Someone mentioned in another cow’s thread (maybe Bex Gerber but I can’t remember) that mental health providers use c PTSD as a stealth warning to their colleagues that the patient is a Borderline Personality Disorder case. (Because people with real c PTSD have a self explanatory life history to back it up, like being forced into prostitution for years or being a POW.)
Yeah, I know I've said it on the Russell Greer thread (and maybe even this one, as well), but teenagers and young adults with Cluster B personality disorders tend to initially be given diagnoses such as depression and Bipolar (Russell) or C-PTSD (Jude).
A lot of therapists will not take on NPD or BPD clients at all because they are so demanding and exhausting and do shit like threaten suicide to get attention (BPD), or are dishonest, manipulative, and essentially untreatable (NPD). So the inclination is to see how well treatment goes for a "softer" disorder that
can be treated/managed, before laying on such a heavy diagnosis--which will negatively affect the client's ability to get further treatment.
Teenage and young adult clients essentially have brain damage until around age 24, as a massive reorganization is taking place within the structures of the brain itself. This is why teenagers and college-age kids are often impulsive, moody, prone to defiance and emotional overreactions, and why they often engage in dangerous or self-harming behavior. They may come off exactly like Narcs or Borderliners or Histrionics at age 17--only to settle down and become perfectly normal, non-disordered adults by age 27. So it's important to cut them plenty of slack on a diagnosis.
That said, at age 24 Jude's just about done with those brain changes, and (assuming she's telling the truth) has been seeing therapists for her alleged C-PTSD for at least two years now. And this is where the rubber starts meeting the road. She may yet end up with a therapist who decides it's time to re-evaluate that diagnosis--because I see nothing in her childhood or family life that would support a C-PTSD diagnosis, and a whole lot that points straight at NPD with Borderline features.
NPD and BPD can be comorbid with each other and other Cluster B personality disorders, but I think NPD is her fundamental issue, here. My primary reasons for this are that she's not engaging in intentional or impulsive self-harm (eating sugary garbage until she ends up with the beetus doesn't count); has shown no signs of suicidal ideation; has maintained a largely stable self-image and self-presentation; and if she feels any self-loathing, it's repressed under her false, self-aggrandizing outward persona (NPD), rather than being out there on display (BPD; see: Trisha Paytas).
And, most importantly, Jude nails every single one of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and nails them
hard. And then fucking countersinks them, so there's no prying them up with, "Yeah, but maybe she's not that bad..."
