Is it ADHD or is it cPTSD?

There is an entire academic population investigating this very question given the overlap in symptoms between ADHD and CPTSD that makes this very challenging for professionals to diagnose and thus treat individuals accurately without a comprehensive evaluation. I am very curious to see the results…

Although cPTSD has not been officially recognised in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used by the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organisation (WHO) included it in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in 2018 as a distinct diagnosis. Advancements in neuroscience since 2018 have contributed enormously to this language starting to enter the mainstream. We can now touch and analyse the lingering effects of stress on the brain-body on par with how a stroke leaves a lesion on the brain.

Consider that cPTSD is a disorder that can emerge after chronic stress, the word COMPLEX is used to represent the fact that this chronic stress is ‘interpersonal stress’. Consider that the word TRAUMA is used to represent the long list of negative physiological effects that interpersonal stress has on the body.

If I were to simplify the language here I would use an analogy like this:

Lingering Effects of Stress Damage the Brain and Body in ways that give rise to all sorts of unfortunate symptoms that permeate Mind, Work, Life, and Play almost always outside of our awareness.

We tend to see it as ‘just life’ and find all sorts of ways to cope, manage and live as best we can with it, for many of us that means we master the ability to be Highly Functioning, Secretly in Despair, until we discover the label responsible for this quality of mental health and we get to educate ourselves on the what, why, and how.

My personal interest in seeing the outcome of this research is largely due to the different treatments one gets pending diagnosis.

For cPTSD, the treatment begins with an initial:

1. Triage to better resolve severity, extent and priority of…
2. Treatment to first switch off the survival mode that the physiology is locked into followed by the…
3. Titration of Bottom Up, Top Down Therapies (Bottom Up therapies address physiological responses to stress, while Top Down therapies focus on cognitive and emotional aspects) to retrain Brain, Body, Mind that restores ongoing Regulation (Self Regulation, Emotional Regulation). Mastering Self (Brain, Body, Emotional) Regulation gives rise to…
4. Thriving inside a newly rewired brain, a restored nervous system, and a physiology that shifts out of endless states of disorder, to calm and healthy. The person’s world is quite literally made new.

Thanks for making it this far. You will find me in a few places:

www.traumainformedgrowth.com — my podcast

www.shannoneastman.com Trauma-Informed Business Coaching

www.nb3.io — b2b consultancy

#cptsdatwork #cptsd #complextrauma hashtag#mentalhealth #wellbeing #Culture #BusinessGrowth #Mindset #Stress #Entrepreneurs #OverAchievers #HighlyFunctioningSecretlyInDespair #ADHD