she started again saying something like "Maybe this therapy is not working because you.." I said that I didn't like the way she was using her position to put me in my place. It just came out of my mouth. She asked "Do you think I am using my professional position?" and I said "Yes because you keep saying the therapy doesn't work because I.." and I added "Maybe it's both of us". What I really wanted to say was "Maybe it's you" or "For sure it's you" but I decided to make it as non-confrontational as possible.

She said repeatedly that she was feeling that there was a lot of anger and frustration coming from me and she was wondering what it was caused by (probably suggesting my past traumas). I said I wasn't angry (I wasn't) and that I was frustrated for precisely the reasons that I had already mentioned many times.

She also asked me several times if I thought this kind of therapy wasn't for me and I said that I wanted to try this therapy with another therapist. She was trying to make it into anything other than take any responsibility.

She was very unhappy with me wanting to just try a different therapist. She asked me (more than once, and I answered the first time) what I wanted to talk about with a different therapist. The whole thing was really frustrating and it left me without any doubt that I shouldn't carry on with her. Honestly, it all seemed too twisted and frankly this kind of interaction could well be triggering for someone who had experienced emotional / psychological abuse.

In the end she very reluctantly said that she would speak to her colleagues and see what can be done. And that was that. I had to ask what colleagues and why not a supervisor. She said senior colleagues. I asked if I can talk to them and she looked very uncomfortable. Finally she said she would tell them to contact me. I asked when and she smiled and said she couldn't tell me that. There was no time frame and she wouldn't see them until a week later.

I have already tried to contact her supervisors myself and I have been given a phone number to call.

I can't help thinking that she is just really bad at her job.

So I went to see the T for the fifth time but this time with the sole purpose to discuss the therapy. She knew about it and this time she quickly started this subject, which was different from the other times when she would just look at me and then ask a faint question about how things had been the previous week.

This time, with a clearer head (since I wasn't talking about my painful stuff) I realised how inadequate she really was. I saw more distinctly bad patterns between us that had been present from the start.

For example she would not answer my questions. This time I asked the same questions about the therapy and her approach that I had asked on previous occasions without getting an answer. This time I had to insist on an answer. I found myself saying things like "I asked you this question before" or "I'm asking this for about fifth time" and "can you please answer this question". Example of questions that she had trouble answering are "What is your role in this therapy", "Are you here just to listen while I am supposed to talk all the time", "Is this what this therapy is about". Only when I mentioned asking a question several times and insisted on an answer she would finally try to answer it but only briefly and then she would change the subject without really clarifying things.

This made me realise that this is what she had been doing the whole time. She would encourage me to talk about something (my painful experiences) and I would do that and when I stopped she would most of the time sit there quietly looking at me and then maybe ask another question which would direct me on a slightly different track and my hurt that I'd just opened up would go unaddressed, undealt with, just hanging in the air while I'd be struggling with some different aspect.

I mentioned this to her as well and again I had to say it several times and she would still ignore it and react in the exact same way changing subject. Then she would act as if I'd never said it, for example acting as if she wanted to understand what I didn't like about the therapy, when I had just told her!

I said to her that she hadn't been engaging with me and she was just sitting there being quiet, and she in a typical manner replied: "Mhm.. And I'm just wondering.." and started talking about whether I wanted to talk about my traumas in a general or detailed way, which was something that came up earlier. Basically I realised that this was a typical response of hers and the way she acted previously during therapy sessions when I talked about something painful. She'd be like "Mhm.. And I'm just wondering.." and would ignore what I'd just said and began talking about something different. I said it to her as well, I told her there had been no continuity and that the therapy was chaotic.

I metioned to her most of the stuff that I was bothered by in this therapy, I said that I was surprised that she had said she couldn't see my emotions which I was talking about, while I struggled (unsuccessfully) to keep my composure, so how did she expect me to act for her to see the emotions? This was a question that she also ignored and her response was that she thought that I must have been very closed off with other people since I had said that I never got the help I needed (I think this was referring to me saying that the abuse was hidden because I don't know what else it could be). So wait a minute - she came to a conclusion that I must have been closed off with people and not really showing how distressed I was because this was in her opinion an explanation for why I never got more help in my life, and this is why she said that she wasn't seeing my emotions when I clearly displayed them?? This is some seriously screwed up back-to-front thought process by a therapist! She basically was never focusing on what I was saying, she was never trying to imagine how this would feel, so I was right in my impression that she couldn't understand me and empathise with me. She just didn't pay that much attention to what i was saying and instead was creating her own theories and explanations in her head during therapy.

Only the very first time I saw her she said at the end of the session that she was sorry I'd been though so much and she thought I was resourceful. Since then she never said anything like what other T would say (I had brief encounters with several), for example "it must have been so hard for you" or anything like that, anything that would make me feel understood and validated.

She just sits there, quiet and expressionless, not even nodding, looking quite closed off with her hands on her lap.

Thank you Blueberry for the hugs. Thank you Sanmagic for sharing and being with me through this therapy experience. I'm very sorry to hear that you are not feeling great in your therapy either. I hope I have not added any negativity to your thoughts about your own therapy.

I really don't want to be negative or put anyone off seeking help.

But I have to write more about it because I'm just fresh out of my fourth session and quite disheartened, and now I have hardly any hope that it will go somewhere. Wrtiting here helps me clear my mind and also helps me have written details of what went on, so that I can look back at it if I need to (if I have to explain to anyone in future why this wasn't working for me).

Basically, session number 4 felt to me like a repeat of number 1,2 and 3. All I've been trying to do so far is to explain to the T what I have experienced and what my life and problems are like at the moment. I believe I've done a great job describing it to the best of my ability for the 4 hours I've had with her. And my ability to describe my experiences is very good from what I've been told before.

She still doesn't seem to fully understand it and I have felt very little, if any, empathy from her. She seems detached and reserved and all she does is listen when I talk about my pain. Then when I stop she would look at me and have a long pause, then ask a question. The few times she tried to sum up what I'd said, she got it wrong or said something so convoluted that I didn't know what she was trying to say. And she only tries occasionally anyway.

She asked me today if I was ready to talk about the details of my past trauma and I said I was but if it had a purpose, and asked her what the purpose would be in this therapy, and I did not get an actual answer. I told her that if I'm to talk about it just for the purpose of saying it, then I don't think it would help me.

I actually told her that I've been trying to tell her the whole time how I feel and I believe I've really done it. I told her I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of this, since there is no feedback, no return, no reflection or different perspective from her. I come and talk, get more upset in the process and leave without anything to hold on to, any tools, anything to work with.

I said that if it was going to be like this, me talking and she just listening and asking a question here and there, then I don't think it will be helpful for me. She said she was still trying to get to know me. I agreed to come again in a week to talk about the therapy specifically.

One thing she said astonished me. I was telling her about my difficulties and painful emotions I feel every day and she said she found it "interesting" because she didn't see any signs of these emotions in my appearance.. And that maybe I am like that with everyone else so no one knows how distressed I am therefore I never get the help I need. That was because I told her earlier how my childhood was extra painful because the abuse I was going through was hidden from the world.. She really doesn't seem to have a clue.

The thing is, I was sitting there talking and at the same time struggling to keep my composure, struggling to breathe, trembling, my voice trembling, my eyes welling up sometimes briefly.. And on previous occasions I was even worse, had to wipe away tears throughout each session.. And she didn't see any signs of distress in me? Like, *?? For the second time in four sessions she made me feel like the fact that she was unable to help me was my fault. Like she couldn't empathise with me because I wasn't showing my distress enough?? Can she not just listen to my words and try to imagine the feelings, if my trembling and fighting tears is not enough? And what does she need anyway to fully see my pain? Do I have to break down into a puddle on the floor? I'm sure if I did she would still sit there in the same way, saying very little.

I told her at the end that I was surprised she couldn't see my distress.

As for the subject of diagnosis, she said she as a psychologist cannot give me a formal diagnosis and even a psychiatrist wouldn't at the moment because C-PTSD will only become an official diagnosis when the updated version of the ICD in May 2018.

Again, thank you for your advice, support and sharing of your own experiences, Sceal, AH and Sanmagic.

AH, I am so sorry for what your FOO put you through by presenting you to the world as a manipulative liar with a PD. I can't imagine how hard it must have been. I have always struggled with the fact that the "the world" didn't understand the reality that I lived in but it was slightly different in my case - my N mother pretended to be a normal, loving mother and although some things must have been off, no one really knew what * I was going through every day, even my extended family who I was close with. And I'm still struggling to some degree with the fact that I look normal on the outside so no one knows about the * that is still going on in my mind.. Which feels unfair.

Tomorrow I will have my fourth session with this psychologist and to be honest I am not looking forward to it. I do not have much hope at this point that this will work out for me. I spent the first three sessions trying very hard to make this lady understand what my problems really are and I don't feel that I have got anything out of these sessions. So so far this is not going anywhere.

As for being directionless, it is not a stabilisation stage. She mentioned nothing about stabilisation. It is also not a stage where we have already done some work and can now be "directionless". It's only just started and we don't even seem to understand each other.

She is either inexperienced or a bad match for me, or both. Sadly.

Sometimes I think that the best T for me would be someone who went through similar problems but overcame them and educated themselves about it and got trained as a T. Such a person would definitely be able to help me. This lady, though, seems to struggle when it comes to empathising with me, so maybe her life experiences were very different?

In any case the fact that I have to teach, almost lecture my T about the condition that I believe I have is not reassuring. The same apllies to the fact that a psychiatrist that I wanted to give me the correct diagnosis, mentions automatically BPD for no reason whatsoever. Particularly because my problems come from being a victim of abuse and people with BPD, although they themselves suffer because of their disorder, they are prone to abuse and mistreat others, so to put these two conditions together, almost equate them and do so for no reason is really upsetting.

Well, I will go tomorrow and see what happens and what the T will say after I spent the whole session reading to her about C-PTSD in detail and after I told her how important it is to me to get the diagnosis. Maybe she will come up with something useful. If not, I will probably try and find another T, who might be a better match.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me Sanmagic7 and for your encouragement.

I had my third session today, just a couple of hours ago.

A few days earlier I saw my GP who printed for me a copy of the reply she received from a psychiatrist, to whom she had referred me for diagnosis. The psychiatrist wrote that she would not offer me an appointment as I have started psychotherapy and the psychologist I'm seeing can "assess" me for C-PTSD and treat it.. She (the psychiatrist) also wrote, quote: "complex PTSD, which is quite similar to Borderline Personality Disorder". I have no idea why she mentioned that but it made me feel that maybe it was a good thing that I would not be seeing this psychiatrist.

It is extremely worrying for me that a consultant psychiatrist would automatically associate C-PTSD with BPD, for no apparent reason. I would find it distressing as a person who was abused by a parent with personality disorder to be disgnosed with a personality disorder instead of being recognised as a victim of one..

Because of that expression my T (psychologist I just saw) mistakenly thought that I had been diagnosed with BPD until the very end of the session when the misunderstanding came to light..

Anyway, I brought print outs of info about C-PTSD to today's session and read to my T all the info I thought was important and relevant. We also discussed the important of having the right diagnosis for me (it is very important for me indeed and I am anxious that I won't get it). Apparently, she cannot give me a formal diagnosis and it has to be a psychiatrist!! But she said she would think about the possibility of a diagnosis and I think she said she'd speak to someone about it (although I'm not sure I remember that correctly).

So yeah, I had to teach her about C-PTSD apparently. At least she said it was a good thing that I'd brought all these materials to  my surprise as I had been anxious and uncertain, worrying if it would be inappropriate.

However, the therapy also seem directionless. I read to her that there are recommended stages of therapy for people with C-PTSD and the first one is stabilisation, but she did not seem to offer anything like that.

Now I am feeling very stressed with physical symptoms occurring strongly. I am struggling to breathe..

Yes, the whole therapy field for C-PTSD sufferers seems experimental, chaotic and not established. It seems that I have to fight for the right diagnosis and treatment in some way.

Thank you again.

So I've had two sessions of psychotherapy and so far not so good.

The lady does not seem to "get" what I'm trying to say. She is young, possibly inexperienced.

The first session was ok but what happened was that I was mostly talking, trying to tell her as much as possible, in more general terms, about what my problems were. I also mentioned CPTSD and she said she knew what it was. In the end she told me that she was sorry I had been through so much and that she was impressed by how resourceful I was, which made me feel good as I am desperate for validation, having grown up with a NPD parent.

But the second session, yesterday, felt like a waste of my time. The psychologist "jumped" on something I said which wasn't very important to me and asked me where I thought it came from (in my past) and I told her about my mother, then she asked more questions about that and she was very focused on my anger about that, which is not my main issue.

Then it was the same - I was opening up, telling her how I felt "inside" and her responses made me feel that she really couldn't put herself in my shoes and relate and truly understand me. She was trying but it wasn't happening. I would say something, try to explain my emotions, and then she would sum it up in a way that did not resemble the way I felt. I would talk for a while and when I stopped there were long silences and she was just looking at me, which made me feel slightly uncomfortable and irritated.

She seemed lost. When I tried to correct her understanding she finally said that whatever she suggested I was saying "no, no, no", as if I thought there was no hope for me, and again it was not how I saw it from my perspective. She made it sound as if she couldn't help me because I was blocking all her ways of helping me. She kind of asked me at some point what we should do and I said she was supposed to be the one with the ideas and she replied that it was a huge pressure on her.

She also surprised me by summing up what she thought I was saying as "My life has always been crap, is crap and will always be crap". I have encountered several therapists in my life and all of them were polite and well-spoken, I wouldn't expect a therapist to use this kind of vocabulary.

In the end she apologised for having sounded like I had been doing something wrong during the session.

As per description of psychodynamic psychotherapy, she tried to ask my questions about my past to link stuff rom my past to my current problems with the aim of making me understand more about myself and in this way make changes to my current situation but I told her that I know and understand where my problems come for but I don't know how to change things as I am not in control of them (e.g. flashbacks ect).

Am I off for feeling that I did not gain anything from yesterday's session? I left the session feeling unsettled having talked about painful stuff, but not having made any progress and it felt like pointless upset.

Thank you for your replies, Sceal and Eyessoblue.

It is encouraging to read about people who had a disgnosis and helpful treatments.

However, I made a typo (not sure how since I paid attention).

I wanted to know if anyone on here has actually been diagnosed with CPTSD, not ptsd. It seems to me that the two are very different things, even though the symptoms partly overlap. Yes, the condition called ptsd has been recognised in medicine for a long time and almost everyone know about it, while CPTSD is so new and unheard of.

Like I wrote, my GP was aware of the condition and she specifically referred my to a psychiatrist to see if I can be given this diagnosis, so it would seem that the diagnosis is already in use? I haven't heard from the psychiatrist yet and I am waiting impatiently.. If it turns out that I won't get the diagnosis I will be very disappointed.

So again - sorry for the mistake - anyone here with an "official" diagnosis of CPTSD?

Thank you so much for your replies, Sceal and Sanmagic.

From what I've heard it is so much easier to get therapy or counseling in the US than in the UK, unless you pay for it yourself.

I had to wait 10 months since the moment I was referred by my GP but the good news is that the lady who called and offered me an appointment said that if I couldn't attend at the time she was available (only one slot in the week) I could stay on top of the queue and wait for another therapist to become available.

As for the diagnosis, I know that the condition will be "officially" present in the medical book in 2018 but it is now in the process of being included, so it seems that the NHS professionals are getting informed about it already. The first time I heard about CPTSD was when I had a look at the NHS website, so it is already included in the NHS list of diseases.

Like I said, one GP I talked to hadn't heard about it but the other knew. I just hope that the psychiatrist I am going to see is also informed.. Not sure if there is any specialised treatment available yet. The diagnosis in itself would mean a lot to me if I got it.

Thank you again for your advice. I will go to the initial appointment with the psychologist and see how it goes.

Has anyone else here been given the diagnosis of PTSD by a relevant professional?