Yesterday Dr. Goddard told me with a straight face that Complex PTSD is a relatively new diagnosis, and then asked why I would want it on my file.

Let’s pause there.

CPTSD has been in the clinical literature since Judith Herman’s work in the early 1990s. Her book Trauma and Recovery (1992) is practically a cornerstone text. And since 2018, CPTSD has been fully codified in the ICD-11, the World Health Organization’s international diagnostic manual. That means for seven years now, it has been a recognised, legitimate diagnosis on the global stage.

So when a psychiatrist in 2025 calls it “new,” it is not an innocent slip. It’s erasure. It’s an excuse to keep the record tilted away from trauma, away from causality, and towards the old fallback: psychosis.

Here’s the truth: if CPTSD were written into my file, the whole narrative changes. Suddenly it’s not “delusions” or “obsessions,” it’s survival after sustained abuse and institutional betrayal. Suddenly the system would have to admit that its own negligence and violence created the condition it now wants to pathologise out of existence.

That’s why they resist it. Not because it’s “new,” but because it’s inconvenient.

I’ve been asking for CPTSD to be acknowledged in my record for four years. Every refusal has been deliberate. Every excuse about novelty is a lie. And every time they scribble “psychotic” instead, they’re protecting abusers and protecting the system — not protecting patients.

CPTSD is not new. And neither is gaslighting. 😶‍🌫️