Dear Candice88:

You wrote:  “Therapists tell me I have PTSD from him cheating... yes, PTSD can occur even if the cheated hasn’t witnessed the cheating. I was surprised by this diagnosis, but apparently it does happen. Not everyone gets, it’s rare, but it’s not abnormal“-

Although learning that a long-distance boyfriend cheated on you has traumatized you, the event of him cheating is not the kind of Trauma that fits into the PTSD diagnosis. ptsd.va.gov lists traumas as relating to war and the military, disaster and terrorism. Wikipedia lists traumas in regard to PTSD as “sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence or other threats on a person’s life”.

A counseling center in San Diego, California called Freedom Within, in their website freedom within center. com/constitutes-trauma-comes-diagnosing-ptsd state the following:

“In order to be diagnosed with PTSD one has to have endured a traumatic event which includes witnessing or experiencing a threatened death to self or others, actual or threatened serious injury or sexual violence… I have had many folks come to me and say they think they have PTSD because they got divorced and it was very traumatic, or because they are having a hard time grieving the loss of a family member. While those are all very sad and traumatizing events, they do not qualify as “trauma” for the purposes of diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder according to the DSM-5. However, we don’t want to dismiss the impact that those life events can have on an individual and therapy can be a very powerful tool for overcoming those losses. The therapy would likely be more focused on grief and loss and life transitions, not on PTSD”.

The last sentence above says that the kind of therapy a person needs for an event such as you experienced (having found out that a long-distance boyfriend cheated on you) is different from the type of therapy a person needs for events such as experiencing violence in warfare, child abuse and sexual assault. I think that you should consider seeing a competent health care professional who will diagnose you correctly, and recommend an effective treatment for you, based on the correct diagnosis.

anita