Trauma Therapy and PTSD Treatment in Denver
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a condition that results from someone witnessing or experiencing a horrible event, such as abuse, sexual assault, a terrible accident, or active combat in the military. It can also result from having been told about a loved one’s terrible experience, or having repeatedly experienced the details of horrific incidents, such as through working as a first responder.
PTSD is the result of getting stuck in your recovery from that experience.
What is it like to have PTSD?
If you have PTSD, you know that it is very hard to live with. You’re probably anxious and restless a lot of the time, and you can’t do a lot of things you used to do. The world is divided into “safe” and “unsafe” people/places/situations, and you spend a lot of your time trying to stay in the “safe” category, but it’s not always possible. You probably blame yourself in ways that don’t make logical sense, and it undermines your self esteem and confidence. You may also blame others, in ways that aren’t helpful in actually keeping you safe. You may have trouble sleeping, which doesn’t help any of the other symptoms. You probably feel depressed and stressed out a lot of the time.
There are three types of symptoms of PTSD:
Re-Experiencing: Flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts about the traumatic event.
Avoidance: Emotional numbness, avoiding people, places or situations that remind them of the traumatic event.
Changes in levels of alertness, including exaggerated startle response, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, and hypervigilence (being on the lookout for danger at all times). People can become easily angry and agitated.
These symptoms are usually present immediately after a traumatic event. If you are able to process the event properly, receive the support and compassion that you need to go through the tough feelings, and make sense of the trauma, then these symptoms can resolve without treatment. However, if you continue to struggle with these symptoms a month after the trauma has passed, then you’ll probably need treatment to recover.
How is trauma therapy different from “regular” therapy?
Maybe you’ve been in therapy before, and it didn’t do much for your PTSD. Unfortunately, traditional talk therapy doesn’t work very well on PTSD. Here’s why: Talk therapy is a tool that is laser-focused on following the client’s lead. The client is allowed the space and time to work on whatever they want. They can discover patterns in their relationships, learn about how they come across to others, and gain insight into their inner thoughts. For many problems, this is a great solution.
Unfortunately, a big symptom of PTSD is avoidance. When someone has PTSD, the last thing they want to talk about is their trauma, since it brings about all of the intrusive symptoms listed above (nightmares, flashbacks, feeling unsafe and anxious).
If you tried to talk about your traumatic experience in a regular talk therapy session, it probably didn’t go so well. Maybe you felt overwhelmed, sick, scared or had nightmares that night. Or maybe you never told your therapist about your trauma because you were afraid of those feelings coming back.
That’s why I recommend a trauma-focused treatment. People with PTSD need a lot of structure to help them to focus on their trauma in a way that isn’t too overwhelming. There are several evidence-based PTSD treatments that have been used in clinical studies with people diagnosed with PTSD. These treatments work by helping people struggling with PTSD to understand what happened to them, and to unlock painful feelings that people have been avoiding feeling. While trauma-focused treatment is challenging, it is immensely rewarding, because you can get tangible results very quickly.
How does trauma-focused treatment help PTSD?
Trauma-focused treatment is very specifically focused on a few goals:
Reducing symptoms of PTSD through exposure, where you become less sensitive to trauma triggers because you’re not avoiding them so much.
Helping you to take the time to think through and actually remember what happened during those traumatic moments. People tend to avoid the memories so intensely that they actually don’t put the pieces together logically, leading to a jumbled-up story that their brain has to keep turning over to make sense of. By making sense of the story of the trauma, you can reduce your trauma symptoms.
Helping you to name and feel your emotions about what happened, and perhaps what happened afterward, in a way that is contained and not too overwhelming. For instance, you may feel that you are so angry that you’ll ruin all of your relationships if you let yourself feel it. Unfortunately, if you stuff down these big feelings, it causes a lot of other problems, so it’s important to find a way to feel your feelings in a way that feels safe.
There are several evidence-based trauma therapies out there.
Cognitive Processing Therapy: an evidence-based trauma therapy
I am certified in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which is a brief cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that focuses on your thinking about the traumatic event. You’ll learn tools to help you make sense of your thoughts and decide what is true, and what is not. Using logic (and lots of worksheets), you can expect a dramatic reduction in your PTSD symptoms in just a matter of weeks. It’s only 12 sessions long, and the skills you learn will help you for the rest of your life.
CPT is arguably the most-studied PTSD therapy, and it’s considered highly effective. In many studies, they found that people can expect a dramatic reduction in symptoms within 5 weeks, and to have a permanent change after they complete 12 sessions. There has been follow-up on study participants five years after treatment, and their gains have held in that time.
CPT is the treatment of choice in Veteran’s Administration mental health facilities for a reason: it provides quick, reliable results for motivated people.
More information about CPT:
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/cognitive_processing.asp
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/682/ten-sessions
Read my blog post about how trauma therapy works.