Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD is a mental condition that is triggered by an extremely terrifying or fearful event. The trauma caused by being involved in that experience or even witnessing it can be so great, that you have a difficult time coming back to a normal life. You face difficulty getting that experience out of your head and may encounter nightmares, uncontrollable thoughts, lots of unpleasant emotions and even anxiety attacks.

Normal Stress vs PTSD

While it is normal to be shocked from a terrifying event for hours even days but if it persists for longer like for weeks and even months and interferes with your day to day functioning, then you might have PTSD. It can happen to people of any age after experiencing a traumatic event. War veterans, victims of sexual or physical abuse, people who experienced devastating accidents or disasters like terror attacks are among common people to have PTSD.

While PTSD can be a really negative experience, but there’s hope and good news as it can be treated and improved with time. There are many therapies and medications that can help people get back to their normal way of living a healthy life. We’ll discuss some evidence-based therapeutic interventions that are commonly used to treat PTSD.

Evidence Based Treatments for PTSD

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Among a variety of different therapies used for treating Post traumatic stress disorder, there are only a few that show research based evidence, CBT is the most common and perhaps the most useful technique for dealing with it. It has shown to be effective in cases of both short-term and long-term trauma patients. Also sometimes called speech therapy, CBT focuses on understanding the relationship between different thinking patterns and how our thoughts affect our behavior. It can be done alone with a therapist or even group sessions. In the case of PTSD, most of the time the damage is psychological rather than physical. So this approach focuses more on making your thinking better and dealing with that event.

How it works

As its name applies, cognitive behavioral therapy focuses more on identifying, changing and restructuring your distorted thinking patterns. It teaches you how to think better and how to tackle negative or overwhelming emotions with tested and proven rational techniques. Cognitive processing therapy CPT being a branch of CBT is more focused on dealing with emotions and recurring thoughts after the trauma and how to perceive them. It focuses on changing how you look at yourself and the world after experiencing that traumatic event. With time you learn to adapt by being aware of how you think and react to your beliefs and emotions. Once you change how you think, your actions automatically change and you become better and your stress significantly reduces.

Components of CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a General category of therapies, it contains many distinct approaches for PTSD such as:

Exposure therapy: In this approach victims are exposed to their traumatic memories. The purpose of this therapy is to make them face and dominate their fears. All of this is done in a safe environment so they can rationalize the fact that the experience has happened and does not affect them in any way now. Research has shown a great reduction in people’s stress with the use of such therapy. It includes showing visuals, writings and even taking people to traumatic places so they can better face their fears.

Another form of such therapy is Prolonged Exposure Therapy in which you continually face your fears without avoiding them. Avoiding your fears can be good for the short term but it doesn’t help in the long run. You are taught how to control your thinking, facing your fears in the real world and talking about your trauma over longer periods so you become totally comfortable with it.

Cognitive Restructuring: You work towards making sense of your bad memories and try to perceive trauma in a different way which is more rational. Your memories about the event may not be completely accurate and you may have added disjointed thoughts that makes thinking about them even worse. You may feel guilty about something that wasn’t totally your fault. Cognitive restructuring filters out all these sorts of false beliefs and judgments for improved thinking.

Stress inoculation Training (SIT)

This is another form of stress-reducing procedure that can be used to quickly tackle stress whenever you feel it. It teaches you the tools and techniques that you can use to cope with tension related to PTSD. It gives you a variety of tools such as deep breathing from your diaphragm, muscle relaxation training, learning to talk to yourself and observing, assertiveness, role-playing and changing thinking behaviors. It is research proved to work for PTSD victims and can even be used with other forms of CBT for maximum effect.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR):

EMDR is a new and very unconventional yet highly effective type of therapy for dealing with PTSD. It is growing in popularity because of its effectiveness. Visuals are more responsible than thoughts for provoking stress and anxieties, So, this kind of therapy targets that in order to stimulate better thinking. It involves the therapist moving his/her fingers in front of your face and then asks you to follow these movements with your eyes. This helps people calm down and think better and the goal of this is to help people react differently to their symptoms. It reduces the overall effect of negative emotions. This therapy also includes exposure therapy as the main component.

The Takeaway

PTSD is indeed difficult to go through, but it’s never hopeless or incurable. Many people across the planet benefit from therapies and medications. In most cases, therapies alone have been proven sufficient to bring relief to a person undergoing PTSD. Getting help from a psychologist and practicing these therapies can be extremely helpful, and prove to be that one big step you take towards living a healthier and better life.

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