Saturday, February 25, 2023

Ways to Heal - EMDR


We're covering the different ways to hear from PTSD, and this week we are covering Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

This description is courtesy of the good folks at the EMDR Institute, found online at www.emdr.com, and the data are clear: EMDR works, and it works well.

EMDR is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements are used during one part of the session. Once the therapist has determined which memory to target first, they’ll ask us to hold different aspects of the traumatic event in mind and to use our eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across our field of vision. As this happens, we begin to process the traumatic memory.

According to the Cleveland Clinic: "When you undergo EMDR, you access memories of a trauma event in very specific ways. Combined with eye movements and guided instructions, accessing those memories helps you reprocess what you remember from the negative event. That reprocessing helps repair the mental injury from that memory. Remembering what happened to you will no longer feel like reliving it, and the related feelings will be much more manageable." The Cleveland Clinic has a wonderful walk-through of the different phases of EMDR here: https://tinyurl.com/pkb3afwu

There are many evidence-based treatments for PTSD and researchers are learning more every year. In this series, we've covered Cognitive Processing Therapy, Prolonged Exposure, and EMDR because these are the three treatment recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; this means that they are widely available and we can ask for them by name. 

Don’t stress out about which evidence-based treatment to choose; if we try one and it doesn’t work, we have two more to fall back on. If we try all three and they don’t work, we may have treatment-resistant PTSD and have to work with our treatment professional on another course of action. 

You can learn more at https://cptforptsd.com/ and reach out on the Facebook page to ask questions and share your thoughts!

*****

If you believe change is possible, you want to change, and you are willing to do the work, you absolutely CAN get your life back.”

Get your copy of The Soldier's Guide to PTSDThe Soldier's Workbook

or Acknowledge & Heal, A Women's-Focused Guide to PTSD




Friday, February 17, 2023

Ways to Heal - Cognitive Processing Therapy

 



We are continuing our series on ways to heal from PTSD. This week we are talking about Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).

CPT typically takes 12 sessions with a therapist; each session is 60 minutes. CPT can be done individually or in group sessions, and it uses a workbook for written assignments. Cognitive means that we pay attention to our thoughts and think about what we are thinking about. 

CPT recognizes that trauma warps our fundamental belief systems—beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world—and that those warped beliefs affect our walking, talking, everyday lives. In CPT, we learn about the relationship between thoughts and emotions and then learn how to identify the automatic thoughts that maintain our PTSD symptoms.

We write an “impact statement” that details our understanding of why the traumatic event occurred and what impact it has had on our belief systems. Next, we’ll use workbook exercises to identify and address unhelpful thinking patterns related to safety, trust, power and control, esteem, and intimacy. Our therapist will ask questions and work with us to recognize unhelpful thinking patterns, reframe our thoughts, reduce our symptoms, and come to a better understanding about ourselves and our relationships. 

CPT forces us to get out of "auto-pilot" and start challenging our thought patterns. Often these are thoughts we have held on to for a long time. 

You can learn more at https://cptforptsd.com/ and reach out on the Facebook page to ask questions and share your thoughts!

*****

If you believe change is possible, you want to change, and you are willing to do the work, you absolutely CAN get your life back.”

Get your copy of The Soldier's Guide to PTSDThe Soldier's Workbook

or Acknowledge & Heal, A Women's-Focused Guide to PTSD

Friday, February 10, 2023

Ways to Heal - Prolonged Exposure Therapy

 



There are many ways that we can heal from PTSD. Over the next few weeks, we'll cover three evidence-based treatments for PTSD that are widely available. And we'll start with PE.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)

PE therapy typically takes 8-15 sessions with a therapist; each session is 90 minutes. PE therapy goes right for the jugular of criterion C of PTSD: avoidance. Rather than avoid our trauma, we intentionally invite the most traumatic event into the session using a technique called “imaginal exposure.” 

After learning breathing techniques to manage anxiety, we imagine and describe the traumatic event in detail with guidance from a therapist. After the imaginal exposure, we process the experience with our therapist. We audio record the session while describing the event so that we can listen to the recording between sessions; this helps us to further process our emotions and practice breathing techniques. 

Think of the imaginal exposure like this: it’s like watching a horror movie. When we first watch a horror movie, it scares the crap out of us because that’s what horror movies do. What if we watch the horror movie back-to-back three times? It’s still going to be scary, but, after the third time, we know what is coming and when and it’s not as bad as the first time. What if we watch that horror movie ten times? Twenty times? A hundred times? Eventually, watching that movie doesn’t affect us as much because we’ve seen it and we know what’s coming. This is called habituation. In PE therapy, we’ll be watching our horror movie literally hundreds of times - in session with our therapist and in between sessions by listening to our recordings. 

The second part of PE therapy is called in vivo exposure, a fancy term for “in real life.” With our therapist, we make a list of stimuli and situations connected to our trauma, such as specific places or people, and create a plan to intentionally expose ourselves to these stimuli in a way that is gradual and safe. 

I realize that for most of us, the thought of retelling our experience out loud can be anxiety-provoking. It’s tough, especially at the start, but PE therapy is undeniably effective, and it also can be adapted into treatment for Moral Injury. 

I encourage you to learn more about PE from https://www.med.upenn.edu/ctsa/workshops_pet.html and also ping us on our Facebook page with your questions. Next week, we'll cover Cognitive Processing Therapy.

*****

If you believe change is possible, you want to change, and you are willing to do the work, you absolutely CAN get your life back.”

Get your copy of The Soldier's Guide to PTSDThe Soldier's Workbook

or Acknowledge & Heal, A Women's-Focused Guide to PTSD

Sunday, February 5, 2023

How Stress Affects Our Bodies - A Video by Sharon Horesh Bergquist


This blog is not just about my musings; I want to share great resources and ideas with you. This video by Sharon Horesh Bergquist is short, fun, comprehensive, and really well done - oh, and it's less than five minutes long! I encourage you to check this out; I know I will be sharing this with all my clients going forward: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-t1Z5-oPtU


*****

If you believe change is possible, you want to change, and you are willing to do the work, you absolutely CAN get your life back.”

Get your copy of The Soldier's Guide to PTSDThe Soldier's Workbook

or Acknowledge & Heal, A Women's-Focused Guide to PTSD