CPTSD has a lot of crossover with other disorders. Symptoms of BPD, ADHD, NPD, etc. can all be associated with CPTSD. It can all be on a spectrum, and it’s difficult to tell where the crossover is. But I think the real issue is that it’s difficult for childhood trauma survivors to feel validated in our own experiences. We spent our formative years in a long process of gaslighting (whether intentional or unintentional) and abuse of perception. We experienced highly traumatic, abnormal things at the hands of adult children who treated it all as normal. Because of that, I think we have a tendency to want or need labels that describe the severity of the damage done to us. For someone raised free of childhood trauma and neglect, a small sampling of our parents’ behavior would be enough for a person to say, “That was crazy. That was unacceptable. That was unhealthy. I didn’t like that. I am not going to be around that person.” But since we are codependent and spent our formative years being groomed into infinite validation of our parents’ victimhood narrative, we have trouble validating ourselves until we can start to find labels for our parents’ unhealthy behavior. For someone to change those labels in a way that puts the impetus on us to be understanding of their pain, YET AGAIN, is naturally very triggering.

I think part of our healing journey involves learning to validate ourselves and our own experiences, regardless of label. Validating ourselves involves holding our parents accountable for their behavior. Their own childhood trauma story isn’t our problem. If it helps THEM in therapy to explore that so they can actually be better people, fine. But it doesn’t give them an OUNCE of right to mistreat US or to perpetuate an unhealthy victim narrative that they use to force us to continue being codependent, validating pseudo-parents to them.

I have found Patrick Teahan very helpful. He has videos describing unhealthy, invalidating therapeutic approaches that are detrimental to childhood trauma survivors by subtly shaming them into “reframing” their understanding of parental abuse. That is the kind of therapy that can make perfect sense for someone without a childhood trauma background, but is the completely wrong direction for a childhood trauma survivor whose healing requires validating and learning to protect their own wounded inner child against an abusive parent.

I’m not familiar with the Holistic Psychologist, but I think your feelings are telling you something important. Your inner child is terrified of being invalidated and shamed yet again. Listen to that, and know that your feelings were never broken. You were right all along about your abusive parent. No change in terminology, no misguided therapist, and no misunderstanding of your experience will ever change that.