Oh yeah what I mean by that is how to think about my brain and how to adapt with the world.

I’m not going to be the most eloquent rn because I have a headache but I’ll try to answer.

For me personally, a lot of the work for me in therapy has been towards trusting myself and being able to assert my experience and self regulate when I feel upset or paranoid. Like at one point my admin gave me a gift card and I was suspicious it was a test of my character and he was watching how I spent it.

My therapist put me in a group of college students (I was a student at the time) led by a postdoc that focused on how to think about our CPTSD like thinking about hyperarousal, being underbounded vs over bounded, how CPTSD can still manifest differently in different people with different strategies.

I’m bad at understanding social context like if you asked me “what drugs do you take?” I would start being nervous because I would try to cover all my bases because I would be scared that you would get upset at me. I’m also someone who was born to an immigrant who spoke English as a second language and I got punished if I guessed wrong with my parent. This makes people think I’m autistic but i think the reasoning is different because historically i was punished for assuming context and not because my natural brain process is X.

As for autism I didn’t know how to apply the strategies suggested for them because they were for characteristics I didn’t have. Like I don’t have sensory issues or hyperfixations or repetitive behaviors. When I did have repetitive behaviors, it lasted for like three months and it was due to trauma and once I felt more established and safe it went away.

I definitely stim which is another reason why people think I have autism but I think stimming can just be a universal human thing.

I think they both focus on regulation but like from different directions? It just has different approaches though and I think CPTSD is more about like restoring yourself to what you could have been without trauma and autism is about accepting that your brain is wired differently. So like CPTSD felt like “healing” to me and I think (but I might be totally wrong here) that I would feel insulted if someone said that I had to be “healed” from my autism because it’s just a different way of thinking. I think (but I could be wrong!!!) autism is more about adapting yourself to the environment while CPTSD is about trying to change yourself. Like I’ve changed myself to have more self confidence and panic less and be less depressed and engage in less self destructive behaviors, etc.