Treating Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
When treating PTSD, I primarily use Exposure Therapy, which is derived from Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. This involves working with the client to help them overcome anxiety related to particular events or stimuli. The client may be encouraged to think of the event or stimulus and to re-live the event in their imagination. By doing this in a safe environment with a therapist, the client is able to experience and process their emotions toward healthy integration.
During Exposure Therapy, the goal is to experience feeling at a tolerable level. If too much anxiety is experienced, the client will not tolerate further exposure, and may continue patterns of avoidance that keep them stuck. The therapist therefore helps the client reduce their anxiety by intellectualizing about their feelings, which can be more tolerable than actually experiencing them firsthand. This process refers to “regulating” the client’s anxiety. Continual exposure to the event or stimulus that causes anxiety, along with aided regulation of that anxiety, should eventually diminish overall levels of distress, until the client is less fearful of the event or stimulus. This, in turn, should help reduce symptoms of PTSD and improve the overall client functioning and quality of life.
In addition to the approach described above, I may also use other Cognitive Behavioural Therapy methods and elements of Psychodynamic Therapy when treating PTSD. All of the above treatment approaches have shown themselves to be empirically supported methods of working with clients suffering from PTSD. (Foa, Keane, Friedman, & Cohen, 2009).
Foa, E.B., Keane, T.M., Friedman, M.J., and Cohen, J.A. (Eds). (2009). Effective treatments for PTSD. Practical guidelines from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. New York: The Guilford Press. .