PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Chat Support Group
PTSD Treatment
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
(CBT) involves working with cognitions to change emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
Exposure therapy, is one form of CBT unique to trauma treatment which uses careful,
repeated, detailed imagining of the trauma (exposure) in a safe, controlled
context, to help the survivor face and gain control of the fear and distress
that was overwhelming in the trauma. In some cases, trauma memories or reminders
can be confronted all at once ("flooding"). For other individuals
or traumas it is preferable to work gradually up to the most severe trauma by
using relaxation techniques and either starting with less upsetting life stresses
or by taking the trauma one piece at a time ("desensitization").
Along with exposure, CBT for trauma includes learning skills for coping with
anxiety (such as breathing retraining or biofeedback) and negative thoughts
("cognitive restructuring"), managing anger, preparing for stress
reactions ("stress inoculation"), handling future trauma symptoms,
as well as addressing urges to use alcohol or drugs when they occur ("relapse
prevention"), and communicating and relating effectively with people ("social
skills" or marital therapy).
Medications
Medications can reduce the anxiety, depression, and insomnia often experienced with PTSD,
and in some cases may help relieve the distress and emotional numbness caused
by trauma memories. Several kinds of antidepressant drugs have achieved improvement
in most (but not all) clinical trials, and some other classes of drugs have
shown promise. At this time no particular drug has emerged as a definitive treatment
for PTSD, although medication is clearly useful for the symptom relief that
makes it possible for survivors to participate in psychotherapy.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
(EMDR) is a relatively new treatment of traumatic memories which involves elements
of exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, combined with techniques
(eye movements, hand taps, sounds) which create an alteration of attention back
and forth across the person's midline. While the theory and research are still
evolving with this form of treatment, there is some evidence that the therapeutic
element unique to EMDR, attentional alteration, may facilitate accessing and
processing traumatic material.
Group treatment
is often an ideal therapeutic setting because trauma survivors are able to
risk sharing traumatic material with the safety, cohesion, and empathy provided
by other survivors. As group members achieve greater understanding and resolution
of their trauma, they often feel more confident and able to trust. As they discuss
and share coping of trauma-related shame, guilt, rage, fear, doubt, and self-condemnation,
they prepare themselves to focus on the present rather than the past. Telling
one's story (the "trauma narrative") and directly facing the grief,
anxiety, and guilt related to trauma enables many survivors to cope with their
symptoms, memories, and other aspects of their lives.
Brief psychodynamic
psychotherapy focuses on the emotional conflicts caused by the traumatic event,
particularly as they relate to early life experiences. Through
the retelling of the traumatic event to a calm, empathic, compassionate
and non-judgmental therapist, the survivor achieves a greater
sense of self-esteem, develops effective ways of thinking and
coping, and more successfully deals with the intense emotions
that emerge during therapy. The therapist helps the survivor identify
current life situations that set off traumatic memories and worsen
PTSD symptoms.
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